GothamLoop vs 1point3acres (2026): Which Question Bank Is Better?

1point3acres is the source and GothamLoop is a paid English decoder of it. As of October 2026, 1point3acres runs a Chinese-language forum plus an English question bank listing 10,512 questions across 401 companies, with passes from $88 monthly. GothamLoop sells a ranked list of 4,002 questions for $199 a month or $329 one time, as of October 2026. If you read Chinese, pick 1point3acres. If you don't and have one loop at a company GothamLoop lists, GothamLoop is the narrower buy. PracHub, which also sells interview prep, publishes this comparison.

Pricing and product details were checked on October 13, 2026.

Quick Verdict

Choose 1point3acres when you read Chinese, interview at a high-volume company such as Amazon, Meta or Google, and want reports within days of the interview. Its forum is the raw material the other product works from, and its English question bank lists hundreds of questions for each big company.

Choose GothamLoop when you cannot read Chinese, have no 1point3acres membership, and are heading into one loop at a company on its list, ideally one of the 18 headline companies it actually refreshed in the last few weeks.

If you want to start free, read the recent questions and written solutions on PracHub first, then decide whether a paid pass still fills a gap.

GothamLoop and 1point3acres at a Glance

What GothamLoop Offers

GothamLoop sells a per-company database of what it calls leaked software engineering questions with answers, stack-ranked by how often candidates report them. Each company page adds a five-stage process walkthrough (recruiter screen to team match) and a levels-and-pay table. As of October 2026 it costs $199 a month, or $329 one time for lifetime access, a price shown struck through from $800 under a "Today Only" countdown that rendered identically on every page fetched. Its sourcing is the pitch: it says it aggregates questions from 1point3acres, Blind and private Discord groups, decodes 1point3acres posts it describes as written in "Chinese riddles", and pays recent hires for exit interviews.

No free account tier is advertised. You get an emailed sample question per company and a demo that lists 173 companies with question counts. The main drawback is freshness. The site says "updated weekly", but 149 of its 168 company pages showed last-updated dates of August 12-18, 2026 when checked on October 13, 2026. Our GothamLoop review covers the product in more depth.

What 1point3acres Offers

1point3acres (一亩三分地, 1P3A) is a Chinese-language community for Chinese speakers in North America, covering jobs, visas, study abroad and immigration, plus an English question bank at /interview branded "1P3A Interview Premium Version". As of October 2026 that bank lists 10,512 questions across 401 companies, including Amazon at 1,087, Meta at 547, Google at 531, ByteDance/TikTok at 452 and Uber at 349. The /interview section also advertises a question tracker, interview guides, a salary database, system design resources and an "Interview Copilot", and it lists Software Engineer, Data Scientist and Product Manager experiences.

Access is sold as passes, VIP tiers, a platinum card and points packs. The App Store in-app purchases, checked on October 13, 2026, run from $88.00 for a monthly subscription to $699.99 for a 12-month pass; the web membership page shows no crawlable price list. Logged out, you can see counts and company lists, and the site does not say what stays locked. The main drawback is the barrier to reading: candidates on Blind report forum posts gated behind 188 points and question text obfuscated so that machine translation cannot decode it.

Head to Head

Coverage

1point3acres wins on volume: 10,512 questions against GothamLoop's 4,002, and 401 companies against 168 to 173, as of October 2026. At Google the gap is 531 to 87. GothamLoop's pitch is a "stack-ranked shortlist" of what you are most likely to be asked, and it says it removes questions once companies stop asking them. Buyers report weaker matches than that pitch implies: a Google engineer on Blind who used GothamLoop across six loops says question matches averaged only 30-35%.

GothamLoop is narrower but has a real niche. AI labs and quant firms such as Anthropic, Jane Street and Jump Trading sit among its 18 headline companies, and several Blind buyers say it is stronger for smaller companies than for FAANG.

