Google retired Interview Warmup in April 2026. There was no announcement, no migration path, and no replacement. The original address at grow.google/interview-warmup now redirects to a generic article about preparing for interviews, and Google's only public explanation was that it was "doing a little spring cleaning."
If you came here because a bookmark broke or a careers adviser sent you a dead link, that is what happened. This guide covers what Interview Warmup actually did, which parts of it mattered, and what genuinely replaces each part in 2026. Some of the replacements are free. None of them are exactly the same tool, and it is worth understanding why before you pick one.
Key takeaways
- Interview Warmup was retired in April 2026 with no notice. Google now points people toward Gemini Live, which is a general assistant, not an interview simulator.
- What made it special was the friction, or rather the lack of it: free, browser based, no login, no card, no time limit. Very few replacements match all four.
- What it never did was push back. It asked a question, transcribed your answer, and highlighted patterns. It never followed up, never probed a vague answer, and never scored you against a bar.
- Free replacements that are genuinely free: Teal for unlimited behavioral practice, Pramp for peer technical mocks, Yoodli for delivery feedback (5 lifetime sessions).
- Pick by bottleneck, not by brand. If your problem is rambling, a delivery tool fixes it. If your problem is thin answers, a delivery tool will not.
- The biggest upgrade since 2022 is conversational practice: tools that ask a follow-up when you are vague. Interview Warmup could not do this. Most current tools can.
What Interview Warmup actually was
Google launched it in 2022 as part of Grow with Google. It was deliberately minimal. You picked a field, it asked you five interview questions, you answered out loud, and machine learning transcribed what you said and highlighted patterns in it: words you leaned on repeatedly, whether you mentioned the job's key terms, how you structured the response.
It was not a scoring tool. It did not tell you whether your answer was good. It showed you your own words on a page, which for a lot of people was the first time they had ever seen what they actually sound like under pressure.
Two things made it beloved out of proportion to its features:
- Zero friction. No account, no email, no trial countdown. You could send the link to someone who was anxious about an interview tomorrow and they would actually use it.
- It was Google's. Careers advisers, university career centres, and job centres recommended it because it carried institutional trust that a startup's free tier does not.
That combination is the real thing that disappeared in April, and it is why the replacements feel unsatisfying even when they are objectively more capable.
What it never did
It is worth being clear about the limitations, because a lot of "best alternative" lists compare modern tools against a rose tinted memory.
Interview Warmup never asked a follow-up question. You could give a completely hollow answer, full of the right keywords and no substance, and it would highlight your keywords approvingly. It could not tell the difference between "I led the migration" and "I was on the team that did the migration," which is exactly the difference a real interviewer digs into.
It also had a fixed, generic question set. It did not read the job description you were actually applying for, so it could not ask you about the specific stack, the specific domain, or the specific scope in the posting.
So the honest summary is: it was an excellent mirror and a poor interviewer.
The replacements, by what they actually fix
There is no single successor. The tools that exist now split roughly into three groups, and they solve different problems.
If your problem is delivery
You know what you want to say, but you ramble, say "um" constantly, or talk for four minutes when ninety seconds would land better.
Yoodli is the closest thing to Interview Warmup's original spirit and the best in this category. It listens and scores pacing, filler words, and structure. The free plan gives five lifetime sessions, which is enough to see your pattern, and paid plans start around $8 per month billed annually. If you only ever use one free tool from this list and your issue is delivery, use this one.
Worth reading alongside it: our guide on how to stop saying um in interviews, because the fix is usually not "try harder to not say um."
If your problem is technical rounds
Pramp (now part of Exponent) pairs you with another human for peer to peer technical mocks, free. You interview them, they interview you. The quality varies enormously with who you get matched with, which is the tradeoff for it being free and human.
The advantage over any AI tool is that a real person gets confused by a bad explanation in a way that is very hard to simulate. The disadvantage is scheduling, and the fact that your partner is usually as inexperienced at interviewing as you are.
If your problem is content
You freeze, or your answers are thin, or you cannot tell whether what you said was actually any good.
This is the category Interview Warmup never covered, and it is where most of the movement has been since 2022.
Teal offers unlimited free behavioral practice with questions generated from a job description, which is a real step up from a fixed question bank. Big Interview is structured more like a course than a tool, with a curriculum attached to video practice, and costs around $79. Huru sits at roughly $24.99 per month as a closer paid analogue to the old Warmup experience.
