5 Best AI Mock Interview Tools, Tested September 2026

Verified September 2026: every price below was checked against the vendor's own pricing page, FAQ, or homepage, and every "voice or text" claim against the vendor's own product description. Where a vendor page would not load, the entry says so and gives the date of the last figure we could confirm.

Every "best AI mock interview tools" list published in 2024 and 2025 recommended the same two free options: Google's Interview Warmup and Pramp. Neither exists in the form those lists describe.

Google retired Interview Warmup in April 2026. There was no blog post. The only public explanation was a one-line notice, quoted by several outlets that captured it before it disappeared: "We're doing a little spring cleaning and have decided to retire Interview Warmup." As of our check this month, grow.google/interview-warmup no longer serves the tool; it redirects to a regional Grow with Google homepage, and Google's own guidance points job seekers to Gemini. The only free, no-login tool that made you answer five questions out loud and showed you your own speech patterns is gone.

Pramp went a quieter way. Exponent acquired it in 2021, moved every session onto its own platform in July 2024, and in 2026 rebranded itself. The practice page at tryexponent.com now reads "Pramp is now Aced (formerly Exponent)." Peer mocks are still free, but they are metered by monthly credits, and the new AI feedback layer is in early access for paying members only.

What filled the gap is a different kind of product. The tools that now rank for "AI mock interview" are mostly interview copilots, built to feed you answers during a live call, that added a practice mode and priced it into an $80 to $300 subscription. Their pricing pages are good at the headline rate and quiet about the rest: minute caps, non-refundable monthly plans, coupon-dependent list prices, and whether the "mock interview" ever asks you to open your mouth.

Here are the 5 tools worth your money or your time, verified in September 2026, what each one actually costs today, and what its pricing page leaves out.

Practice tool vs. interview copilot

This list sits next to our Cluely alternatives roundup, and three of the tools below appear in both. The difference is which half of the product is being judged.

An interview copilot runs during the live interview. It listens to the interviewer, reads your screen, and suggests answers in real time. Some companies explicitly prohibit AI assistance during evaluated interviews and will rescind an offer if they detect it; the copilot roundup covers the vendors, the detection claims, and the privacy record.

A mock interview tool runs before the interview. It plays the interviewer, or records you while someone else does, and then tells you what to fix. Nobody objects to rehearsal. There is no detection risk and no offer to lose. The only cost is your time and the price of the tool.

This article judges the practice side only. If you are reading it, you are probably not looking for invisibility. You are looking for a way to stop rambling, and for a price that does not punish you for practising a lot.

Quick Comparison

All figures verified in September 2026 against vendor pages unless marked otherwise.

Tool	Mock format	Voice or text	What it measures	Refund / lock-in	Pricing
GeekBye	Records the mock you run, on your desktop	Voice: transcribes both sides	6 delivery and content metrics, summary, action items	Free plan; no minute caps; cancel anytime	Pro $74.99/mo paid ($149.99 list); $600/yr; $750 once
Final Round AI	AI mock inside the copilot subscription	Not stated on first-party pages	Answer content	Monthly non-refundable; 3-day window on longer plans	$25/mo billed $300/yr; $60/mo quarterly; $90/mo
LockedIn AI	AI mock on web, desktop or phone	Voice (video call)	Competency scores per session	Monthly, quarterly "non-refundable once started"	Metered plans, 400 min cap; $1,499.25 lifetime (promo)
Interview Sidekick	AI interviewer, record-and-review or live	Voice	Per-category analytics, transcripts	Free tier limited; paid plan coupon-dependent	Ultimate $80/mo list, $40 with code SAVE50
interviewing.io	Live call with a senior engineer	Voice	Interviewer's written feedback	Full refund if unhappy; pay per session	"Starts at $179" per session; packages unpriced

Now let's break down what each one actually does.

1. GeekBye — Best Overall Alternative

Best for: Candidates who want to rehearse every week without a meter running, and want a report at the end that tells them what to fix.

