MockLive vs ChatGPT
Free, brilliant and the first thing most people try — but a general assistant you have to turn into an interviewer yourself, not an interview room or an exam.
What ChatGPT is
OpenAI's general-purpose assistant. You can ask it to play an interviewer or an examiner, by typing or in voice chat, and it will — as well as the instructions you give it. It does not know your exam's format, timing or marking unless you describe them, and each new chat starts over.
How practice happens
Text or voice chat with a general assistant, set up by your own prompt.
How it is priced
A free plan with unlimited text chats, limited voice chats and limited memory, and paid Go, Plus and Pro plans, as listed on chatgpt.com/pricing.
In their own words
“Limited voice chats”
chatgpt.com/pricing, Free plan
“Limited memory and context”
chatgpt.com/pricing, Free plan
What ChatGPT is better at
Answered honestly, because a comparison page where the author wins every row is an advert and reads like one.
- It is free, and it is there at 3 a.m. the night before.
- Explaining things: what a question type is testing, what a STAR answer looks like, what a band descriptor means.
- Drafting and brainstorming — your stories, your 'why this course', your answer to a hard question — on any topic at all.
Where the two genuinely differ
| ChatGPT | MockLive | |
|---|---|---|
| Setting it up | You write the prompt: who it is, the format, the rules, when to push back. Each new chat starts from nothing. | You pick the room. The interviewer, examiner or consular officer, the format and the clock are already there. |
| The real format | No clock and no sections; it waits until you are done and answers whatever you ask. | The exam on its real timings and tasks — IELTS, TOEFL, PTE, Duolingo, OET, PLAB 2 — and interviews that run like the real round. |
| How you are marked | Feedback in the moment, by whatever standard you ask for. General assistants are built to be helpful and encouraging. | Scored against the published criteria for that exam or round, quoting your own words, with the same rubric every time so your score can move. |
| Your own file | Knows what you paste into that chat. | Holds you to your case: a visa officer who checks your answers against your I-20 or offer letter, an interviewer who has read your résumé. |
| Progress | Memory is limited on the free plan; a past practice run is a past chat. | Every report is saved, so you can see what changed between your first run and your last. |
Which one you should actually use
Pick ChatGPT if…
You want to understand a question type, brainstorm your stories or draft an answer — free, any time, on anything. It is an excellent tutor; use it.
Pick MockLive if…
You want the rehearsal itself: out loud, on the real format and clock, marked the way the real thing marks, before the day it counts.
How to check this
Everything above about ChatGPT was read from their own site on 15 October 2026. Pricing and features in this category change without announcement — if what you see there differs from what you read here, theirs is right and ours is stale. We would rather you tell us than assume we meant it.
Other comparisons
MockLive vs Final Round AI
The biggest name in AI interview tools, and mostly a different product: its headline feature runs during your real interview, not before it.
MockLive vs Aced (formerly Exponent and Pramp)
Free peer-to-peer mock interviews with real people (5 a month on the free plan), plus a spoken AI interviewer for paid members. The catch with peers is scheduling and the quality lottery.
MockLive vs interviewing.io
Anonymous mock interviews with engineers who actually work at FAANG. The strongest option in this list for senior technical interviews, and priced accordingly.
7 minutes beats a comparison table
The first session is free and needs no card. It ends with a scored report against a fixed rubric and every answer replayable — which tells you more about whether this suits you than any page like this one can.