Best Alternatives to LeetCode For Data Science

This list of LeetCode alternatives focuses on 6 best and more niche platforms to hone your skills on data science, specifically focusing on SQL and Python.

What is LeetCode?

LeetCode is the platform where people practice their coding skills and prepare for software engineering interviews. It is the primary educational platform meant for the advanced-beginner to an intermediate engineer looking to brush up on their technical concepts. So can LeetCode be used for data science interviews? LeetCode is to help software engineers to get jobs. It wasn't designed to help prepare data scientists for their data science interviews or improve their analytical skills in SQL and python -- two tools that are required to become a successful data scientist.

There are over 1050 questions to test for different technical concepts, each with multiple solutions. Questions on LeetCode are ranked by the level of difficulty: easy, medium, and hard. But just because they have 1000+ questions doesn't mean they're the best. So let's look at a few LeetCode alternatives aimed at data scientists.

Why You Need to Know the Best Alternatives to LeetCode

Let's find out why you should know the best alternatives to LeetCode.

• Some have issues with their methodological way to learn concepts like data structures and algorithms and are looking for alternative ways to learn.
• Others are simply looking for LeetCode alternatives to learn SQL and Python in a more structured way.
• Some find that LeetCode is worth with premium membership but they find their premium membership too expensive.

Whatever the reason, lots of people are searching for LeetCode alternatives.

How to Pick the Best Alternative to LeetCode?

To pick an alternative platform to LeetCode, you should understand what you're looking for:

• Can you identify your needs?
• What is your skill level?
• What do you need these skills for?
• What concepts are you trying to learn?

What are the Best LeetCode Alternatives For Data Science?

Our list of LeetCode alternatives for data science focuses on 6 of the best and more niche platforms to hone your skills on data science. This list will provide you with a small overview of each LeetCode alternative, as well as let you know what makes them different and better.

1. Mode Analytics

Mode Analytics might be a great LeetCode alternative for you that offers tutorials and courses for learning SQL and Python. They provide separate training courses for each topic. You can create a free account there and play with their public dataset.

You don't need to have any coding experience to start learning how to answer the questions with data using SQL or Python on Mode Analytics. Each course is broken down in terms of the level of difficulties: Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced. As a beginner, you can pick any area you are comfortable at and start from scratch.

Mode Analytics provide courses that are basic and straightforward. They are designed to teach you analytical skills related to SQL and Python.

Mode.com is one of the valuable alternatives to LeetCode if you're looking for a basic and straightforward method to learn. However, Mode Analytics is somewhat limited in terms of offering the opportunity to grow and test your skills.

The SQL courses at Mode are more extensive and also offer additional exercises to improve and grow your skills. But their Python tutorial lacks this kind of exercises and do not focus on growing your skills.

Overall, you can say that it offers a good place to learn the basics but lacks sufficient applications to test your skills. Their simple layout may work for you if you're looking for an online resource to learn the syntax and concepts.

2. StrataScratch

While the Mode Analytics is quite lacking in methods and applications to test your skills, StrataScratch is quite the opposite and committed to helping for the constant growth of your SQL and Python knowledge, especially to become a data scientist.

While the previous alternative is best suited for beginners, StrataScratch is one of the best platforms for those who have some basic knowledge and for those who are looking to test and grow their data science knowledge and skills.

To help improve your data science skills, StrataScratch provides 600+ SQL and Python questions to practice. All questions come from real companies and are from real interviews. So these question's are not only testing for your knowledge on the syntax but they're also testing for your problem-solving skills. Most of the questions contain edge cases and real-life scenarios that you'd need to implement on the job as a data scientist or on an interview.

StrataScratch offers free data science interview questions and continues to release interview questions when they come out from companies. This ensures that you are always practicing your data science skills on questions that are currently appearing on data science interviews at various companies. StrataScratch is designed to be the ideal resource for preparing data science interviews and for advancing your career as a data scientist.

Why is StrataScratch Worth it?

1. It was designed for data scientists by data scientists. All the questions focus on data science concepts rather than merely syntax.
2. It provides in-depth video and article explanations of the proper technical solution for each interview question.
3. Offers many ways to test your knowledge and skills through practicing interview questions with real-life scenarios and edge cases.
4. StrataScratch sources many of their questions from tech companies and continously releases interview questions currently in-rotation at those various companies. This ensures that the material you're learning is practical.
5. Specifically built for the advanced-beginner to intermediate data scientist to help grow your knowledge and advance your career.

