TL;DR: The original Grokking the Coding Interview, the course that introduced the patterns method, lives at designgurus.io, where it is maintained and expanded by its original creators (I'm one of them). It first launched on educative.io, and after we moved it to our own platform, Educative released similarly named pattern courses built by its in-house team. So both products exist and both are real courses, but they are different courses with different authors that share a name. If what you're looking for is the original, author-maintained version, that is the Design Gurus one, and this site is its official companion.
If you searched something like "grokking the coding interview official" or "educative vs design gurus," you've noticed the confusing part of this story: two platforms appear to sell the same famous course. You deserve a straight answer about which is which, and since I created the course, I can give you the history firsthand. I'll keep it factual; where I have an obvious interest, I'll flag it.
The short history
The course was created by me (Arslan Ahmad) and my co-founders under the name Design Gurus. After years of conducting interviews at Meta and Microsoft, I kept seeing the same thing: candidates grinding hundreds of random problems and still failing, because interviews test problem recognition, not problem memory. We organized the entire question space into a small set of reusable patterns and built a course around them: Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions.
It launched on educative.io. Educative is a course marketplace, and in the early years it was the course's home. That is where hundreds of thousands of engineers first met the patterns method, and why many old Reddit threads, blog posts, and bookmarks point there.
We moved the course to our own platform, designgurus.io. As Design Gurus grew into a full interview-prep platform, we brought our courses home. Since the move, the original course has been continuously updated and substantially expanded there: it now covers 42 patterns (32 common + 10 advanced) across 50 chapters, 669 lessons, and 300+ problems with solutions in six languages.
Educative later released its own pattern courses under similar names. Today Educative sells coding-interview pattern courses (with language-specific editions) built by its in-house content team. Those are Educative's own products: created, maintained, and sold by Educative, not by the original authors.
That's the entire mystery. Nobody copied anybody's homework in the dark; a famous course moved homes, and the old home now sells its own courses in a similar wrapper. But it does mean the name "Grokking the Coding Interview" no longer points to a single course, and if provenance matters to you, you need to know which page you're on.
What's where today
| Design Gurus (the original) | Educative's pattern courses | |
|---|---|---|
| Where | designgurus.io | educative.io |
| Authors | Original creators (Arslan Ahmad and team) | Educative's in-house team |
| Lineage | The course that introduced the patterns method | Separate course, similar name |
| Scope | 42 patterns, 300+ problems, 6 languages in one course | Language-specific editions |
| Purchase model | One-time (about $79, discounted from the $197 list price), lifetime access | Subscription |
| Free tier | Yes, introductory lessons free | Varies |
| Companion sites | designgurus.io and this site | educative.io |
I'll say the disclosure again plainly: I profit from one column of that table. The factual rows (who wrote what, where the original lives, purchase models) you can verify yourself in five minutes on both sites.
How to tell you're looking at the original
- The URL is designgurus.io/course/grokking-the-coding-interview, or you arrived from this site, grokkingthecodinginterview.com, which Design Gurus runs as the course's companion.
- The author listed is Arslan Ahmad / Design Gurus.
- The course page describes 42 patterns (32 common + 10 advanced) and 300+ problems with solutions in Python, Java, C++, JavaScript, Go, and C# in a single course, rather than separate per-language editions.
- It's a one-time purchase with lifetime access, not a subscription.
If you're on educative.io reading a course by Educative's team, you're looking at their product. It may suit you fine, but it is not the original, and reviews or recommendations you've read about "Grokking" (including our own honest self-review) may be describing a different course than the one in your cart.
Does it actually matter which one you buy?
An honest answer, from the interested party: it depends on why you came.
If you came because of the course's reputation, the recommendations in blog posts, the Reddit threads, the "grokking method" people talk about, that reputation was earned by the original, and the original is at designgurus.io. It is also where the method's creators continue to update and expand it; the pattern count and problem set have grown considerably since the Educative days, and this blog's pattern deep dives are written against the current course.
If you're comparing them as products on today's merits, then compare like you would any two courses: authorship, scope, format, price model, and reviews on each site. Educative is an established platform, and I won't pretend to give you a neutral review of their version; I haven't taken it, and you should weigh what its own students say. What I can tell you is exactly what's in mine, and the free introductory lessons exist so you can judge the teaching before paying anything.
If you already bought the Educative version, don't feel burned: the patterns idea works in any competent implementation, and switching costs money. Use what you have, use our free pattern guides alongside it, and know where the original lives for next time.
The takeaway
One name, two courses. The original Grokking the Coding Interview was created by Design Gurus, launched on Educative, and moved home to designgurus.io, where its original authors keep expanding it. Educative's current similarly named courses are its own separate products. Neither is a scam; they're just not the same thing, and now you can tell them apart in ten seconds: check the domain, check the author, check the pattern count.
The original, from the source: Grokking the Coding Interview teaches all 42 patterns (32 common + 10 advanced) across 300+ problems in six languages, with lifetime access for a one-time $79 and free introductory lessons to try first. New to the method? Start with the pattern guide or the start here index on this site, free.
FAQs
Is grokkingthecodinginterview.com an official site? Yes. This site is run by Design Gurus, the creators of the course, as its companion blog: pattern deep dives, study plans, and honest comparisons with other resources. The course itself is hosted at designgurus.io.
Did Grokking the Coding Interview leave Educative? The original course did, yes. It launched there, and its creators later moved it to their own platform, designgurus.io, where it has been updated and expanded since (42 patterns and 300+ problems at the time of writing). Educative subsequently released its own pattern courses under similar names.
Is Educative's Grokking Coding Interview Patterns the same course? No. It's a separate course built by Educative's in-house team after the original moved to designgurus.io. It shares the naming style and the patterns-first premise, but the authors, content, and product model are different.
Why does Google show both when I search the course name? Because both products exist and the name has huge search demand. Educative's pages have years of accumulated links from when the original lived there, which keeps them ranking. That, in fact, is why this article exists: the single most common question we get from confused buyers is which one is which.
Which version do the reviews and Reddit recommendations refer to? It depends on the age of the thread. Older discussions almost always mean the original (then hosted on Educative); newer ones may mean either, and plenty of commenters don't realize there are two. When in doubt, check whether the thread links to designgurus.io or educative.io, and read our self-review, where I lay out exactly what the current course does and doesn't include.