NeetCode 150 vs Blind 75 vs Grind 75: Which List Should You Do?

Quick answer

Do Blind 75 if your interview is a few weeks away and you need the core patterns fast. Do NeetCode 150 if you have more time and want the same core plus 75 more problems that fill thinner topics. Use Grind 75 if you want the list to come with a schedule: you set how many weeks and hours per week you have, and it plans the questions for you.

These lists overlap far more than they compete. NeetCode 150 contains the Blind 75, and Grind 75 was built by the author of Blind 75 as an updated, customizable version. Picking one and finishing it matters more than picking the perfect one.

Disclosure: AlgoDrill wrote this independent comparison. AlgoDrill is not affiliated with NeetCode, Blind, or Tech Interview Handbook, and none of them reviewed this page.

How the three lists relate

Blind 75 came first. On Tech Interview Handbook, its author Yangshun Tay explains that he curated a list of 75 important LeetCode questions, shared it on Blind, and that people started calling it Blind 75 after it was reposted. NeetCode hosts the list today with 75 problems across 18 topics, split into 19 Easy, 49 Medium, and 7 Hard.

NeetCode 150 is described on its own page as "the Blind 75 plus 75 more problems" and as the list for people already familiar with basic algorithms and data structures. It keeps the same 18 topics with 28 Easy, 101 Medium, and 21 Hard. The extra problems mostly deepen topics where Blind 75 is thin. For example, Stack goes from 1 problem to 6, Backtracking from 2 to 10, and 2-D Dynamic Programming from 2 to 11.

NeetCode 250 goes one step further: the NeetCode 150 plus 100 more, with 60 Easy, 155 Medium, and 35 Hard. NeetCode calls it its most beginner-friendly list, which makes sense given the larger share of Easy problems.

Grind 75 lives on Tech Interview Handbook and is billed as "a better Blind 75 you can customize, by the author of Blind 75." Its FAQ says the question pool started from Blind 75, Sean Prashad's LeetCode Patterns, and other pattern resources, and that the full list contains 169 questions. Easy questions come first within a topic, Hard questions get lower priority, and premium-only questions are pushed toward the end.

Side by side

Sizes and difficulty counts above come from the NeetCode list pages and the Grind 75 FAQ on the check date. NeetCode also offers NeetCode 250 and a full catalog, which we left out of the table to keep the comparison focused.

Who each list fits

By time available

• Two to four weeks: Blind 75, or Grind 75 set to your real number of weeks. Seventy-five problems in a month is already roughly three a day, and that leaves little room for review.
• Six to ten weeks: Grind 75 at its default of 8 weeks and 8 hours a week, or Blind 75 followed by a selection of the NeetCode 150 extras.
• Three months or more: NeetCode 150. The extra depth in backtracking, graphs, and 2-D dynamic programming is where many candidates are weakest.

By experience

• New to data structures: neither 75-problem list is gentle. Learn the basics first, or consider NeetCode 250, which has more Easy problems to build up from.
• Comfortable with basics, rusty on interviews: Blind 75 or Grind 75. You mostly need to reactivate patterns.
• Already finished Blind 75: do the 75 problems that NeetCode 150 adds rather than starting a new list from zero. Grind 75 also overlaps heavily, so switching lists mostly means repeating problems.

A concrete study plan

Here is one way to run an eight week plan with about eight hours a week. Adjust the numbers to your schedule; the structure is the useful part.

• Weeks 1 to 2: arrays and hashing, two pointers, sliding window, and stack. Start with Two Sum, Valid Anagram, and Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters. Read the hash map guide and sliding window guide before you start each group.
• Weeks 3 to 4: binary search, linked lists, and trees. Trees carry 11 problems in Blind 75 and 15 in NeetCode 150, so give them the most time.
• Weeks 5 to 6: graphs, heaps, and intervals, including Number of Islands and Merge Intervals.
• Week 7: dynamic programming, starting with Climbing Stairs before Coin Change.
• Week 8: no new problems. Re-solve a sample from every earlier week from a blank editor, timed.

Each session should split roughly into one third new problems and two thirds review. Keep a short log of each problem: the pattern, the one insight that unlocks it, and whether you solved it unaided. The log tells you what to review in week 8 far better than memory does.

Where recall practice fits

Every list has the same weak point: finishing a problem once is not the same as being able to write it again. A common experience is recognizing a solution instantly when you see it, then stalling on the loop condition or the update step in an interview. That gap is about retrieval, not understanding.

The fix is to test yourself on problems you have already done, without the reference. You can do this with a blank editor and a timer, or with a tool like AlgoDrill, where you rebuild solutions line by line from memory and see which lines you missed. Either way, the list gives you what to study and recall practice checks whether it stuck.

Practice exercise

Try this original sliding window problem before checking the answer. You have a log of study session lengths in minutes and a number k. Return the length of the longest run of consecutive sessions that contains at most k sessions longer than 60 minutes.

Input: sessions = [30, 90, 45, 20, 120, 40, 75, 25], k = 1.

The answer is 4. Both [30, 90, 45, 20] and [45, 20, 120, 40] contain exactly one long session. Any run of 5 consecutive sessions includes at least two of 90, 120, and 75.

Now write the solution without notes. Keep a count of long sessions inside a window, extend the right edge each step, and shrink the left edge while the count exceeds k. If you got the idea but stalled on when to shrink the window, that is a recall gap. Revisit the sliding window guide, then rebuild Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters from memory, which uses the same shrinking condition structure.

Sources and verification

Checked November 9, 2026: NeetCode Blind 75 list, NeetCode 150 list, NeetCode 250 list, Grind 75, the Grind 75 FAQ, and the Tech Interview Handbook page on Blind 75's origin. List contents and counts can change. The Grind 75 defaults and limits reflect the planner settings on the check date. We did not verify the original Blind post directly and relied on its author's account.