HackerRank pricing for companies and what each test really costs
October 23, 2026 6 min read
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HackerRank charges companies an annual or monthly subscription that includes a fixed number of candidate attempts, meaning one candidate taking one coding test. Price trackers that checked hackerrank.com/pricing in late September 2026 list Starter at $79 a month billed yearly ($948 a year, 60 attempts) or $99 billed monthly, and Pro at $419 a month billed yearly ($5,028 a year, 360 attempts). Enterprise is a custom quote. Extra attempts beyond the plan have been priced at $20 each.
Those numbers buy the test. They do not buy candidates to send it to, or the interviews afterwards. Below is what each plan works out to per test and per hire, how the prices have moved, what the plans leave out, and when an all-in hiring plan costs less. If you already know you want sourcing and testing in one place, the coding assessment page shows how ours works.
How much does HackerRank cost for companies?
HackerRank costs from about $948 a year on Starter to about $5,028 a year on Pro, with larger teams on custom Enterprise contracts. Every self-serve plan is priced around candidate attempts per year, so your real cost depends on how many people you test. The table shows the current figures reported by trackers next to the figures HackerRank published in 2025.
| Plan | Late 2026 price (trackers) | Attempts included | 2025 price (HackerRank) | 2025 attempts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $79 a month billed yearly, $99 billed monthly | 60 a year (5 a month) | $165 a month billed yearly | 120 a year |
| Pro | $419 a month billed yearly, $529 billed monthly | 360 a year (30 a month) | $375 a month billed yearly | 300 a year |
| Enterprise | Custom quote | Custom | Custom quote | Custom |
The 2026 figures come from two independent sources, a pricing review dated 29 September 2026 and a page change tracker, which agree with each other. The 2025 figures come from a comparison HackerRank published on its own site. HackerRank's pricing page would not load for us when we checked, so treat these as reported figures. Check the page before you budget, because the plans changed within the past year.
Paste events
1 small paste, from the task text
Tab switches
4 switches, longest 27 seconds
Keystroke playback
Steady typing, edits and reruns
Code similarity
38 percent with Candidate 2024 on helper code
AI-generated code likelihood
Low, style matches interview answers
Signals inform your team. They never reject a candidate on their own.
What does a HackerRank attempt cost?
A HackerRank attempt costs about $15.80 on the current Starter plan and about $14 on Pro when you use every attempt you paid for. Unused attempts are the hidden cost. If you buy Starter and test 30 people in a year, each test really costs you $31.60. Past the allowance, each extra attempt has been listed at $20.
| Plan and usage | Yearly price | Tests taken | Real cost per test |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter, full use | $948 | 60 | $15.80 |
| Starter, half used | $948 | 30 | $31.60 |
| Starter plus 40 overage attempts | $948 + $800 | 100 | $17.48 |
| Pro, full use | $5,028 | 360 | $13.97 |
| Pro, half used | $5,028 | 180 | $27.93 |
The overage line is an estimate built on the $20 per attempt figure from 2025. Ask HackerRank for the current overage rate before you rely on it.
How much does HackerRank cost per hire?
HackerRank costs roughly $240 to $500 in test fees per developer hire, if you send the test to 15 to 30 candidates per role. That range assumes Starter pricing at full use. It covers only the test. Sourcing those candidates, screening their resumes and interviewing the finalists are separate costs, and for most small teams they are the expensive part.
Here is a realistic year for a startup making four developer hires:
- Test fees: 4 roles times 20 candidates is 80 attempts. That is Starter plus 20 overage attempts, about $1,350.
- Sourcing: a job board posting or a sourcing tool, commonly a few hundred dollars per role, or recruiter time.
- Interviews: two engineers spending an hour with each of five finalists per role is 40 engineer hours a year.
Add those together and the coding test is often the smallest line. That is why it is worth comparing HackerRank with tools that bundle the other steps, not only with other test vendors.
#1 Candidate 6815
PHP 8, Symfony, MySQL · code, interview and integrity done
#2 Candidate 7550
PHP 8, Symfony, MySQL · code, interview and integrity done
#3 Candidate 4784
PHP 8, Symfony, MySQL · code, interview and integrity done
#4 Candidate 5736
PHP 8, Symfony, MySQL · code, interview and integrity done
#5 Candidate 1296
PHP 8, Symfony, MySQL · code, interview and integrity done
What is included in HackerRank Starter and Pro?
