Codility Pricing in 2026The volume discount that runs backwards
Codility publishes real numbers, which puts it ahead of most assessment vendors. Read them closely and something odd falls out: the cheap plan costs $10 a candidate and the expensive one costs $20. You buy more and pay twice as much per unit.
Codility plans at a glance
Annual billing only
$1,200 / year
No monthly option
120 invite credits a year
Where the math turns
$6,000 / year
$600 / month billed monthly
300 credits, capped at 25 a month
Quote-only enterprise
Sales-quoted
Multi-year agreements available
Volume tailored to you
Figures read directly from the Codility pricing page on July 28, 2026, checking both the monthly and yearly billing toggles. Vendor pricing moves. Confirm before you sign.
What Codility actually charges
Two published numbers, one quote. Starter is $1,200 a year for 120 invite credits and a single platform user. Scale is $6,000 a year for 300 credits and three platform users. Custom is a sales conversation. Everything else on that page is detail.
One correction before we go further. If you looked this up elsewhere first, you may have read that Scale costs $500 a month or $5,000 a year. At least one pricing aggregator publishes that figure and it is wrong. The live page shows $6,000 on the yearly toggle and a 17 percent saving against monthly, which puts the monthly rate at $600 and the monthly-billed annual total at $7,200. I checked both toggles on the vendor's own site rather than trusting a listing page, and you should do the same on any tool you are about to buy. This is the same problem we ran into pricing TestGorilla and HackerRank.
Codility sells two products under one subscription: Screen for automated technical assessments and Interview for live collaborative sessions. Both self-serve plans include both, the same bundling CoderPad splits into separate purchases. The meter is the invite credit, meaning one candidate invited to one assessment.
For the wider category see our guides to coding assessment alternatives and pre-employment testing. This post is narrower. It is the arithmetic: what each plan costs per candidate, why that number gets worse as you grow, and the two limits that decide whether $1,200 is a bargain or a trap.
The invite math
Upgrading doubles your cost per candidate
Divide price by credits and the ladder inverts. This is unusual enough that it changes how you should think about the whole product.
Cost per invite credit
Starter, annual
$1,200 for 120 credits
Scale, annual
$6,000 for 300 credits
Scale, monthly
$7,200 for 300 credits
The cheapest plan has the lowest unit cost. Upgrading doubles what you pay per candidate. Almost every other tool in this category works the other way round.
What invite 121 costs you
There is no published overage rate on the self-serve plans. Run out of Starter credits and the only listed path forward is the next tier.
Forecast 120 and land on 140 and your per-invite cost goes from $10 to $42.86. The cliff, not the list price, is the risk here.
Five times the price for two and a half times the credits. That is the whole story of the Starter to Scale jump. Every other assessment vendor I have priced this year moves the other way, rewarding volume with a lower unit cost, which is what buyers expect a tier ladder to do.
So what are you actually buying with that $4,800? Two extra platform users, a larger task library that adds system design and AI-specific tasks, and the ability to build custom tasks through MCP straight from your IDE against your own codebase. That last feature is genuinely good and nobody else in this category ships it as cleanly. The point is that the credits are close to incidental. If you justify the upgrade to your finance lead on assessment volume, the numbers will not support you. Justify it on seats and task quality instead.
The cliff at the top of Starter deserves its own line. Codility publishes no overage rate for either self-serve plan, so the only visible path past 120 credits is the $6,000 tier. Invite 121 costs $4,800. Forecast 120 screens, land on 140, and your per-invite cost lands at $42.86 rather than $10. Engineering hiring is lumpy, as BLS data on software developer employment reflects across the sector, so build your forecast off your busiest quarter and leave real headroom.
The real constraint
Scale is not a 300-invite plan, it is twelve 25-invite plans
The pricing page says 300 credits a year. The line underneath says up to 25 per month. Those two sentences describe very different products, and the second one is the one you will actually feel.
