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Recruitment · head to head

Codility vs Karat

Codility logo

Codility

Recruitment

Technical coding assessment platform priced by annual invite volume, not by seat count alone

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Karat logo

Karat

Recruitment

Outsourced technical interviewing, engineers conduct your candidate interviews for you

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Codility pricing is capped by candidate invites per year, not by hiring headcount, so a busy recruiting quarter or hiring surge can exhaust the allowance faster than a company's growth plan anticipated.; Karat pricing is quote-only, so a buyer cannot model cost per hire against internal interviewer time without a sales conversation
  • They diverge on capability: Codility covers Coding task library, Karat covers Interview Engineers.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Codility and Karat actually diverge.

Attributes where Codility and Karat differ
AttributeCodilityKarat
Pricing modelPer year by candidate invite volume, with platform user limits per tierquote

Identical on both: starting price (On request), free tier (No), platforms (Web), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Recruitment).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Codility

  • Coding task library
  • Automated scoring
  • Plagiarism detection
  • Live coding interviews
  • ATS integrations
  • Candidate experience reporting

Only in Karat

  • Interview Engineers
  • Structured scoring
  • High-volume screening
  • Interview intelligence
  • Scheduling integration

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Codility

  • An engineering team with a steady, moderate hiring volume that fits comfortably within the Starter or Scale invite allowancenot Karat
  • A company that wants automated coding assessments integrated directly into an existing applicant tracking systemnot Karat
  • A hiring team concerned about AI-generated or copied solutions wanting built-in plagiarism detectionnot Karat
  • An organisation running live, interviewer-led coding sessions in addition to take-home assessmentsnot Karat

Karat

  • A company scaling engineering headcount quickly and unable to free up enough internal engineer time for first-round technical interviewsnot Codility
  • A hiring team wanting a consistent bar across interviewers when growth has diluted interview qualitynot Codility
  • A seasonal hiring push, such as a new-grad or intern cohort, that needs a large volume of structured interviews in a short windownot Codility
  • A company that has measured interviewer no-shows or inconsistent scoring as a source of candidate drop-offnot Codility

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Codility

  • Pricing is capped by candidate invites per year, not by hiring headcount, so a busy recruiting quarter or hiring surge can exhaust the allowance faster than a company's growth plan anticipated.
  • The Starter plan supports only one platform user, making it impractical for any team with more than a single recruiter or hiring manager needing direct access.
  • Annual-only billing on the Starter tier requires a full year's commitment before a company knows whether its actual invite usage matches the plan it bought.
  • As with any automated coding assessment, over-reliance on it as an early filter risks screening out strong candidates who do not perform well under artificial timed test conditions.
  • Its assessment format is squarely aimed at software engineering roles, so it offers no coverage for non-technical or adjacent technical hiring needs that HackerRank's broader question library covers.

Karat

  • Pricing is quote-only, so a buyer cannot model cost per hire against internal interviewer time without a sales conversation
  • Handing the interview itself to a contractor removes the one part of the process where candidates meet a real employee, which can weaken employer brand for roles where culture fit matters most
  • It solves interviewer capacity for technical screens but does not replace hiring manager or team-fit rounds, so it only removes part of the funnel
  • Quality depends on how well the client-provided rubric and questions are written; a poor rubric produces poor Karat interviews just as it would internally
  • Contracted interview volume can create pressure to keep using the service even after an internal hiring slowdown, since commitments are typically annual
  • Candidates sometimes react negatively on discovering the interviewer is not an employee of the company they applied to, which is a reputational risk not visible until candidates start talking about it publicly

Pricing, plan by plan

Codility

On request
  • Starter$1200/year
    • Up to 120 assessment invites per year
    • 1 platform user
    • Annual billing only
  • Scale$500/month
    • Up to 300 assessment invites per year (25 a month)
    • 3 platform users
    • Discount available on annual billing
  • Custom$undefined/year
    • Custom quote
    • Unlimited or high-volume invites
    • Unlimited users, SSO, integrations and dedicated support

Karat

On request
  • Karat$undefined/year
    • Interview Engineer coverage
    • Structured technical interviews
    • Interview analytics and calibration

Which should you pick?

Choose Codility if

  • You need coding task library.
  • You also want automated scoring.
Codility review

Choose Karat if

  • You need interview engineers.
  • You also want structured scoring.
Karat review

Questions people ask

Is Codility or Karat better?
Neither clearly leads. Codility starts at On request and Karat at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Codility or Karat?
Codility starts at On request and Karat at On request.
Does Codility or Karat run on more platforms?
Both run on Web, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
What is Codility best used for?
Codility is most often used for an engineering team with a steady, moderate hiring volume that fits comfortably within the starter or scale invite allowance, a company that wants automated coding assessments integrated directly into an existing applicant tracking system, a hiring team concerned about ai-generated or copied solutions wanting built-in plagiarism detection, an organisation running live, interviewer-led coding sessions in addition to take-home assessments. Of those, an engineering team with a steady, moderate hiring volume that fits comfortably within the starter or scale invite allowance and a company that wants automated coding assessments integrated directly into an existing applicant tracking system are not what Karat is typically brought in for.
What can Codility do that Karat cannot?
Codility covers Coding task library, Automated scoring, Plagiarism detection, Live coding interviews. Karat covers Interview Engineers, Structured scoring, High-volume screening, Interview intelligence.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Codility: What counts against the invite limit?

Each candidate assessment invitation sent counts toward the plan's annual (or monthly, for Scale) invite allowance.

Karat: Do candidates know they are being interviewed by a contractor rather than an employee?

Karat discloses that Interview Engineers are trained third-party interviewers rather than employees of the hiring company, though disclosure practices are set by the client.

Codility: What happens if we exceed our invite allowance?

Additional invites beyond the plan limit typically incur per-invite charges or require an upgrade to a higher tier.

Karat: Can Karat interview for languages or stacks outside mainstream web and backend engineering?

Coverage depends on the pool of Interview Engineers Karat maintains for a given stack; niche or highly specialised roles may have less coverage than common web and backend roles.

Codility: Is there a free tier?

No published free tier exists; all plans require payment, with Starter billed annually only.

Karat: Is pricing per interview or per contracted block of volume?

Karat does not publish pricing; it is quoted per client based on expected interview volume and contract term.

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