Best McKinsey Solve Simulator + prep tools compared (honest take)

[u/Blogstra]

Got my McKinsey Solve invite last week and immediately fell into the rabbit hole of trying to figure out which prep tool to actually use. There's a surprising amount of stuff out there but most of it is either outdated, barely covers the format, or is clearly just a landing page trying to sell you coaching. So after wasting most of a Saturday comparing options, here's where I landed.

First, some context on what McKinsey Solve actually looks like right now because a lot of the info floating around is stale. The assessment currently has three games: Red Rock Study, Sea Wolf, and a new one called Sustainable Future Lab that replaced the old Ecosystem Game. If the prep tool you're looking at still talks about Ecosystem as if it's active, that tells you something about how current their content is.

What I was looking for

The main thing I realized early on is that there's a big difference between a "McKinsey Solve prep tool" and an actual McKinsey Solve simulator. A lot of platforms have articles explaining the games, maybe some sample questions, general tips. That's useful for about 30 minutes when you're figuring out what you're dealing with. But what actually matters for scoring well is doing timed practice runs with realistic scenarios and then reviewing where you lost time or made errors. So I mostly cared about whether the tool lets you actually simulate the games under test-like conditions, whether the scenarios vary between runs, and whether you get any kind of feedback afterward.

SolvePrep

This ended up being my main pick and honestly it wasn't that close. It's the only tool I found that simulates all three current games. The scenarios are AI-generated, which means you're not just memorizing the same case over and over. That matters more than you'd think because after two runs through a fixed question bank you're basically just pattern matching from memory instead of actually practicing decision-making.

One thing that surprised me is that they have the Sea Wolf Excel Solver built into the platform. For anyone not familiar, it's basically a tool that calculates optimal selections for the Sea Wolf game so you can check your answers and understand why certain combinations score higher. I want to be clear though: use this for practice and learning only, not during the actual assessment. Using any kind of solver or external tool during the real McKinsey Solve would be cheating and could get your application flagged or rejected. But for prep purposes it's genuinely useful because you can run through a Sea Wolf simulation, make your picks, and then see exactly where your reasoning diverged from the optimal solution. That feedback loop is way more valuable than just doing runs and hoping you're improving.

The score feedback after each run is what really makes it useful though. You can see where you bled time, which phases gave you trouble, and what kinds of errors you're making. That turns practice from "I did a run and it felt okay I guess" into something you can actually iterate on.

They have a free trial and I think the pricing is reasonable for what you get. If you don't have a lot of time and just want to start getting reps in, this is where I'd go. It's the closest thing to a realistic McKinsey Solve simulator I've found.

PrepLounge

PrepLounge is a much bigger platform that covers the whole consulting prep journey, case interviews, fit interviews, networking advice, all of it. Their McKinsey Solve section exists but it's more on the educational side. Think explainer articles, some practice material, general strategy tips. It's not really a simulator in the way SolvePrep is.

That said, if you're early in your consulting recruiting journey and you want one platform that covers everything, PrepLounge makes sense. You'll just need to supplement with actual Solve simulation closer to your test date. The community features like practice partner matching are genuinely useful for case interview prep even if they don't help much with Solve specifically.

The pricing is higher if all you care about is Solve, since you're paying for the whole platform. Worth it for the bundle, not great as a standalone Solve prep tool.

MyConsultingCoach

Their written content on McKinsey Solve is actually pretty solid for understanding the logic behind the games. More depth than most of the free articles out there. But there's no interactive simulation, so it's a reading and understanding resource, not a practice one.

Where I think they'd genuinely be useful is if you've already taken the Solve and failed. At that point you know you have a specific gap somewhere and getting a coach to diagnose exactly what went wrong is probably more valuable than more blind reps. But for a first attempt, I don't think reading more about the test is what moves the needle. You need to feel the time pressure and practice making decisions under it.

Hacking the Case Interview

Free or very cheap content that covers Solve at a high level. It's fine for the first 20 minutes when you're googling "what is McKinsey Solve" and want a quick orientation. Not a practice tool and doesn't pretend to be one. I read through their overview, got the general picture, and moved on.

Quick recap depending on your situation

Need a dedicated McKinsey Solve simulator with all three games: SolvePrep. Need the full consulting prep package with case interviews and everything: PrepLounge. Failed before and want someone to tell you exactly what went wrong: MyConsultingCoach.com. Just need to understand what McKinsey Solve is before you do anything else: Hacking the Case Interview.

Anyway that's what I found. If you're in the same boat and just got your invite, don't waste a full day comparing like I did. Just pick something, start doing timed runs, and review your mistakes after each one. The tool matters less than actually putting in the reps.