A real hiring year, throttled
Scale gives 300 credits a year but never more than 25 in a month. Open three roles at once and the plan stops you mid-funnel.
53 candidates unscreened in March and April. Annual usage: 86 of 300 credits. You paid for volume you were never allowed to spend.
Platform users vs collaborators
The seat limits look tighter than they are. Codility splits access into two roles, and only one of them is metered.
Platform Users, metered
Create assessments, review results, manage settings. 1 on Starter, 3 on Scale, unlimited on Custom.
Collaborator Users, unlimited on every plan
Join interviews and review candidate submissions. Cannot configure the platform. Free on Starter too.
Credit where it is due: unlimited collaborators on a $1,200 plan is better than most competitors manage, and it means engineers reviewing code do not need a paid seat.
Hiring does not arrive at a steady 25 candidates a month. It arrives in bursts when a funding round closes or three roles open at once. A team that opens two engineering roles in March can easily need 50 or 60 screens that month, and Scale will hand out 25. The other 30 candidates wait, get screened by hand, or drop out of the process entirely.
Here is the part that stings. Because the cap throttles your peak months, most teams never spend the 300 credits they bought. The scenario in that chart uses 86 credits across six months while being blocked 53 times. You pay $6,000 for volume the plan structurally prevents you from using, and slow candidate response is one of the most reliable causes of drop-off, which our piece on why candidates ghost employers covers in more detail.
The inversion shows up here too. Starter, at a fifth of the price, has no published monthly cap at all. Its 120 credits appear to be spendable whenever you like. So on timing flexibility the cheap plan is better than the expensive one. That is a genuinely strange piece of packaging and I would ask a rep to confirm it in writing, because if Scale really is throttled and Starter is not, that reframes the upgrade decision entirely.
Now the good news, and it is real. Codility splits access into Platform Users and Collaborator Users, and collaborators are unlimited on every plan including Starter. A collaborator can join interviews and review candidate submissions without configuring anything. That means your engineers reviewing code do not burn a paid seat, which is exactly the behaviour Google's re:Work research on structured interviewing found improves hiring decisions. Most vendors tax multiple reviewers. Codility does not, and on a $1,200 plan that is a better deal than the headline suggests. It also removes the single-seat problem that makes structured multi-reviewer evaluation painful on competing entry tiers.
Head to head
Codility against HackerRank, tier by tier
These two get shortlisted together constantly, and the honest answer is that neither wins outright. Each takes a tier.
Codility against its closest priced rival
| Plan | Annual | Volume | Seats | Each |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Codility Starter | $1,200 / yr | 120 invites | 1 platform user | $10.00 |
| Codility Scale | $6,000 / yr | 300 invites | 3 platform users | $20.00 |
| HackerRank Starter | $990 / yr | 60 attempts | 1 user | $16.50 |
| HackerRank Pro | $4,490 / yr | 300 attempts | Unlimited | $14.97 |
At the entry tier Codility is the better buy: twice the volume of HackerRank Starter for $210 more. At 300 assessments the comparison flips hard. HackerRank Pro costs $1,510 less, gives unlimited users instead of three, and lets you spend the allowance whenever you want.
At the bottom Codility is the better product for the money and it is not close. For $210 more than HackerRank Starter you get double the assessment volume, and where HackerRank hard-caps you at one user with no workaround, Codility hands you unlimited collaborators. A small team can run a real multi-reviewer process on Codility Starter. On HackerRank Starter they cannot.
At 300 assessments the picture reverses completely. HackerRank Pro is $1,510 cheaper, gives unlimited platform users against Codility's three, and imposes no monthly throttle. My view: buy Codility if you are small, and take a hard look at HackerRank or a consolidated hiring system the moment you outgrow 120 screens a year. Codility is priced to acquire small teams and priced to lose them at the upgrade, which may be deliberate positioning toward enterprise but it costs them the middle of the market.
