Interview Sidekick alternative that actually shows pricing upfront?
i was about to pay for interview sidekick last weekend and god i'm glad i didn't. their site refuses to show the price until you create an account. i tried like three times, looking for a pricing page or a tier comparison or anything. nothing. only way to see what they charge is to give them your email and click through the welcome flow. hard pass on principle.
context. fintech loop on thursday. been job hunting for seven months and the live coding round always wrecks me. i can solve mediums on leetcode in my sleep at night, but the moment a real person is watching my screen i lose like 30 seconds to brain fog. happens every single time, doesnt matter how prepared i am. so i started shopping for one of these interview helper tools everyone keeps mentioning.
interview sidekick was the top google result. clicked in, looked around. ready to nope out as soon as i hit the gated pricing thing. ill never get that decision. raycast shows the price. notion shows the price. the dinky little vpn i use when im in airports shows the price. when somebody hides the number behind a signup form my default read is the number is high enough that they want you emotionally committed before you see it. and the second they have your email its retargeting hell forever.
so instead of giving in, i wrote down what i actually needed and tried four interview sidekick alternative tools across two weekends. ran mock interviews with chatgpt voice as the interviewer for the practice rounds. coding mock saturday morning, behavioral mock saturday afternoon, system design sunday, mixed panel the next sunday switching question types just to mess with myself. the requirement list was: price visible before signup, has to work on a real video call, cant show up in the screen share recording, has to handle behavioral plus coding plus system design (because i fail behavioral too tbh), and i dont want to deal with balancing a phone on a stack of books for a second device unless i actively want that.
first tool was a chrome extension. second i shared my zoom tab the overlay was right there in the share. embarrassing. dead. second tool was coding only. asked it for a behavioral prompt, the tool just sat there. nothing. the third one had a session cap that ended my mock at about the 90 minute mark right when i was about to roll into system design. annoying because i was finally warming up. the fourth one cleared every single requirement. real desktop app on mac and windows, hides itself from screen capture so the share looks normal, transparent pricing right on the homepage no signup needed, handles all three interview types, and works as a one-device setup or pairs with a phone if you want the second screen for some reason. ran my actual round 1 (recruiter screen) on it last friday and passed. nothing flagged on the recruiter side.
am i nuts for this. anyone actually paid for sidekick after handing over the email and walked away happy. ill drop names in the comments if anyone asks.