9 Best TryHackMe Alternatives in 2026 (Free and Paid)

Why People Look for TryHackMe Alternatives

TryHackMe is still one of the best places to start. Its guided rooms, in-browser AttackBox and huge community (the company reports more than 8 million learners) make the first weeks easy. The reasons people move on are predictable, and almost all of them are about fit or money:

• The free tier hits a wall. Free accounts get free rooms, partial learning paths and one hour of AttackBox a day. Most structured paths stop part-way for free users.
• The price went up and split in two. Since June 2026, Premium (EUR 16.99 a month, or EUR 126 a year) covers the beginner paths, and the new MAX plan (EUR 29.11 a month, or about EUR 216 a year) is needed for the advanced ones. US checkout shows higher dollar prices. Our full TryHackMe pricing breakdown has every number.
• The hand-holding starts to hurt. Answering task questions is not the same as hacking a target with no instructions. Many learners notice this the first time they open a box that has no questions attached.
• It is English only. Rooms, paths and certification material are written in English, which slows down learners who would rather study in French or Portuguese.
• No real competition. King of the Hill and the leaderboards are fun, but they are not the same as a timed CTF against hundreds of teams.

In practice, the one-hour AttackBox cap is the first wall most beginners hit. A medium room with reading, a slow scan and one wrong turn easily takes longer than that. You can connect your own Kali VM over TryHackMe's OpenVPN instead, but that means installing and maintaining a VM, which is exactly the setup a beginner was trying to avoid.

TryHackMe Alternatives at a Glance

Match the row to your reason for leaving. Everything marked free is free to use without a time limit.

The 9 Best TryHackMe Alternatives, Reviewed

1. HackerDNA: Browser Labs and Courses Without the Timer

HackerDNA keeps what beginners like about TryHackMe (explanations first, then practice on a live target) and removes the parts that get in the way. Courses and short interactive lessons teach the technique, then hands-on labs and challenges let you use it, all in the browser with no VPN, no local VM and no daily machine clock. An AI coach inside each lab gives you a nudge when you are stuck without handing over the flag, on the free and Pro plans alike.

• Best for: beginners who liked the guided style but kept running into the AttackBox limit or the paywall. The Hacking 101 course is where most people start.
• Also good for: French and Brazilian Portuguese speakers. Labs and courses are available in both languages as well as English.
• Daily habit: the free Daily Hack is a short daily puzzle you can play without an account, which is a good way to keep a streak going on busy days.
• Trade-off: a smaller community than TryHackMe, and no certifications of its own.

2. Hack The Box Starting Point: The Natural Next Step

If you are leaving TryHackMe because it feels too easy, Hack The Box is where you are probably heading anyway. Start with Starting Point, not the main machine pool. It has three tiers: Tier 0 teaches tooling and enumeration, Tier 1 machines turn on one main exploitation step, and Tier 2 machines chain foothold and privilege escalation like a real box. Every machine has guided tasks and hints, so it is a softer landing than its reputation suggests.

• Best for: people who finished a TryHackMe beginner path and want unguided practice.
• Price: free accounts get 20 active machines and a one-time two-hour Pwnbox trial. VIP+ costs $25 a month or $223 a year. HTB Academy is a separate subscription.
• Trade-off: after Starting Point, the difficulty jump is real. Our TryHackMe vs Hack The Box comparison explains when you are ready for it.

3. pwn.college: A Free University Course in Your Browser

pwn.college is the platform Arizona State University uses to teach its own security classes, and it is open to anyone for free. You get a Linux workspace in the browser, lecture videos, and hundreds of small challenges grouped into dojos. You start as a white belt and earn belts as you complete the core material. Of the free options on this list, it is the closest to TryHackMe's "no setup" feel, at zero cost.

• Best for: learners who want to understand how programs actually break, and who do not mind reading.
• Price: free.
• Trade-off: the Getting Started dojos are gentle, then Program Security gets steep fast. Our pwn.college beginner guide lists the dojo order that avoids the worst of that jump.

4. PortSwigger Web Security Academy: Free Web Hacking

Made by the company behind Burp Suite, the Web Security Academy has 31 topics and hundreds of labs graded Apprentice, Practitioner and Expert, each with a written explanation. If your goal is web pentesting or bug bounty, this is better web content than most paid platforms, and it costs nothing.

• Best for: anyone heading toward web application testing.
• Price: free. Only Burp Suite Professional and the optional BSCP exam cost money.
• Trade-off: web only, and you install Burp Suite Community Edition on your own machine. Do every Apprentice lab in a few core topics before you touch anything else.