Hidden costs
Six things the self-serve price does not cover
The published prices are honest. The gates behind them are where budgets break. Check these against your requirements before the demo rather than after the contract.
Every ATS integration needs Custom
Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday, and SAP all sit on the enterprise tier. Neither self-serve plan connects to your system of record, so on Starter or Scale a coordinator is copying scores by hand into your pipeline.
SSO and SAML are enterprise-only
Single sign-on, SAML, and the full API are Custom-tier features. Security teams that require SSO for any system holding candidate work product cannot approve the self-serve plans at all, which turns a $1,200 purchase into a sales cycle.
Proctoring gets serious only at the top
Starter gets basic proctoring with candidate snapshots. Premium video proctoring, ID verification, and the desktop app that detects unauthorized applications are Custom. If AI-assisted cheating is your worry, the cheap tiers will not settle it.
No published overage rate
HackerRank tells you an extra attempt costs $20. Codility publishes no equivalent number on either self-serve plan. That is not necessarily bad, but it means you cannot model a busy quarter from the pricing page. Ask for the figure in writing.
The task library is a paywall ladder
Starter gets a limited library. Scale adds engineering, AI, and system design tasks plus custom task building through MCP. The complete library and the Business tasks arrive only on Custom. Check that your specific stack is covered before signing.
Skills Intelligence is a different product
The internal skills mapping module that Codility markets heavily is not on Starter or Scale. If you were sold on assessing your existing workforce rather than just candidates, your entry price is a quote, not $1,200.
The integration gate is the one I would check first, and Codility is stricter here than most. HackerRank at least connects Greenhouse, Lever, and Ashby on its mid tier. Codility puts every single ATS integration behind a Custom quote. On Starter or Scale, results live in Codility and your pipeline lives somewhere else, and a coordinator bridges the two by hand. Budget that time honestly. It is a recurring cost that never shows up on the invoice, and it inflates your real cost per hire well past the subscription line.
The proctoring split matters more in 2026 than it did two years ago. Codility now lets candidates use an agentic AI copilot and even Claude Code via CLI on enterprise assessments, with reviewable activity logs, which is a sensible answer to the reality that engineers use AI at work. But the tooling that actually enforces integrity, premium video proctoring, ID verification, and the desktop app that spots unauthorized applications, is Custom-tier only. On Starter you get candidate snapshots and plagiarism detection. If defensible integrity is the reason you are buying an assessment tool at all, price the enterprise tier from the start.
Team scenarios
What Codility costs four kinds of teams
These use Codility's published prices with assessment volumes drawn from typical engineering funnels. The volume estimates are mine, not vendor quotes. Swap in your own numbers and the shape holds.
Technical founder hiring engineers two at a time
Roughly 40 screens a year, one person configuring, engineers reviewing as collaborators
Plan
Starter, annual
Cost
$1,200 / year
This is the profile Starter is genuinely priced for. The single platform user costs you nothing because collaborators are unlimited and free, so your engineers still review submissions. At 40 screens against 120 credits you have room for a bad quarter.
Seed startup with a recruiter and steady volume
About 110 screens a year, two people who need to build and edit assessments
Plan
Starter, annual
Cost
$1,200 / year
Volume fits with 10 credits to spare, which is uncomfortably tight. The bigger question is whether your recruiter needs to configure assessments or only review them. If reviewing is enough, stay on Starter. If they need to build tests, you are looking at $6,000 for a second and third seat.
Series A engineering org, bursty hiring
200 screens a year but concentrated into two hiring sprints
Plan
Scale, annual
Cost
$6,000 / year
The 25-a-month cap is fatal here. Your March sprint needs 55 invites and the plan allows 25. You pay $6,000, use maybe 150 credits, and land at $40 an assessment while still screening people by hand. HackerRank Pro at $4,490 with no monthly throttle is the straightforward better buy at this shape.