Round Zero, which is us, runs a live mock interview by voice or text where the interviewer asks follow-up questions when an answer is vague, then scores the transcript against a rubric and quotes your own words back to you as evidence. The free tier includes one full scored session with the complete report. We built it because the gap we kept hearing about was exactly the one above: people had practiced, but nobody had ever pushed back on them.
An honest comparison
| Tool | Free tier | Follow-up questions | Scores content | Uses your job description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interview Warmup (retired) | Was fully free | No | No | No |
| Yoodli | 5 lifetime sessions | Limited | Delivery only | Partial |
| Pramp | Yes, unlimited | Yes (human) | Human judgment | Depends on partner |
| Teal | Yes, unlimited | Limited | Basic | Yes |
| Big Interview | Trial only | No | Curriculum based | Partial |
| Round Zero | 1 full scored session | Yes | Yes, with quoted evidence | Yes |
Two honest notes on this table. First, pricing and tiers in this category change frequently, so check before you commit. Second, we build one of these tools, so weigh the last row accordingly and use the free tier to judge for yourself rather than taking our word for it.
What to actually look for in a replacement
If you strip away branding, four things separate a tool that helps from a tool that just makes you feel productive.
Does it push back? The single biggest predictor of whether practice transfers to a real interview is whether something interrupts a weak answer. A tool that accepts everything you say is a recording device, not an interviewer.
Does it use the actual job description? Generic questions produce generic answers. If you are interviewing for a specific role, practice against that posting. Our guide on practicing for a specific job covers how to do this even with a tool that does not support it natively.
Does the feedback point at something you can change? "Your answer lacked impact" is not actionable. "You described the situation for 90 seconds and the result in one sentence" is.
Can you see the transcript? Interview Warmup's real gift was showing people their own words. Any tool that hides the transcript behind a score is withholding the most useful part.
What to do this week if your interview is soon
If you found this page because your interview is in a few days and your bookmark broke, here is the compressed version.
- Answer five questions out loud today, recorded. Your phone's voice memo app is enough. The tool matters much less than the fact that you spoke rather than thought.
- Listen back once. Do not analyse. Just notice where you lost the thread.
- Pick your weakest of the three: delivery, technical fluency, or content. Choose one tool from that section above rather than trying three.
- Do one session where something asks follow-ups. A friend works. A peer on Pramp works. An AI interviewer works. What matters is that a vague answer gets questioned rather than accepted.
- Write down the two answers that fell apart and rebuild only those.
Most people over-practice the questions they are already good at, because it feels better. The five minutes spent on the answer that collapsed is worth the hour spent polishing the one that already worked.
FAQ
Why did Google shut down Interview Warmup?
Google did not give a substantive reason. The only public explanation was that the company was "doing a little spring cleaning." The tool was retired in April 2026 without a formal announcement, and its URL now redirects to a general article on interview preparation.
Is there an official Google replacement?
No. Google points people toward Gemini Live for conversational practice, but that is a general purpose assistant rather than a structured interview simulator. It will happily hold a mock interview if you prompt it to, but it does not transcribe and analyse your spoken answers the way Interview Warmup did, and it will not score you against a rubric unless you build the rubric yourself.
What is the closest free replacement?
It depends on your bottleneck. For delivery feedback on spoken answers, which is what Interview Warmup mostly did, Yoodli's free tier is the closest match. For unlimited free behavioral practice tied to a job description, Teal. For technical rounds, Pramp. None of them replicate the exact zero-login simplicity of the original.
Can I just use ChatGPT or Gemini instead?
Yes, and for content practice it works better than people expect, particularly if you tell it to ask one follow-up question after every answer and to refuse to accept vague claims. The gap is spoken delivery: unless you use voice mode deliberately, you end up typing answers you would never say out loud, which trains the wrong skill. We have a guide to ChatGPT prompts for job interviews if you want to go this route.
Was Interview Warmup actually good?
It was very good at one narrow thing: showing people their own words and their own speech patterns, with no barrier to entry. It was never an interviewer. It did not follow up, score answers, or adapt to a specific role. Most current tools are more capable and less frictionless, which is why its retirement still stings.
Practice with something that actually pushes back
The part of Interview Warmup nobody has replicated is the zero-friction start. The part worth upgrading is everything after that.
Round Zero runs a live mock interview that asks follow-up questions when your answer is vague, then scores the transcript and quotes your own words back as evidence for every point. The free tier includes one full session with the complete report, no card required. If your problem is that you have practiced plenty and still freeze when someone digs, that is the specific gap it was built for.