Hello guys, if you are preparing for System design interviews then you may know how tough it is to answer questions in an interview setting where you not only have time pressure but also job pressure, the only way to crack the System design interview is to practice, practice, and practice, and for that you need right resources.

And, if you are looking for interactive resources then you have come to the right place.

In the past, I have shared the best System Design book, system design online course, Cheat Sheets, Websites, mock interviews as well and System design newsletter to keep yourself updated, but today I am going to share a special interactive course from Educative.io, one of my favorite place for coding interview preparation.

If you don't know Educative is another online learning platform that is gaining a lot of traction for its text-based, interactive learning courses. Reading is generally faster than watching and If you prefer reading text to watching videos then this is the platform to checkout.

It has some of the best courses to prepare for coding interviews like Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions. It also has a lot of free resources like this free JavaScript tutorial to learn essential technologies.

You do not just need to prepare theory-based questions like horizontal scalability vs vertical scalability or API gateway vs load balancer. but also System design questions like TinyURL Design, vending machine design, URL Shortener design, WhatsApp design, YouTube design, and much more, and most importantly system design case studies.

While System Design principles are helpful in interviews, understanding how larger systems use smaller systems as building blocks is crucial for any developer working on any scalable web application.

Grasping the building blocks of modern System Design is essential for creating scalable, modular, and maintainable architectures that can adapt to evolving business requirements and handle increasing users, and that's where these courses will help you.

By the way, if you are preparing for System design interviews and want to learn System Design in-depth then you can also check out sites like ByteByteGo, Design Guru, Exponent, Educative, and Udemy which have many great System design courses and guides.

And here is a nice System design interview cheat sheet from Educative.io to start with, and keep reading the article because I am going to share another API Interview cheat sheet at the end of the article.

6 Best Interactive System Design and API Design Interview Courses

Now, without any further ado, let's jump into the best interactive courses to learn about System Design and API Design.

1. System Design Interview Prep Crash Course

Typically we recommend spending 2--3 weeks on SDI prep. But if you have a time crunch, we built this crash course for you.

It's a compact version of our flagship course on System Design, Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers. It condenses the fundamentals of System Design into a 7-hour crash course, grounded in real-world problems.

By the end, you'll be able to design systems that efficiently scale withincreasing users, remain highly available under different faults, and meet functional & non-functional requirements with high performance.

Here is the link to join this course --- System Design Interview Prep Crash Course

2. Deep Dive into System Design Interview

System design is fundamental to building scalable systems, a core skill required for all software engineers. Your understanding of system design will determine your engineering level.

This path follows the bottom-up approach and contains the foundational components a software engineer needs to prepare for the system design interview.

Start with a quick refresher on the distributed systems, building blocks, and web architectures.

You will learn the RESHADED pattern to design large-scale systems like Netflix, Facebook, Quora, etc.

Ultimately, a machine learning system design module will prepare you with best practices to design, develop, and integrate machine learning models in production at scale.

Here is the link to join this path ---Deep Dive into System Design Interview

3. Scalability & System Design for Developers

As you progress in your career as a developer, you'll be increasingly expected to think about software architecture. Can you design systems and make trade-offs at scale? Developing that skill is a great way to set yourself apart from the pack.

In this Skill Path, you'll cover everything you need to know to design scalable systems for enterprise-level software.

Here is the link to join this path --- Scalability & System Design for Developers

4. Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers

This is one of the best System design courses on Educative.io and probably the most comprehensive also.

This course presents carefully selected system design problems with detailed solutions that will enable you to handle complex scalability scenarios during an interview or designing new products.

You will start with learning a bottom-up approach to designing scalable systems. First, you'll learn about the building blocks of modern systems, with each component being a completely scalable application in itself.

You'll then explore the RESHADED framework for architecting web-scale applications by determining requirements, constraints, and assumptions before diving into a step-by-step design process.

Finally, you'll design several popular services by using these modular building blocks in unique combinations, and learn how to evaluate your design

Here is the link to join this course --- Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers

5. Machine Learning System Design

In an interview setting, could you confidently design an adaptive production-scale system --- e.g. a system that can predict the delivery time of a takeout order?

To do that, you'll need a working understanding of machine learning system design principles. Understanding ML system design best practices will give you a competitive boost in your interviews.
It will help you to :
1. Deconstruct complex problems into manageable tasks
2. Identify key requirements and constraints
3. Design scalable and efficient architectures
4. Select appropriate ML techniques and models
5. Discuss trade-offs and justify design decisions

Through this course, you will also acquire cutting-edge knowledge from hundreds of the latest research papers and industry best ML practices and system design principles.

Here is the link to join this course --- Machine Learning System Design

6. Grokking the API Design Interview

Designing a modern system involves navigating complex requirements to create cohesive and functional designs. As a designer, you'll need to understand these requirements and guide the design process effectively, addressing both broad and specific topics in product design.

In this course, you will design APIs for well-known systems such as YouTube, Stripe, and Zoom, understanding how these APIs integrate into the larger product ecosystem.

You'll begin by discussing recurring concepts, using them as foundational building blocks. You'll trace the lifecycle of each API call from the client to the service to meet functional requirements.

This course prepares you for product architecture design interviews by examining systems from a client's perspective and discusses how client calls interact with the back-end system.

Here is the link to join this course ---Grokking the API Design Interview

Additionally, you'll use a reference back-end implementation to demonstrate how an API call operates, with a focus on minimizing client-visible latency to create competitive APIs and products.

Here is another nice cheat sheet about Performance in System Design from Educative.io

That's all about the best online courses for System Design and API Design interviews. They are all from Educative.io, one of my favorite websites to learn Tech skills and prepare for coding interviews. The list includes both beginner and advanced level System design courses.

I have also made an effort to include courses on Machine Learning System Design as well as API Design, both are key components of modern system design and solid knowledge of them will help you to perform better in Software design interviews.

By the way, you can either join this course individually or you can take an Educative subscription (recommended) to get access to their 100+ high-quality, AI-powered, text-based, interactive courses to learn key skills for coding interviews, software development, and technology.

And, here is another awesome API Interview cheat sheet which I had promised earlier, this one is also from Educative.io so you can thank them for creating such an awesome resource:

Other System Design Articles and Resources you may like
- Top 5 Places to learn System design and Software design
- Is DesignGuru's System Design Course worth it
- 5 System Design CheatSheets You can Refer before Interview
- 16 best Resources to Prepare for System Design Interview
- 100+ System Design Interview Questions and Problems
- Is Exponent's System Design Course worth it?
- 10 Reasons to Learn System Design
- Top 5 System Design YouTube Channels for Engineers
- 10 Best Places to Learn System Design
- How to Prepare for System Design Interview
- Is ByteByteGo worth the hype?
- My Favorite Software Design Courses
- 3 Places to Practice System Design Mock interviews
- 20 System Design Interview Questions for Practice
- Is Designing Data-intensive application book worth reading?

Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like these System design courses then you can join Educative now, they are offering a 20% discount also.

P. S. --- If you are looking for an affordable online course to learn System Design and prepare for interviews then I also suggest you check out Alex Xu's ByteByteGo, one of the best places for System design interview preparation. It contains all the materials of two of his best-selling books on System design and exclusive content for the course