Enterprise with Workday and an SSO mandate
400 plus assessments, security review required, ATS sync non-negotiable
Plan
Custom
Cost
Sales-quoted
Integrations, SSO, premium proctoring, and Skills Intelligence all live here, so the self-serve plans are not on the table regardless of your volume. Get the quote, then price it against screening that already sits inside your hiring system rather than a second annual contract.
The pattern is a cliff rather than a curve. Codility is well priced right up to 120 screens a year and one configuring user, then falls off hard. There is nothing between $1,200 and $6,000, and the $6,000 plan comes with a throttle that punishes exactly the bursty hiring pattern that pushed you off Starter in the first place. Teams hiring their fourth through tenth engineer land in that gap most often, which is the same middle-market squeeze we found pricing HackerRank.
If that is you, the useful question is not which assessment vendor to pick. It is whether a separate assessment contract earns its place at all when screening and structured evaluation increasingly sit inside the hiring system, which we cover in our guide to hiring software engineers and the practical interview loop that assessment feeds.
Fit analysis
When Codility is worth the money
Buy it when
- You run under about 100 assessments a year, where Starter's $10 per invite beats every priced rival
- One person builds assessments and everyone else only needs to review, so unlimited collaborators carry the team
- You want Screen and Interview in one subscription instead of two vendors
- Custom tasks built from your own codebase matter enough to justify Scale on its own
- You are already heading for an enterprise contract with Workday or SAP and need Skills Intelligence
Skip it when
- Your hiring is bursty, because the 25-a-month cap on Scale will block your peak weeks
- You need ATS sync, since every integration sits behind a Custom quote
- Security requires SSO, which turns a self-serve purchase into a sales cycle
- You expect somewhere near 120 screens and cannot get an overage rate in writing
- You would rather run screening inside your hiring system than sign a second annual contract
My honest read after pricing a lot of these tools: Codility Starter is one of the best-value entry products in technical assessment, and Codility Scale is one of the worst-value middle tiers. Those two sentences describe the same vendor. The company clearly wants small teams to try it and large teams to sign enterprise contracts, and it has priced the middle to push you toward one end or the other.
Codility is SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified with GDPR compliance and a choice of EU or US hosting on enterprise, and it counts GitHub, SpaceX, and SAP among its customers. The product is not the problem. The packaging in the middle is. If you want a second opinion on day-to-day experience rather than list prices, buyer reviews on G2 are more useful than any aggregator's pricing table, and our roundup of assessment platform alternatives covers the broader field.
Buyer checklist
Seven questions to ask before you sign
Self-serve checkout is fast, which means these questions never come up unless you raise them. Each one changes the number on your invoice in month eight.
What is the overage rate per invite credit on Starter and on Scale, and can you put it on the order form?
Do unused invite credits roll over at renewal, on either self-serve plan?
Does Starter have a monthly credit cap, or is the 25-a-month ceiling genuinely specific to Scale?
What exactly consumes a credit: inviting a candidate, the candidate opening the assessment, or submitting it?
If a candidate is invited and never starts, does that credit come back?
Can I buy a fourth platform user on Scale, or is Custom the only way to add one?
Which of my required integrations are truly Custom-only, and what is the entry price of a Custom contract?
Question five is the sleeper. Invite-based metering is riskier than attempt-based metering, because a credit can burn the moment you send the invitation whether or not the candidate ever opens it. Take-home assessment abandonment is real and often runs above 30 percent of invitations. If abandoned invites still count, your effective cost per completed assessment is materially higher than any table in this post. Ask, get it in writing, and track your own completion rate alongside your other recruitment metrics.
Screening and interviews, without a second contract
Prepzo runs AI screening and structured interviews inside one hiring system. Unlimited users on every plan, no monthly throttle, and no $4,800 cliff when your hiring picks up.
Try Prepzo freeFrequently Asked Questions
How much does Codility cost in 2026?
