Grokking the Modern System Design Interview

What the course contains

According to the course page as of September 2026:

• 206 lessons, 140 quizzes and 8 mock interviews, with about 26 hours of content
• Level: intermediate to advanced
• First published: 2021, and updated continuously (the page showed a September 2026 update)
• Author: Fahim ul Haq, Educative's co-founder, who previously worked on distributed storage at Meta and Microsoft
• Certificate of completion available
• Average rating: 4.67 out of 5 on the course page

The structure moves from preliminaries to building blocks to designs:

1. System design interviews and how to approach them, including the course's RESHADED framework for structuring a 45-minute answer
2. Preliminary concepts, non-functional requirements and back-of-the-envelope calculations
3. Building blocks: DNS, load balancers, databases, key-value stores, CDNs, sequencers, monitoring, caches, queues, pub/sub, rate limiters, blob storage and more
4. Design case studies: YouTube, WhatsApp, Uber, Twitter, Google Maps, and newer systems such as ChatGPT and AI infrastructure
5. Mock interviews for practice

How it compares with the alternatives

The building-block approach makes explicit what every design has in common. By the fourth or fifth design you are recognising components you already studied rather than meeting new material. The text-and-diagram format is faster to revise from than video. Compared with book-based preparation, you get quizzes, mock interviews and updates; compared with video channels, you get a sequenced curriculum. Other well-known options include the ByteByteGo platform and the System Design Interview books, so compare a free sample of each before paying.

Is it worth paying for?

The course requires an Educative subscription rather than a one-off purchase. The course page listed a monthly price of 59 US dollars in September 2026; annual plans and student discounts (including through the GitHub Student Developer Pack) are available, so check the pricing page before subscribing. If you are also using other Educative courses, the subscription covers them too.

How to use it well

• Do the building blocks before the designs, even if you are short of time. The designs refer back to them constantly.
• For each design, attempt it yourself for 30 minutes before reading the solution.
• Use the mock interviews near the end, under time pressure, out loud.
• Plan for four to eight weeks at an hour a day to finish 26 hours of material properly.

Common questions

Is there a free trial? The course page offers a way to try it for free; check the current terms.

Is it enough for senior roles? It covers breadth well. For senior rounds, add deeper reading on replication, consistency and storage engines, and practise with a partner.

Is this the same as the older Grokking course? No. This is Educative's own modern course with its own structure; similarly named courses exist on other platforms.

Best for: engineers preparing for system design interviews who learn best from structured, interactive text.