Free Alternatives to Google Interview Warmup

TL;DR: Google Interview Warmup shut down in April 2026 with no direct replacement. The closest free options today are AceRound (30 free minutes + 1 mock interview, no card), ChatGPT voice mode (free, 15 minutes/day), and Yoodli (free, but only 5 roleplays total, ever). Further down, there's a copy-paste prompt to rebuild Warmup's exact five-question format in ChatGPT or Gemini for $0, indefinitely.

If you bookmarked Google Interview Warmup, that bookmark is dead. Google pulled the plug in April 2026, and if you search for it now you land on an archived page that points you toward Gemini Live and Career Dreamer — neither of which asks you five role-specific questions and transcribes your answers the way Warmup did.

So the practical question isn't "what happened" (we covered that in our full Warmup shutdown review). It's: which of the tools claiming to be "free" actually are, and what do you hit a wall on first — a session cap, a feature gate, or a credit card prompt? Every listicle we checked while researching this called its picks "free" without saying what that free tier actually caps. We tested the caps.

The trouble with "free" interview tools

"Free" on a pricing page can mean any of these:

• A time-boxed trial that quietly expects a card later
• A lifetime cap measured in total sessions, not a monthly allowance
• A daily reset that's genuinely free forever, just capped in minutes
• A permanently free tier with a missing feature (no follow-up questions, no scoring, text-only)

Warmup was the third kind: free forever, capped only by the five-question format itself. Nothing else on this list is an exact match, so the real task is finding the one whose specific limit you can live with.

Free alternatives, audited for their actual limits

Here's what each tool's free tier gives you, checked directly rather than copied from a pricing page.

Tool	Signup required	Free tier limit	Voice or text	Follow-up questions	Card required
AceRound AI	Yes (email)	30 min real-time assistance + 1 mock interview	Voice	Yes	No
ChatGPT (voice mode)	Yes (account)	15 min/day, resets every 24h	Voice	Only if you prompt for them	No
Gemini Live	Yes (Google account)	Daily cap, not publicly specified	Voice	Yes, conversational	No
Yoodli	Yes (email)	5 roleplays, lifetime (not monthly)	Voice	Limited	No

A few things worth flagging that don't fit neatly in a table:

AceRound's free tier is a genuine trial of the same real-time assistance and mock interview engine the paid plans use — you're not testing a stripped-down version. Thirty minutes covers a full mock round for most roles; the mock interview session on top of that lets you test the follow-up-question behavior before deciding if you need more.

ChatGPT's 15-minute daily cap resets every 24 hours, so if you're willing to practice in short daily bursts instead of one long session, it's effectively unlimited over a week — just not in one sitting.

Yoodli's "free" plan is the one most likely to surprise you. It's marketed as a standing free tier, but it's five roleplays total, ever, not five per month. Any recorded attempt longer than 30 seconds counts against that number. Budget it like a trial, not an ongoing habit.

If you want to try the mock-interview format specifically — closest in spirit to Warmup's five-question drill — AceRound's mock interview uses the same free allowance shown above, and you can see how a role-specific follow-up question actually sounds before committing more time to it.

Rebuild Warmup's exact format for $0, forever

If none of the caps above sit right with you, you can recreate Warmup's original five-question, transcribe-and-analyze loop yourself, using ChatGPT or Gemini's free voice mode. This isn't a hidden feature — it's just a prompt Google never gave you a template for.

Open voice mode and say (or paste, then speak your answers):

"You're running a mock interview for a [job title] role. Ask me one question at a time, based on real interview questions for this role. After each answer, don't grade me yet — just ask a natural follow-up question, the way a real interviewer would if my answer was vague. After 5 questions total, give me feedback on: filler words I used, whether my answers had a clear structure, and any word or phrase I repeated too often."

This reproduces the two things that made Warmup useful — voice-based questions and a pattern-analysis summary at the end — without any tool-specific setup. The tradeoff is that you're relying on the model to follow your instructions consistently over a multi-turn conversation, which is less predictable than a purpose-built interview product, and you'll need to re-paste the prompt each new session.

Which one should you actually use

• Practicing for one interview this week, casually: ChatGPT voice mode with the prompt above. Free, no signup friction beyond an account you likely already have.
• Practicing daily in the run-up to a real interview: AceRound's free tier, then decide if the 30-minute cap is enough or if you want the broader free-practice options compared side by side.
• You specifically want delivery coaching (pace, filler words, clarity) over content coaching: Yoodli, but treat your 5 roleplays as a one-time audit of your speaking habits, not a recurring practice tool.
• You want real-time help during the actual live interview, not just practice beforehand: that's a different category of tool entirely — see our best AI interview copilot comparison for that use case.

None of these tools are a like-for-like replacement for Warmup. They're free in different ways, capped in different places, and worth picking based on which limit you'll actually run into first.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a truly free alternative to Google Interview Warmup?

Yes, but "free" means different things at each tool. AceRound gives new accounts 30 minutes of free real-time assistance plus one full mock interview session, no card required. ChatGPT's voice mode is free with a 15-minute daily cap that resets every 24 hours. Yoodli's free tier is 5 lifetime roleplays total, not monthly — once you use them, you're done unless you upgrade. None of these are "unlimited free forever" like Warmup was, so pick based on which cap actually fits how much you plan to practice.

Can I use ChatGPT instead of Google Interview Warmup?

Yes, and it's the closest thing to a zero-signup, zero-cost replacement. Open ChatGPT's voice mode, paste in the DIY prompt further up this page, and it will ask you interview questions out loud and react to your spoken answers the same way Warmup did. The catch is the 15-minute daily limit on the free plan and the fact that you have to prompt it correctly yourself — it won't structure a five-question drill or score your delivery unless you tell it to.

What was Google Interview Warmup used for, and why is it gone?

Interview Warmup was a free Google tool, launched in 2022, that asked you five role-specific questions by voice, transcribed your answers, and highlighted word patterns like filler words and frequently repeated terms. Google retired it in April 2026 without a direct replacement, redirecting traffic to Gemini Live for open-ended conversational practice and Career Dreamer for career exploration — neither of which reproduces the original five-question interview drill.

Are AI mock interview tools actually free, or do they have hidden limits?

Every tool we checked has a limit, it's just disclosed differently. AceRound and ChatGPT state theirs plainly (session count, daily minutes). Yoodli's "5 free roleplays" is easy to miss because it's framed as a permanent free plan rather than a trial, and any recorded attempt over 30 seconds counts against it — so treat it as a one-time trial, not an ongoing free tier. Read the fine print before you build a practice routine around any one tool.

Do free interview practice tools require a credit card?

No, not for the ones in this guide. AceRound, ChatGPT's free plan, Gemini Live's free tier, and Yoodli's free roleplays all work without entering payment details. You only hit a paywall once you exceed the free caps described above.

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Author · Alex Chen. Career consultant and former tech recruiter. Spent 5 years on the hiring side before switching to help candidates instead. Writes about real interview dynamics, not textbook advice.