3. DataCamp

DataCamp is meant to be a streamlined way to learn skills like SQL, R or Python, Statistics and more through video tutorials & coding challenges. From basic to most advanced, you can pick up a lesson you want depending on your skill level and grow your knowledge of various concepts.

The lessons on DataCamp are in bite-sized lengths. It helps you to pick up and learn a new topic in a short period of time. This makes DataCamp a platform to grow your skills in your spare time. It makes it easy for you to invest as much time as you want.

The quite useful and numerous lessons on DataCamp include technologies like Python, SQL, Tableau, Power BI and more. The lessons are more niche and subject area focused than platforms like Mode. This makes it one of the best alternatives to LeetCode.

Like StrataScratch, DataCamp mainly focuses on data science and offers many ways to test and practice data science skills. It offers not only many mini practice challenges but also extensive ways to test your skills. These problems are based on real-world scenarios. However, the number of projects and problems in certain subject matters is limited. But Overall, DataCamp is well-organized, intuitive, and subject area focused platform where you can test and improve your skills through various problems and projects.

4. W3Schools

W3Schools, as one of the best alternatives to LeetCode, claims to be the world's largest web developer site. It's a simple and no-frills tool to learn web development skills including Python and SQL. Their methods and approach to learning work for many people. Their teaching method is simple and basic. The courses on W3Schools are outlined from simplest to most advanced concepts. Each page of concepts provides the description from syntax to important functions and keywords. So if you prefer to learn in a brief and clearly expressed manner, you will like their learning method. The best thing about W3Schools is that the entire course is available free without even registration.

Their interactive lessons offer heavy use of examples. After they explained the concept, you will generally find an immediate example of how it looks with proper syntax. They also often provide a customizable field to solve an example problem.

The simple and straightforward approach to teaching programming languages like SQL, Python, and more makes this platform popular and one of the best alternatives to LeetCode. The lessons plan on W3Schools includes clearly marked topics, straightforward explanations, and place to test your programming skills. However, if you're looking for extensive exercises with real-world scenarios, you should check out the above two platforms: StrataScratch and DataCamp.

5. HackerRank

HackerRank is another valuable alternative to LeetCode. They're not very "niche" but I had to include them on this list because they're a great resource for data science practice. On HackerRank, you can learn and test your competitive programming skills. If you have basic knowledge of Python and SQL and you're looking to sharpen your skills for an interview, then this platform is for you. Similar to LeetCode, you have the ability to filter by topic and skill level.

There are many practice questions or problems to test your skills on HackerRank. There is a variety of languages including SQL and Python you can choose from. The topics are ranked according to skill level: Easy, Medium, and Hard. And the system on HackerRank tracks your progress. Also, to narrow certain syntax issues or problems, you can organize the challenges according to the subject areas and subdomains.

Check out HackerRank for Data Science to find out if HackerRank can help you prepare for your data science interview.​

It also offers certification challenges which give you the ability to certify your expertise in specific skills. HackerRank also offers a job board for the users looking for a job. These are valuable tools that HackerRank offers if you want to test your skills and prepare for the interview or prepare for the problems you might see on the job.

Although users enjoy learning through the problems on HackerRank, some find them too much like puzzles and enough like the real work. Some have found that the solutions on HackerRank are too narrow and there is no room for different types of answers, which can result in frustration.

Also, check out our article LeetCode vs HackerRank where we compared these two interview preparation platforms.​

6. Guru99

Guru99 is a free online resource meant to teach you a variety of skills including SQL and Python. Their lessons are sorted from basics to more advanced concepts. Classes on Guru99 are either written or in video form.

Similar to W3Schools, their no-frill approach to teaching is simple that attempts to explain all the relevant concept in a straight-forward manner. With a broad range of concepts and functions, it helps you to improve your knowledge in many areas.

While Guru99 is a simple tool to learn in a straight-forward manner, it doesn't provide your ways to test your knowledge. One of the major disadvantages is their courses are mainly non-interactive. There are no areas to write your own code and test your skills by solving sample problems.

Conclusion

The above data science alternatives to LeetCode are varied significantly in their goals and teaching methods. These LeetCode alternatives focus on providing exercises or lessons ranked by level of difficulty and are meant to serve for various purposes. There is generally a primary focus of each resource. It could be to provide a place to prepare for an interview, build up basic skills, or test and improve your knowledge.

What is more relevant to you is what kind of learning style it provides. Many tools such as W3Schools, Guru99, and Mode Analytics focus on straightforward teaching concepts. However, others such as StrataScratch, DataCamp, and HackerRank focus to provide resources to build your understanding through practicing real-world problems.