Recency

1point3acres sits closer to the interview. Blind users report forum posts appear a day or two after the loop, though an ex-Meta user adds that it helps most for online assessments and phone screens because onsites leak less often.

GothamLoop's freshness is weaker than its copy. When checked on October 13, 2026, only its 18 headline companies showed update dates between September 23 and October 7; the other 149 sat in mid-August, and Adobe showed March 16, 2026. Its Google page promised "84 verified questions from the last 14 days" while its own company list dated Google's last update to September 23. Its homepage "Last Week's Leaked" showcase listed questions last asked in December 2025 and January 2026.

Price

Over one month, 1point3acres is cheaper: $88 against $199 as of October 2026 (App Store price; the web price may differ). Over a year the order flips: GothamLoop's $329 one-time price is less than half of the $699.99 twelve-month pass. Two caveats apply. GothamLoop's "Today Only" discount is a standing promo carried by a prefilled promo code, so treat $329 as the real price; an ex-UKG commenter on Blind said the promo had been running for a year. And 1point3acres sells at least three overlapping tier families plus points packs without saying what each one covers, so you may not know which product you need.

Refunds and Terms

Neither refunds. GothamLoop's terms say all sales are final and cancelling does not refund payments already made; its billing section points to an automatic-renewal section that does not exist in the document. 1point3acres' terms (last updated August 13, 2021) say refunds will not be provided for any subscription, with no proration mid-month, and do not say whether that covers one-time passes or points packs.

GothamLoop also imposes binding individual arbitration, bans any credential sharing, and runs a piracy bounty page offering $1,000 for reports on users. On the 1point3acres side, a Blind commenter says some people split one account to share the cost.

Language

Language decides this comparison for most readers. The 1point3acres forum is in Chinese, and a Microsoft user on Blind says Google Translate "won't help at all" with its obfuscated question text. Its /interview bank is in English, but 1point3acres does not publish which of its paid tiers include that bank versus the Chinese forum, or what a free account can read in it. GothamLoop exists to close that gap and writes everything in English. If you read Chinese, GothamLoop sells you a reworded copy of material you can already read; one commenter in r/interviews said it is not worth buying if you already have a 1point3acres membership.

Who Should Pick GothamLoop

• You cannot read Chinese and have no 1point3acres membership.
• Your loop is at a mid-size or less-covered company on its list, such as Anthropic, Scale AI, Anduril, Rippling, Jane Street or Jump Trading. Check that company's "Last Updated" date on its companies page before you pay.
• You want a ranked list with round, format and report-count metadata, plus a process walkthrough and levels-and-pay table on the same page.
• You expect many loops over several years and accept a $329 one-time charge with no refund.

Skip it for data science, PM or ML loops: its copy says SWE throughout and does not state coverage for other roles. Whether its answers include runnable code is also not published.

Who Should Pick 1point3acres

• You read Chinese. The forum is first-hand, high-volume and posted within days.
• You need recent online-assessment and phone-screen questions at high-volume companies such as Amazon, Meta, Google, ByteDance/TikTok, Uber and Microsoft, each with hundreds of listed questions.
• You interview at Chinese or China-adjacent employers such as ByteDance/TikTok or Temu/Pinduoduo, which English-language sites cover thinly.
• You are a data scientist or product manager; /interview lists both roles.
• You also want salary data and visa, immigration and offer-comparison discussion in one community.

Skip it if you do not read Chinese and need questions for one loop next month: you would pay for a forum you cannot use, and a DoorDash commenter on Blind called the content "pretty inaccurate nowadays" in January 2025.

The Third Option: PracHub

PracHub is a bank of real, recently asked interview questions with in-depth written solutions, and most questions are free. As of October 2026 it holds more than 12,000 questions across more than 570 companies; more than 8,000 are free and more than 7,000 have a written solution. Google alone has more than 600 (Google questions) and Anthropic more than 240 (Anthropic questions). It is in English, free to start with an optional paid tier, and covers SQL, ML and analytics rounds alongside coding and system design.