GeekBye takes a different approach from the four tools below it. It does not bolt a practice mode onto a copilot subscription. It is a native desktop app for macOS and Windows that sits beside whatever mock you run, with a friend, a coach, or a free voice assistant asking the questions, captures both sides of the audio, transcribes it in real time in 33 languages, and then does the part the pricing pages below never quite promise: it turns the session into a report you can act on.

That report scores six dimensions, Confidence, Clarity, Specificity, Engagement, Composure and Relevance, and pairs them with an AI summary, key points and action items. The performance metrics guide explains each one. The difference from a filler-word counter is that the metrics cover content as well as delivery: a fluent answer that never addressed the question scores low on Relevance; a precise answer with no example scores low on Specificity. Run the same mock next week and you have two reports to compare, which is the whole point of practising.

The second thing GeekBye does that a practice tool should is keep your prep in reusable profiles. Build one for the role, with the job description, your stories and the stack they use, attach it to every mock for that role, and fold what you learned from the real first round back into it before the second. The AI assistant for interviews overview walks through that loop. Mid-session, the Ask feature answers a question you blank on instantly, so a rehearsal keeps moving instead of stopping to search.

The privacy difference is specific. Transcripts and reports live in a local SQLite database on your machine. Screenshots go through on-device OCR, so only extracted text reaches the AI. A recording of you rehearsing your weakest answers is more personal than a transcript, and every other tool on this list keeps it on their servers.

Key features:

• Real-time transcription of microphone and system audio, in 33 languages, with the transcription language set independently of the output language
• Six-metric performance report after every session, plus AI summary, key points and action items
• Reusable role profiles so every mock for the same job starts from the same context
• Ask — instant AI help on any question, mid-session, via shortcut
• Screenshot capture with on-device OCR — only text leaves your machine
• Local-first storage — SQLite database on your device, OAuth tokens in the OS keychain
• Works with any interviewer — a friend, a coach, or a free voice AI; the report is the same
• No minute caps and no session caps on any plan, including the free Starter plan
• Native desktop app whose window is protected from screen capture, so prep notes stay private when you rehearse over a screen share; see the technical interviews walkthrough for the live-session side

Pricing: Free Starter plan. Pro lists at $149.99/month and you pay $74.99/month, because checkout applies 50% off automatically for as long as you stay subscribed. Annual is $600/year and Pro Lifetime is $750 once. Cancel anytime; there is no minute meter, no annual-upfront requirement to reach the advertised rate, and no coupon code to remember.

Why it beats the rest: Every other tool on this list charges you in a way that discourages practice: $179 per session, 400 minutes a month, a year upfront, or a monthly plan you cannot refund. GeekBye charges one flat price, lets you run as many mocks as you want, scores them on six dimensions instead of one, and keeps the recordings on your machine. The one thing it does not do is play the interviewer, and a free voice assistant does that job for nothing.

2. Final Round AI — Biggest Prep Ecosystem, Longest Commitment

Best for: Early-career candidates who want mock interviews, a resume builder and a live copilot in one subscription, and are prepared to pay a year upfront to get the price on the homepage.

Final Round AI is the largest platform in this space by traffic, and its AI Mock Interview is bundled into every plan alongside the resume builder, cover letter generator, Interview Copilot and, since June 2026, Career Coaches. Our Cluely alternatives roundup and the head-to-head comparison cover the copilot side. This entry is about the practice side and what it costs.

The pricing structure is the thing to understand before you sign up. Their own pricing explainer lists one feature set at three billing frequencies: $25/month billed as $300 upfront for a year, $60/month billed as $180 per quarter, or $90/month month to month. The headline rate is the annual one. Annual and quarterly carry a 3-day refund window; the monthly plan is explicitly non-refundable. The trial is a single 10-minute session, not extendable and not renewable.

On the question this list asks of every tool, do you speak, the first-party pages do not say. The mock interview is described in terms of question filtering ("Smart Mode" and "Auto Mode") rather than answer capture, and no page we could find describes recording or scoring a spoken answer. Use the 10 minutes to find out before you commit to twelve months.

