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By Hidini Team 4 min read

Choosing the Right AI Provider for Your Interviews

guide ai-providers comparison

The Four Options

Hidini supports four AI providers, each with distinct strengths. Your choice depends on what matters most: accuracy, speed, cost, or privacy.

How you pay for it

Before comparing providers, it helps to know there are two billing paths, because they change what “cost” means below.

Included credits. Hidini ships preconfigured, so every provider below works without an API key. Credits are deducted per request, and cheaper models cost fewer credits than frontier ones. The free tier includes 50 credits and Pro includes 500.

Bring your own key. Enter your own API key and Hidini calls the provider directly. No credits are consumed, and you pay the provider at their published rates. Local models cost nothing either way.

Model line-ups move fast, so treat the lists below as a snapshot of what the current release offers and check the picker in Settings for the live set.

Claude (Anthropic)

Models available: Opus 4.8, Opus 4.7, Sonnet 5, Fable 5, Haiku 4.5

Claude excels at nuanced reasoning and code explanation. It’s particularly strong at system design questions where you need structured, well-organized answers. Sonnet 5 is the default and the best balance of quality and cost for most sessions.

Best for:

  • System design interviews
  • Behavioral questions requiring structured frameworks
  • Code explanation and optimization
  • When you want thorough, well-reasoned responses

Cost: Haiku 4.5 is the cheapest option and the automatic default for demo users. Opus 4.8 is the most capable and the most credit-hungry.

GPT (OpenAI)

Models available: GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4, GPT-5.4 Mini, GPT-5.4 Nano, o3, o4-mini

GPT-5.5 is fast and broadly capable, and it is the default for this provider. The o-series models add deeper reasoning at the cost of higher latency, which matters when an interviewer is waiting.

Best for:

  • Coding challenges, especially with the o-series on complex algorithms
  • Quick responses during fast-paced Q&A
  • When you need the lowest latency
  • General-purpose interview assistance

Cost: The Nano and Mini tiers are the cheap options. GPT-5.5 and the o-series cost more per request.

Gemini (Google)

Models available: Gemini 3.1 Pro, 3.5 Flash, 3 Flash, 3.1 Flash-Lite

Gemini 3.5 Flash is the default and offers an excellent speed-to-quality ratio. The Pro model competes with Claude and GPT on reasoning tasks.

Best for:

  • Speed-sensitive scenarios where you need answers fast
  • When you want competitive quality at a lower price point
  • Multimodal tasks such as screenshot analysis

Cost: Flash-Lite is the cheapest tier. Flash sits in the middle, and Pro is the premium option.

Local AI

Models available: anything your local server exposes. Hidini suggests Gemma 4 E4B, Llama 3.1, Qwen 2.5, Mistral, DeepSeek R1, and Phi-4, but the model field is free text.

Local AI runs models entirely on your Mac. No API key, no internet connection required, no credits consumed, and no data leaves your machine. Hidini points at http://localhost:11434/v1 by default, which is Ollama’s OpenAI-compatible endpoint, and you can change it to LM Studio, Jan, llama.cpp, or anything else that speaks the same API.

Best for:

  • Zero-cost operation
  • Maximum privacy, because no data is sent anywhere
  • When you don’t have or want to use API keys
  • Practice sessions where cost matters

Trade-offs:

  • Slower than cloud APIs, depending on your Mac’s hardware
  • Less capable than the latest cloud models
  • Requires downloading models, typically 2-8 GB each

Our Recommendation

For most users, we suggest this setup:

  1. Start with a local model for practice interviews. Zero cost, zero risk, and it doesn’t spend your credits.
  2. Switch to Sonnet 5 or GPT-5.5 for real interviews. The quality difference matters when stakes are high.
  3. Use Gemini 3.5 Flash if you prioritize response speed above all else.

You can switch providers at any time in Hidini’s settings, and it takes two seconds.

Transcription Engine Pairing

Don’t forget to choose a transcription engine too:

Interview TypeRecommended TranscriptionRecommended AI
Practice runApple Speech (free)Local AI (free)
Real interviewGroq Whisper ($0.02/hr)Sonnet 5
High-stakes interviewDeepgram Nova-3 ($0.46/hr)Opus 4.8 or GPT-5.5

The transcription engine affects how accurately the AI understands the conversation. Better transcription = better hints.

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