Both self-serve plans include the Screen product for take-home coding tests and the Interview product for live pair-programming sessions, along with plagiarism detection, according to HackerRank's own 2025 comparison. Pro adds more attempts and a larger question library, and trackers report ATS integrations on Pro. Enterprise adds single sign-on, custom contracts and the full question library.
What none of the plans include is candidates. HackerRank tests the people you bring to it. If your inbound pipeline is thin, you still need a job board, a sourcing tool or a recruiter, and you still need someone to read the results and decide who moves forward.
Is HackerRank worth it for a small company?
HackerRank is worth it for a small company that already has plenty of applicants and mainly needs a trusted, well-known test to filter them. Its question library is large and candidates recognize the format. It is a weaker fit when you are hiring two to five developers a year with few inbound applicants, because you pay for attempts you may not use and still have to find the candidates yourself.
It is also worth knowing that HackerRank's best known content is widely practiced. Candidates prepare on its public practice site, and answers to common library questions circulate online. Custom tasks written for your role, and a follow-up interview about the code each candidate wrote, are harder to rehearse. Our guide to detecting cheating in remote coding tests covers what to watch for.
HackerRank pricing compared with an all-in hiring plan
A test-only tool and an all-in hiring platform solve different amounts of the problem, so the fairest comparison is what a year of hiring costs with each. The table compares HackerRank's current Starter plan with the DeveloperHiring Startup plan, using the limits published on our pricing page.
| What you get | HackerRank Starter (late 2026) | DeveloperHiring Startup |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $79 a month billed yearly, $948 a year | $99 a month billed yearly, $1,188 a year |
| Coding tests | 60 attempts a year | 40 assessments a month |
| Candidate sourcing | Not included | 150 candidates sourced and scored a month |
| AI interview about the candidate's code | Not included | 15 a month |
| Tasks | Question library | Tasks generated for each role, with hidden tests |
| Output | Test reports per candidate | A ranked top five with scorecards and integrity signals |
| Fee per hire | None | None |
If you only need a test and you have a full pipeline, HackerRank Starter is cheaper by $240 a year. If you would otherwise pay for sourcing and spend engineer hours on first-round interviews, a plan that includes both usually costs less in total. Larger teams can compare HackerRank Pro at $5,028 a year with our Team plan at $299 a month billed yearly, which includes 160 assessments a month across 8 new roles.
Are there cheaper alternatives to HackerRank?
Yes. Cheaper alternatives to HackerRank fall into two groups. Test-only tools such as Codility, CodeSignal, TestGorilla and Coderbyte compete on price per test and question style, and some offer lower entry plans. All-in platforms such as DeveloperHiring include sourcing and interviews with the test, which lowers the total cost of a hire rather than the cost of a test.
Pick by where your time goes. If you drown in applicants, a cheap test filter is the right buy. If you struggle to find qualified developers at all, a better test will not fix that, and a platform that sources and tests together will. For non-engineering roles, such as support or sales hires, a separate tool for AI screening interviews handles the first round without a coding test.
How do you get a lower HackerRank price?
You get a lower HackerRank price mainly by committing to a longer term and buying attempts up front. Buyer data from procurement platforms shows annual contracts negotiated below list price, with longer terms, prepaid volume and early renewal as the common levers. HackerRank listed prepaid Pro attempts at $15 each in 2025, cheaper than the $20 overage.
- Pay yearly. On the current figures, yearly billing on Starter saves $240 against monthly.
- Estimate attempts honestly. Count roles times candidates you will actually test, then buy that, not the next tier up.
- Ask for prepaid attempts instead of paying overage mid-year.
- Run the first round on something cheaper and send HackerRank tests only to shortlisted candidates.
Which should you choose?
Choose HackerRank if you already have a steady flow of applicants and you want a recognized test to filter them. Choose an all-in platform if your bottleneck is finding and vetting developers in the first place, or if you hire a few engineers a year and want one flat price for sourcing, testing and a ranked shortlist. You can see how that works for your own role in about a minute on the technical recruiting platform page.