Key features:

• AI Mock Interview on all three plans
• Interview Copilot for live sessions, with stealth gated to tiers that are not priced on any first-party page
• Resume builder and cover letter generator
• Career Coaches, launched June 2026
• 91 languages claimed platform-wide
• 10% discount for students, veterans, first responders and the recently laid off

Pricing: $25/mo billed $300 upfront annually, $60/mo billed $180 quarterly, or $90/mo monthly. 3-day refund on annual and quarterly; monthly non-refundable.

Trade-off vs GeekBye: Far more tools in one place. What you give up is clarity and flexibility: whether the mock is spoken is not stated, the cheap rate locks you in for a year, the month-to-month rate is $15 more than GeekBye's and cannot be refunded, and everything is processed in the cloud.

3. LockedIn AI — Real Mock Mode, Metered by the Minute

Best for: Candidates who want a spoken AI mock with a scored report and are willing to watch a minute counter while they get it.

LockedIn AI has the most complete mock mode of the copilot vendors. Its homepage describes running "full mock interviews on any device — desktop, tablet, or phone — with no download needed," after which "the AI interview assistant generates a performance report with competency scores." It is voice-based, works inside the same call platforms as the copilot, and the report is closer to GeekBye's than anything else on this list.

The minuses are on the pricing page and in the fine print, and our LockedIn AI vs Cluely comparison documents them. As verified in August 2026, the monthly and quarterly plans are metered at 400 Copilot minutes, a cap that a serious interview season can exhaust. The lifetime plan is $1,499.25, which is a $1,999 catalog price with a 25%-off promo applied; the displayed figure moves with whichever promo is running. The refund policy calls monthly and quarterly plans "non-refundable once started" while the pricing page shows a money-back-guarantee badge. And Trustpilot has removed LockedIn AI's rating, displaying a notice that it "removed a number of fake reviews for this company," while the company's own pages advertise "4.8 / 2,739 reviews"; Trustpilot's listing showed 119 reviews as of August, 22% of them 1-star.

Key features:

• Mock Interview mode on web, desktop and mobile, with a competency-scored report after each session
• Real-time coding copilot and support for HireVue, CodeSignal and HackerRank
• LockedIn Duo — a helper types, speaks, or takes remote control alongside the AI
• Stealth on paid plans only; the vendor's own docs say the web version "hides nothing at all"
• 50+ languages by their marketing, though the same site also claims 45+ and 99+ on different pages
• Free tier to start, no card

Pricing: Metered monthly and quarterly plans capped at 400 Copilot minutes; lifetime at $1,499.25 as a promo on $1,999. Monthly and quarterly are non-refundable once started. Figures verified August 2026; the pricing page's plan detail did not render in our September check, so confirm the current cap at checkout. Our GeekBye vs LockedIn AI comparison goes deeper.

Trade-off vs GeekBye: A genuine AI interviewer with a scored report, which GeekBye does not have. What you give up is the ability to practise without counting: 400 minutes is under seven hours a month, every session runs on their servers, the refund terms contradict the badge, and the review platform that should tell you what customers think has pulled the rating.

4. Interview Sidekick — Biggest Question Bank, Least Stable Price

Best for: Job seekers who want a large prep library and a live-voice AI interviewer, and who will check the price on the day they buy.

Interview Sidekick combines preparation and live assistance. The prep side is a 10,000+ question bank across behavioral, technical and role-specific categories, and, new since our August review, a Mock Interview Practice mode where you "rehearse with an AI interviewer (record-and-review or live voice)," with full transcripts and analytics across categories afterwards. It is spoken, it is unlimited on the paid plan, and the question bank is the largest here. See our GeekBye vs Interview Sidekick comparison for the copilot side.

The correction is the price, and it has needed correcting three times this year. In March 2026 the paid tier was $10/month. By August the homepage listed Ultimate Sidekick at $160/month, $80 with the code SAVE50. In September it lists $80/month, $40 with SAVE50. Every one of those figures was the vendor's own, on its own homepage, within six months. Whatever you read on a comparison site, including this one, open the homepage before you decide.

The free tier is real but thin: limited prep sessions, limited question bank access, and basic insights, with no numbers attached. The mock interview mode is on the paid plan.

