LeetCode Online Assessment: What You Are Actually Taking

A "LeetCode online assessment" is almost never hosted by LeetCode. As of September 9, 2026, LeetCode markets one employer product, LeetCode Interview, which is a live video call with a shared editor, and one candidate product, Mock Assessment, which is a Premium practice tool. It does not market a proctored take-home assessment. When a recruiter, a forum post, or a prep site calls an OA "LeetCode," the word describes the question style. The test runs on HackerRank, CodeSignal, Codility, or another vendor, and that vendor's rules and monitoring apply.

Read the invitation before anything else

The domain in the invitation link tells you which platform you are on and therefore which rules you are under.

• leetcode.com/interview or interview.leetcode.com: a LeetCode Interview session. A person will be on the call.
• leetcode.com/assessment: Mock Assessment, LeetCode's own Premium practice product, not an employer-run test as documented today.
• leetcode.com/contest: a rated competition, with its own rules and bans.
• Anything else: hackerrank.com, codesignal.com, codility.com, and similar. The test is on that platform even if every question looks like a LeetCode medium.

The last case covers most employer OAs. Candidate write-ups of Amazon, Stripe, and TikTok assessments describe HackerRank or CodeSignal sessions with LeetCode-style problems, and those platforms document webcam, screen, and tab monitoring that LeetCode does not have. For the most common destination, start with what HackerRank proctoring detects and records; CodeSignal and Codility publish equivalent documentation of their own.

What LeetCode Interview is

LeetCode Interview is the employer-facing product, launched in 2021. The launch post lays out the flow: the interviewer creates an interview, picks "questions from LeetCode question bank or create your own whiteboard questions," and invites candidates "by sending the interview link." The session is "Video and voice chat along with code collaboration. See, hear, and code with your candidates all in one place," with "No downloads or IDE required."

What you should expect:

• A browser link, no installer.
• Camera and microphone permission prompts, because it is a call. Those permissions go to the WebRTC session with your interviewer, not to a proctoring service.
• A shared editor where the interviewer sees your code as you type, plus a whiteboard and, for frontend roles, HTML, React, and Vue environments.
• Judger results visible to both sides when you run code.

What LeetCode does not document: session recording, playback, or any integrity flag. The interviewer is the monitoring. If the employer records the call with its own tooling, that is the employer's disclosure to make. Whether LeetCode records your screen or webcam covers the difference between a live stream and a stored recording.

What Mock Assessment is

Mock Assessment is a Premium feature. LeetCode's Premium overview describes it as a way to "practice mock interviews targeting a specific company." It is timed and scored, and the result is yours. No employer sees it and nothing about the session is monitored.

It is useful for exactly one thing: rehearsing the question style you will meet on the real platform. It will not show you a proctoring setup screen, a monitor check, or a tab warning, because LeetCode has none of those.

What a LeetCode contest is, if that is what you were sent

Some employers ask for a contest rating rather than running an OA. Contests are rated, public, and policed. The contest rules prohibit "any external assistance," including AI, and violations are penalized without warning; how LeetCode detects contest cheating covers the plagiarism checker and the ban ladder. A contest is still not proctored: no camera, no screen, no lockdown. What it has is a public Code Replay of your typing and a similarity check against every other contestant.

What this means for candidates

Identify the platform from the link, then prepare for that platform. If it is a LeetCode Interview, prepare for a conversation: a person will watch you code, ask follow-ups, and see every run. If it is a contest, the rule is no outside help of any kind. If it is any other domain, the monitoring is that vendor's, and the consent screen there is the document to read. LeetCode's own surfaces are inventoried in what LeetCode records across contests, Interview, and mock tests, and when AI is allowed in a technical interview covers how to confirm the rules in writing before any of them.