5. picoCTF: Free CTF Practice and a Real Competition

picoCTF is Carnegie Mellon University's free CTF program. Its practice library (picoGym) covers general skills, cryptography, web, forensics and reverse engineering, and picoCTF has long offered a browser-based webshell with common tools pre-installed, so you can solve many challenges without installing anything. Since May 2026 the learning platform lives inside CMU's CyLab Security Academy, and old picoCTF accounts still work.

• Best for: students and anyone who wants short, satisfying puzzles.
• Price: free.
• Competition: in recent years the annual picoCTF competition has run in March. The 2027 dates were not announced as of November 2026.

6. OverTheWire: The Linux Skills TryHackMe Assumes

OverTheWire has no lessons, no progress bar and no account. You SSH into a server, find the password for the next level, and log in again. Bandit, its first game, is the best free way to stop being scared of the terminal, and that fear is behind a lot of the "stuck" moments on TryHackMe.

• Best for: anyone who copies commands from TryHackMe without understanding them.
• Price: free.
• Trade-off: a spartan interface, and you will want a terminal and a notes file open at all times.

7. Root-Me: Hundreds of Free Challenges

Root-Me is run by a French non-profit association and is available in six languages, including English and French. In October 2026 it listed 608 challenges and 178 virtual environments across web, networking, cryptanalysis, forensics, programming and reversing. After each flag you can read other players' solutions, which is how you learn the three other ways to solve the same thing.

• Best for: learners who enjoy grinding many small, focused challenges.
• Price: free for individuals.
• Trade-off: very little teaching. Run scanners gently, too: the firewall bans you for five minutes if you hammer it.

8. KC7: The Free Alternative for SOC Learners

Many people take TryHackMe's SOC Level 1 path and then look for something cheaper to keep going. KC7 is a free, nonprofit detective game: you play an analyst investigating a fictional intrusion by querying logs with KQL in Azure Data Explorer, the same query language used in Microsoft Sentinel. The beginner case "A Rap Beef" takes about 50 minutes.

• Best for: future SOC analysts and anyone who enjoys investigating more than exploiting.
• Price: free.
• Other blue team options: Blue Team Labs Online gives free accounts every downloadable challenge, and CyberDefenders has free labs. LetsDefend is less attractive now: since Hack The Box bought it, new content moved to HTB from October 15, 2026. Our KC7 guide covers the KQL you need for a first case.

9. Live CTF Competitions: When You Want a Scoreboard

The one thing no practice platform gives you is a live event: a clock, a scoreboard, and a team chat that goes quiet at 3 a.m. while someone stares at a binary. CTFtime lists upcoming competitions from all over the world, most of them free and online. Look for events tagged as beginner-friendly or run by universities, and enter with a team, even a team of two.

• Best for: anyone who finished a few TryHackMe paths and wants to measure themselves.
• Price: mostly free. Student leagues such as the National Cyber League charge a fee.
• First step: our guide to entering your first CTF competition explains formats, team rules and the events worth a beginner's first weekend.

What Is the Best Free Alternative to TryHackMe?

The best free alternative to TryHackMe is pwn.college if you want a guided course in the browser, PortSwigger Web Security Academy if you want web hacking, and KC7 if you want SOC skills. picoCTF, OverTheWire and Root-Me add free volume, and HackerDNA's free tier keeps the guided, browser-based format without a daily AttackBox limit.

A zero-budget month that actually works, for someone who finished TryHackMe's free rooms:

1. Week 1: OverTheWire Bandit, levels 0 to 15. Write down every new command.
2. Week 2: picoCTF General Skills and the easiest Web and Forensics challenges.
3. Week 3: PortSwigger Apprentice labs for SQL injection, XSS and access control.
4. Week 4: one free HackerDNA lab every other day, plus the Daily Hack, then sign up for a beginner CTF on CTFtime.

How to Choose the Right TryHackMe Alternative

Start from the reason you are leaving, then pick one main platform and one free supplement.

"The AttackBox hour keeps running out"

• Main: HackerDNA or pwn.college, both fully in the browser
• Supplement: picoCTF's webshell for quick puzzles

"I cannot justify Premium or MAX right now"

• Main: pwn.college or Root-Me
• Supplement: PortSwigger for web, KC7 for blue team

"The rooms feel too guided"

• Main: Hack The Box Starting Point, then active machines
• Supplement: HackerDNA challenges, which give you a target and a goal but no step-by-step tasks

"I want to compete"

• Main: a beginner event from CTFtime, or picoCTF in March
• Supplement: old challenges from past events to learn each category's patterns

Keeping your TryHackMe account is fine too. Plenty of people keep it for one specific path and do their volume elsewhere. If Hack The Box is also on your list, our roundup of Hack The Box alternatives covers the more advanced end, including OffSec Proving Grounds and VulnHub.