Key features:

• 10,000+ real interview questions across behavioral and technical categories
• Mock Interview Practice — AI interviewer, record-and-review or live voice, unlimited on Ultimate
• Full transcripts and per-category analytics on practice sessions
• AI model selection — choose between GPT-5, GPT-4.1 or Claude 4.0 Sonnet
• 52 language support
• Native desktop app for Windows and macOS plus a web interface

Pricing: Basic free, limited. Ultimate Sidekick $80/month list, $40/month with code SAVE50 at checkout, as shown on the homepage in September 2026. This is half the August figure; treat any price older than a month as stale.

Trade-off vs GeekBye: The bigger question bank and a real AI interviewer. What you give up is predictability and locality: a list price that has moved by 16x and back within a year, a rate that depends on a coupon, and cloud processing of every practice session with no on-device option.

5. interviewing.io — Real Engineers, Priced Per Session

Best for: Software engineers with a FAANG-style loop scheduled who want feedback from people who actually run those loops, and have the budget for it.

interviewing.io is the one entry where the interviewer is a senior, staff or principal engineer from a large company, on a live anonymous call. Nothing on this list substitutes for that if what you are practising is a system design round in front of a person who has failed candidates on system design rounds. The free tier is unusually useful: an AI interviewer for coding and system design, plus 200+ problems from Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview.

The minus is the price, and the way it is published. The figure circulating in most lists is "$339 a session." interviewing.io does not publish a price list. Its FAQ says one thing: "Interviews start at $179, but the price varies depending on the subject matter and whether you want an interviewer from a specific company." Third-party reports put company-specific sessions at $225 to $300, FAANG-branded ones near $339, and a 3-session coaching package near $2,000. The vendor's own number is the floor; everything above it is unpriced until you ask.

Key features:

• Live mocks with engineers from large tech companies, anonymous on both sides
• Free AI interviewer for coding and system design, with feedback
• 200+ problems from Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview, free
• Coaching packages of 3, 5 or 10 sessions with a dedicated mentor, unpriced publicly
• Full refund if you are unhappy with a session, per the FAQ
• Peer practice queue for free human reps

Pricing: Human sessions from $179, priced up by subject and target company; no table published. AI interviewer and problem bank free.

Trade-off vs GeekBye: Human feedback from exactly the right humans, at a price that makes weekly practice a four-figure habit. There are no delivery metrics, no persistent scoring, and nothing carries from one session to the next except what the interviewer chose to write down. Record the session with GeekBye and you keep both.

What the Pricing Pages Don't Say

Four of the five tools above sell a practice mode inside a copilot subscription, and their pricing pages are built around the copilot. Here is what a candidate who only wants to rehearse needs to know, with the sourcing stated.

The monthly plan is the one you cannot refund. Final Round AI's own explainer calls its $90 monthly plan non-refundable and gives the longer plans a 3-day window. LockedIn AI's policy says monthly and quarterly are "non-refundable once started." The plan a cautious buyer picks to try the product is, at both vendors, the plan with no way out.

The advertised price needs a year upfront. Final Round AI's $25/month exists only as $300 paid at once. The month-to-month rate is 3.6x higher. Every "from $25" you see for it in a comparison table is the annual number.

Practice is metered. LockedIn AI's monthly and quarterly plans cap at 400 Copilot minutes. That is under seven hours, shared between live interviews and practice. A candidate running three mocks a week plus real rounds will hit it.

The list price is a coupon away from meaning nothing. Interview Sidekick's price has been $10, $160 and $80 in 2026, and the amount you pay depends on entering SAVE50. When the list price halves and the coupon stays, the "50% off" is the price.

Your practice recordings stay on their servers. Every tool above except GeekBye processes and stores mock sessions in the cloud. For a live interview that may be acceptable. For a recording of you rehearsing the answer to "tell me about a time you failed," it is worth a second thought. GeekBye keeps transcripts and reports in a local database and sends only text to the AI.

Nobody says whether you speak. Of the four competitors, only LockedIn AI and Interview Sidekick describe a spoken mock on their own pages. Final Round AI does not, and interviewing.io's paid sessions are live calls by definition. If a vendor cannot tell you on its homepage whether its mock interview listens to you, assume it reads what you type.

