System design is a core part of almost every tech interview today, whether you are a software engineer, DevOps engineer, cloud professional, or working in AI/ML roles.
In the AI era, it is extremely important for tech aspirants to understand how a complex set of components works together to solve problems at scale. The reason is simple: the core principles of scalability, availability, and reliability remain the same.
In fact, these are the exact skills most companies are looking for in candidates in 2026.
In this blog, I have listed the top platforms that offer the best system design courses. If you are interested in system design or preparing for system design interviews, these courses will be very useful.
Best System Design Interview Courses
I have reviewed many courses, but these six platforms stand out because they provide real-world experience and practical knowledge. That is why I wanted to share them with you to help you improve your skills and crack system design interviews.
Lets take a look at each one of them.
1. ByteByteGo
ByteByteGo is a leading learning platform for system design interview preparation. It is well known for its visual, practical guides and real-world system architecture examples.
I am personally a fan of the ByteByteGo newsletter, which offers many in-depth system design articles. However, if you are looking for a guided and structured path for system design preparation, you can check out their courses.
- System Design Interview
- Object-Oriented Design Interview
- Machine Learning System Design Interview
- Mobile System Design Interview
- Generative AI System Design Interview
These courses are best for Software Engineers who are preparing for System Design Interviews, and developers who want to understand the system architecture better.
2. Educative: Grokking Modern System Design Interview
Eduacative.io Grokking Modern System Design interview built by FAANG engineers, and is a valuable course for system design interview preparation.
You will be able to master the distributed system fundamentals and gain practice with real-world interview questions.
In this course, you will get,
- 180 Lessons
- 8 Mock Interviews
- 129 Quizzes, and
- Certification
- 26 hours of learning materials.
Here is what you will get from this course.
- Practice mock interviews, model answers, and rubrics to build your confidence and speed.
- Capacity and reliability skills.
- Pattern toolkit such as sharding, replication, consistency models, CQRS, and event-driven design.
- You will get a 45-minute answer structure with RESHAPED for any system design interview.
- How to communicate under pressure(fast diagramming, clear trade-off narratives, and effective checkpoints).
- Frame open-ended interview problems
3. Tryexponent - System Design Interview Preparation
The TryExponent System Design Interview course is one of the most valuable, beginner-friendly, and easy-to-understand courses available.
TryExponent has a combination of video and text lessons, as shown below.
So if you are someone who needs a guided video course on system design, you will love Tryexponent.
The following table shows all the key concepts you will learn in this course.
| Topics | You will learn |
|---|---|
| Overview |
• How to answer system design interview questions • System Design principles • Rubric for system design interviews • System design glossary and get top Engineering blogs |
| Networking & API Design |
• Web protocol questions • API |
| Scalable Systems | • Reliability, availability, and load balancing |
| Databases |
• SQL vs NoSQL • Database sharding • Replication |
| Distribution Systemes | • Consistent hashing, CAP theorem, asynchronous processing, caching, encryption, authentication & authorization, cloud architecture, and CDNs. |
| Real-time & Events: Mock Interviews | • Learn to design Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Tinder, ChatGPT, Uber Eats, and Weather App. |
| Media & Content Delivery: Mock Interviews | • Learn to design YouTube, TitTok, Instagram, Netflix, and Twitter. |
| Async & Data Processing: Mock Interviews |
• Design a web crawler • Design a metrics and logging service • Design Dropbox • Design app that downloads user data • Design an application performance monitoring system |
| Payments & Marketplaces: Mock Interviews |
• Design a parking garage • Design the payment system for the Amazon Kindle • Design a hotel booking service • Design Zillow • Design a vending machine • Design Ticketmaster |
| Distributed Infrastructure: Mock Interviews |
• Design a key value store • Design a rate limiter • Desing a distributed message queue • Design a URL shortener • Design typeahead for seach box • Design a distributed LRU cache |
Tryexponent Key Features:
- Interactive exercises and AI feedback
- Full mock interview videos
- Completed interview walkthroughs
4. Codemia.io
Codemia.io is dedicated to System Design courses and helps with cracking system design interview problems. You will get the System Design problems and object-oriented design problems practice section.
There are four levels such as easy, medium, hard, and advanced. Also in the practice section, you can chat with a coach to clear your doubts.
Codemia has two key courses,
- System Design Fundamentals - Beginner Level
- Tacking System Design Interview Problems - Beginner Level
5. DesignGurus System Design
DesignGuru.io is one of the best platforms for learning system design from scratch and preparing for interviews, offering a comprehensive roadmap for interview preparation.
Lets get into, what are the things you will get and learn from DesignGurus.
System Design Interview Roadmap:
- Grokking System Design Fundamentals
- Grokking the System Design Interview
- Grokking the Advanced System Design Interview
- Grokking Scalable Systems for Interviews - New Arrival
- Grokking Microservices Design Patterns
- Grokking the Object Oriented Design Interview
- Grokking SOLID Design Principles
- Grokking Design Patterns for Engineers and Managers
Look into the image below to know what learning you will get in each interview prep guide.
Start to learn: System Design Interview Roadmap
6. Algomonster (System Design School)
AlgoMonster is an online platform built to help software engineers crack technical interviews. It was created by former engineers from top companies and focuses on pattern-based learning.
To learn System Design, they created a platform called System Design School.
You will learn from basic to advanced levels.
Here are the topics covered in this course:
- Introduction to system design
- Microservices and data flow
- Scaling services and storage
- Data storage scaling
- Batch and stream processing
- Design patterns and templates
Few Tips
When it comes to system design, you need to look into the following Core Pillars of Modern System Design.
- Scalability: Can the system handle a 10x or 100x increase in load? (Vertical vs. Horizontal scaling).
- Availability vs. Consistency: Do you prioritize the system always being "up" (Availability) or every node having the same data at the same time
- Latency: How fast does the system respond? This often involves implementing Caching (e.g., Redis) or Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
- Resiliency: How does the system behave when a component fails? This involves "Circuit Breakers," retries, and decoupled architectures using Message Queues (e.g., Kafka or RabbitMQ).
- Throughput: How many requests/transactions can the system process per unit of time?
- Fault Tolerance & Data Durability: How does the system prevent data loss during failures? Understanding RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective)
- Security: Authentication and Authorization (OAuth, JWT, RBAC)
- Observability: Monitoring, Logging, and Tracing (the three pillars of observability)
- Data Partitioning/Sharding: How to split data across multiple databases/nodes
Conclusion
I have listed some of the best system design courses that will help you prepare for system design interviews.
However, I would also like to mention that while courses give you a well-structured learning path, they are not enough on their own.
To perform well in interviews, you should also practice designing systems on your own, understand real-world problems, and think clearly about scalability, reliability, and cost.
Here is the key thing.
Try to break problems into components, explain your decisions, and communicate your thinking step by step.
Finally, refer to engineering blogs, study real-world systems, and discuss designs with others. This will greatly help you build confidence and succeed in system design interviews.
Over to you.
How are you preparing for system design interviews right now?
What is your favorite learning resource?
Which engineering blogs have helped you understand system design concepts?
Drop your thoughts in the comments below.