Codility lists three plans. Starter is $1,200 a year, billed annually only, and includes 120 invite credits and one platform user. Scale is $6,000 a year billed annually, or $600 a month billed monthly, and includes 300 invite credits capped at 25 per month plus three platform users. Custom is quote-only and covers enterprise volume, unlimited platform users, ATS integrations, SSO, and the Skills Intelligence module. All three plans include unlimited Collaborator Users at no extra cost.
Why does Codility cost more per candidate on the bigger plan?
Because the volume does not grow as fast as the price. Starter is $1,200 for 120 credits, which works out to $10 each. Scale is $6,000 for 300 credits, which is $20 each. You pay five times more for two and a half times the volume, so the unit cost doubles. What you are actually buying with the upgrade is two extra platform users, a larger task library, and custom task building through MCP. The credits are close to incidental, so check that before you justify the upgrade on volume alone.
What is a Codility invite credit and do unused credits roll over?
An invite credit is one candidate being invited to one assessment in Screen or Interview. Starter includes 120 a year and Scale includes 300 a year with a hard ceiling of 25 in any single month. Codility does not publish a rollover policy or an overage rate for the self-serve plans, which is the single biggest gap in the pricing page. Get both answers in writing before you sign, because without a published overage rate the only visible path past your allowance is a jump to the next tier.
What happens when I use all 120 Starter credits?
There is no listed overage rate, so the published route is upgrading to Scale at $6,000. That makes invite number 121 cost you $4,800 in practice, and it drops your blended cost from $10 an invite to $49.59. This is the real financial risk on Starter and it is why you should forecast your assessment volume off your busiest quarter rather than your annual average. If you expect anything close to 120 screens, ask a sales rep what an overage block costs before you commit to the cheap plan.
Does Codility charge per user or per candidate?
Both, in a split that works in your favour more than most competitors. Invite credits meter candidates. Platform Users, the people who create assessments and manage settings, are capped at one on Starter and three on Scale. But Collaborator Users are unlimited on every plan, including Starter, and they can join interviews and review candidate submissions. So the engineers reading code do not consume a seat. Only the people building and configuring assessments do.
Does Codility integrate with Greenhouse, Lever, or Workday?
Yes, but only on the Custom plan. Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday, and SAP integrations are all listed as enterprise features, alongside SSO, SAML, and the full API. Neither Starter nor Scale connects to an ATS. If moving assessment results into your pipeline automatically matters to you, treat a sales quote as your starting price rather than the $1,200 on the pricing page, and budget coordinator time if you stay self-serve.
Is Codility or HackerRank better value?
It depends entirely on which tier you land in. At the entry level Codility wins clearly: $1,200 for 120 invites beats HackerRank Starter at $990 for 60 attempts, and unlimited collaborators beat HackerRank's hard one-user cap. At 300 assessments the answer flips. HackerRank Pro is $4,490 against Codility Scale at $6,000, includes unlimited users rather than three, and has no monthly throttle on when you spend the allowance. Buy Codility small, buy HackerRank at volume.
Is there a free Codility plan for employers?
No. There is no permanently free hiring tier and no monthly option on Starter, so the practical entry point is a $1,200 annual commitment. Codility does run demos and will walk you through plan fit before you buy. The free Codility experience people sometimes reference is the candidate-facing practice material, which is a different thing from the Screen and Interview products employers pay for.
Resources & Further Reading
Related Guides
- HackerRank Pricing in 2026
The closest direct pricing comparison
- CoderPad Pricing: The Per-Interview Model
A third metering model compared
- Pre-Employment Testing: A Practical Guide
Where coding assessments fit the wider screen
- How to Hire Software Engineers
Building the loop these assessments feed
External Sources
- Codility: Official Pricing Page
First-party plan prices and credit allowances
- BLS: Software Developers Occupational Outlook
US employment and wage data for engineering roles
- Google re:Work: Structured Interviewing
Why multiple independent reviewers improve decisions
- G2: Codility Reviews
Buyer-reported experience with plans and limits