Free & No-Cost Ways to Practice

If the budget is zero, here is what actually exists in September 2026:

• Gemini Live or ChatGPT Voice as the interviewer. Gemini Live is a free spoken conversation in the Gemini mobile app; ChatGPT's voice mode is on the free tier with usage caps. Paste the job description, ask for one question at a time with follow-ups, and speak. No scoring, no history.
• Aced peer mocks — a real human on a live call, free within your monthly credits, and the closest thing to the old Pramp.
• interviewing.io's AI interviewer and 200+ free problems, for coding and system design specifically.
• Yoodli's free plan — the best delivery analytics in the category, but its pricing page says 5 sessions for life, not per month. Enough to see the report once.
• A friend and a phone call, which is still the most common mock interview in the world.

The trade-off is the same across all five: no measurable progress. None of them tells you whether this week's answers were better than last week's, because none keeps a comparable record. That is the gap GeekBye's free Starter plan fills: let the free interviewer ask, let GeekBye capture, read the six-metric report, and run it again next week against the same numbers. That combination costs nothing.

What Actually Makes Mock Practice Work

Four things, in order, and most of the products above do only one or two:

1. Say it out loud. Reading an answer in your head is not rehearsal. Typing it into a chat box is not rehearsal either. The interview is spoken, so the practice has to be. This is why the "voice or text" column exists.
2. Follow-ups matter more than the opening question. Anyone can prepare a first answer. Interviews are decided on "why that approach?" and "what would you do differently?" Tools that ask one question and score it miss the part that fails candidates.
3. Watch or read yourself back. Nobody improves from a score they never look at. A transcript you can search, or a recording you can scrub, is worth more than a number.
4. Volume beats content. Most candidates already know which story to tell. What they need is fifteen repetitions of telling it in ninety seconds without rambling. That is why a minute meter or a per-session price is the wrong shape for practice.

For which formats to rehearse first, our report on what technical interviews actually asked in 2026 is drawn from real sessions rather than a recycled question bank.

Do AI Mock Interviews Actually Help?

Yes, with one qualification: they improve delivery fast and content slowly. Filler words, pace and structure respond to feedback within a handful of sessions, because the fix is mechanical and the tool can measure it. Content, the right story, the right technical depth, the right example, improves only as fast as you build it, and no tool fixes not having the stories in the first place.

The corollary is that the tool should match the weakness and the price should match the volume. If you ramble, you need a report after every run and a plan that lets you run many. If you freeze on system design, you need a human once or twice, and interviewing.io is the human. If you have never seen a good behavioral answer, a question bank helps. A free voice assistant will make you talk, which is the first step, and will not tell you anything after that.

Which Tool Should You Pick?

It depends on what is actually going wrong:

• Rehearsal every week, with a report you can act on — GeekBye. Run the mock with anyone, get six metrics, a summary and action items, stored on your machine. Free Starter, Pro $74.99/month, no minute caps, cancel anytime.
• Everything in one subscription, and you can commit annually — Final Round AI at $300 upfront. Use the 10-minute trial to confirm the mock is spoken before you pay for a year.
• A spoken AI mock with a scored report, and you will watch the meter — LockedIn AI. Check the current minute cap and the refund wording at checkout; see our LockedIn AI vs Cluely comparison.
• The biggest question bank plus an AI interviewer — Interview Sidekick, at whatever its homepage says today; $40/month with SAVE50 as of September.
• Technical rounds, and you want a real engineer — interviewing.io, from $179 per session. Its AI interviewer and problem bank are free.
• Zero budget today — Gemini Live or ChatGPT Voice asking the questions, with GeekBye's free plan capturing the answers.

Whatever you choose, read the fine print on refunds, minute caps and billing frequency before you pay. Two of the tools on this page call their monthly plans non-refundable, one meters your practice, and one has changed its list price three times this year.

For practice questions to run through whichever tool you pick, start with the behavioral interview question bank, and for the full preparation sequence see the complete guide to technical interviews.