HackerRank vs TAO
HackerRank
hackerrank.com
TAO
taotesting.comSide by side
| Figure | HackerRank | TAO |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $165/mo | $149/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 7 |
| Spec score · Automated Grading Software | 8.8 (#2) | 8.7 (#3) |
| Spec score · Assessment & Examination software | 8.8 (#3) | 8.8 (#5) |
| Spec score · Assessment Software | 8.9 (#5) | 8.8 (#7) |
| Company founding | HackerRank's LinkedIn profile lists 2012 as its founding year. | The company was created in 2013 when TAO spun off into Open Assessment Technologies S.A. |
| Company legal name | The community terms identify the provider as Interviewstreet, Inc. doing business as HackerRank. | Crunchbase identifies the maker as Open Assessment Technologies S.A., a private for-profit company founded by Marc Oswald and Patrick Plichart. |
| Company size | LinkedIn lists HackerRank's company size as 201–500 employees. | LinkedIn lists Open Assessment Technologies as having 51–200 employees and headquarters in Capellen, Luxembourg. |
| Documentation | HackerRank maintains a searchable support knowledge base with API guides, product instructions, release notes, integrations, and candidate documentation. | The online user guide covers administration, importing and exporting, session security, monitoring, scoring, delivery, reporting and experimental features. |
| Founded | 2009 | 2013 |
| Integrations | Pro lists Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Google Calendar, and Outlook; Enterprise lists more than 40 integrations including Workday, Oracle, and Eightfold. | Listed integrations include Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard, GeoGebra, Proctorio, MathType, Wiris and Texthelp. |
| Licence | The terms say HackerRank or its licensors exclusively own the hosted services and grant users only a non-exclusive access licence, indicating proprietary software rather than open source. | TAO Community Edition core components are released under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3). |
| Purpose | HackerRank helps companies attract, hire, and upskill developers while supporting a large developer community. | TAO is an online assessment platform for creating, delivering and managing digital assessments. |
| Rating on GetApp | 4.5 out of 5 from 69 reviews. | 0.0 out of 5 from 0 reviews |
| Self-hosting | The terms describe HackerRank services as hosted by HackerRank in the United States and do not provide a self-hosting option. | Organizations can deploy TAO themselves, use TAO Cloud, or choose private-cloud hosting. |
| What it does | HackerRank provides developer-skills assessment, technical screening, live interviewing, and upskilling tools for employers and a coding-practice community for developers. | TAO is an open-source digital assessment platform for creating, delivering, scoring, grading and reporting tests. |
Plans
TAO
- TAO Community EditionFree
- TAO StarterFree
- TAO StarterFree
- TAO Author$149 a month
- TAO Ignite$990 a month
- TAO ElevatePriced on request
- TAO EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
HackerRank
HackerRank helps companies attract, hire, and upskill developers, while also supporting a developer community. Its Screen product offers take-home technical assessments for evaluating applicants in the hiring funnel. Teams can use role-based Certified Assessments or generate a test from an uploaded job description. Screen includes a suspicious-activity model, a proctor, and identity and multiple-face monitoring. HackerRank APIs can automate test administration, interviews, user and team management, candidate data, and question retrieval. Integration categories include ATS, scheduling, talent intelligence, SSO, and productivity tools. The HackerRank for Work platform supports Chrome, Edge, and Firefox on Windows and macOS, plus Safari on macOS; a desktop app is available for Windows and macOS, including Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. HackerRank says its AWS platform complies with ISO 27001 and other listed security standards, and that redundant data centers provide 99.9% service availability. The Starter plan is $165 a month, billed $1,990 billed annually, with one user and 120 attempts per year; additional attempts cost $20. Pro is $375 a month, billed $4,490 billed annually. A free plan and free trial are available.
TAO
TAO is an online platform for creating, delivering and managing digital assessments. Authors can build tests manually, convert existing exam files, use AI-assisted drafting or import QTI packages. Question formats include Choice, Extended Text, File Upload, Hotspot and Text Entry. Scoring supports automatic and manual methods, partial credit, weighted responses and cut scores, with branching logic also available. Results can be reviewed through session and test-taker reports, custom reports, CSV results, Data Explorer and TAO Insights. TAO supports QTI 2.2 and QTI 3.0, and promotes interoperability through QTI and LTI. Delivery options include online, LMS via LTI, test centers, local proctoring, and cloud-hosted or self-hosted configurations. TAO Cloud offers shared or private hosting using providers including AWS, Google Cloud and Linode. Starter is free for one author and 50 learner attempts monthly; Community Edition is a free, self-hosted open-source option. Paid plans include TAO Author at $149 a month and TAO Ignite at $990 a month; custom plans are also listed.