Asked at Google: Design LLM Summarization of E-commerce Reviews with Prompt-Injection and PII Defenses

Build a system that feeds customer reviews to a language model and shows summaries on an internal dashboard. The interviewer cared most about untrusted input: injected instructions hidden in reviews and personal data leaking into output.

Asked at Anthropic: Make a Web Crawler Concurrent with Thread-Safe Visited State

Take a single-threaded crawler to concurrent fetching, then explain how new links reach the work queue and how the visited set stays correct when two workers find the same URL.

A workflow that spends money last:

1. Open your target company from the company list, for example Jane Street, and read the free questions and solutions for your round.
2. Write down which rounds look thin for that company.
3. If a real gap remains and you read Chinese, buy a short 1point3acres pass for the weeks before the loop. If you don't, check GothamLoop's last-updated date for that company before paying.
4. Study the patterns as well as the list: a Google engineer on Blind says Google changes a question once it is found to have leaked.

Practice these on PracHub

The quickest way to know whether GothamLoop is worth paying for is to try real questions first. These PracHub questions are free to read, sit in the areas it covers, and each has a written solution:

• Coding (Lexicographically Largest Permutation After Sorting One Fixed-Length Window · Maximize total catch over K hours from ponds whose yield drops after each hour · Merge Overlapping Collinear Lane Segments Given as Integer Point Lists); more in the coding questions.
• System design (Design a Real-Time Trivia Battle Royale Platform with Live Spectating · Idempotent Kafka Consumer: Duplicate Writes, Offset Commits and a Second Database); more in the system design questions.
• Behavioral (End-to-End ML Project Deep Dive: Decisions, Evaluation Design and Career Goals); more in the behavioral questions.

Keep going from the software engineer questions, the full question bank or the company hubs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is GothamLoop or 1point3acres better if I don't read Chinese?

GothamLoop, narrowly. The 1point3acres forum is in Chinese and its question text is often obfuscated, while GothamLoop writes everything in English. 1point3acres does run an English question bank at /interview, but it does not publish which paid tiers include that bank or what a free account can read in it. Check the GothamLoop company page's last-updated date before paying, since most showed August 2026 dates when checked in October 2026.

Which is cheaper, GothamLoop or 1point3acres?

For one month, 1point3acres: an $88 monthly subscription against GothamLoop's $199, as of October 2026. For a year or more, GothamLoop's $329 one-time price beats the $699.99 twelve-month 1point3acres pass. Neither offers refunds.

Is GothamLoop worth it if I already have a 1point3acres membership?

Usually not. GothamLoop says it sources questions from 1point3acres among other places, and one commenter in r/interviews said it is not worth buying if you already have a membership there. The exception is a member who cannot read the forum's Chinese posts and wants GothamLoop's per-company ranking and levels-and-pay pages.

Do GothamLoop or 1point3acres give refunds?

No. GothamLoop's terms say all sales are final, and cancelling does not refund payments already made. 1point3acres' terms say refunds will not be provided for any subscription and there is no proration for mid-month cancellations; they do not say whether one-time passes or points packs are covered.

Are there free options for recent interview questions?

Yes. PracHub is free to start: as of October 2026, more than 8,000 of its more than 12,000 questions are free, and more than 1,100 of those come with a free written solution. GothamLoop offers only an emailed sample and a demo, and 1point3acres does not publish what a free account can read.

Final Verdict

Pay for one at most. If you read Chinese, 1point3acres is the better buy: it is the source, it is larger on every count compared here, its posts land within days, and its monthly subscription costs less than half of GothamLoop's monthly price. If you don't read Chinese and have one loop at a company GothamLoop refreshed recently, its English ranked list is the more convenient buy, and the $329 one-time price is the only sensible way to pay for it.

Neither should be your first step. Both are no-refund purchases of what other candidates reported, and GothamLoop buyers report match rates around 30-35%. Start with the free questions and written solutions at PracHub.