Blind 75 vs NeetCode 150 vs Striver SDE Sheet: Which One Should You Follow?

Every week someone asks which DSA sheet to follow, and every answer online is either "NeetCode is the best" or "Striver is the best" without saying what each one actually contains. This page compares the three lists on the things that decide your outcome: which patterns each one covers, what it leaves out, how long it really takes alongside a job, and which kind of candidate it suits. Then it gives one combined plan so you stop sheet-hopping.

A note on numbers: problem counts and sections below are as these lists are commonly published. Their authors update them (NeetCode added a 250 list; Striver maintains several sheets), so check the current version on the official sites before you start.

Quick Verdict: Which DSA Sheet Should You Pick?

What Each Sheet Actually Is

Blind 75

A list of 75 LeetCode problems posted on the Blind forum in 2018 by an engineer then at Facebook (Yangshun Tay, who later built the Tech Interview Handbook and the configurable Grind 75 list). It was designed for people with a job who wanted the highest-yield problems in the least time. Problems are grouped into broad buckets: array, binary, dynamic programming, graph, interval, linked list, matrix, string, tree and heap.

A few Blind 75 problems are LeetCode Premium (for example Alien Dictionary, Graph Valid Tree, Meeting Rooms, Encode and Decode Strings, Number of Connected Components). They are available free on LintCode or on neetcode.io's practice pages.

NeetCode 150

Created by NeetCode (Navdeep Singh, ex-Google) as Blind 75 plus 75 more problems, reorganised into a roadmap of about 18 pattern-based sections: Arrays and Hashing, Two Pointers, Sliding Window, Stack, Binary Search, Linked List, Trees, Tries, Heap, Backtracking, Graphs, Advanced Graphs, 1-D DP, 2-D DP, Greedy, Intervals, Math and Geometry, and Bit Manipulation. Every problem has a free video explanation, which is its biggest practical advantage. The site also has a longer NeetCode 250 list for people who finish early.

Striver SDE Sheet

Built by Raj Vikramaditya (Striver, of takeUforward) and aimed squarely at Indian SDE interviews. It is organised into roughly 27 to 30 "days", each a topic (arrays, linked lists, greedy, recursion, binary search, heaps, stacks and queues, strings, trees, graphs, DP, tries), with around 180 to 190 problems in total. It mixes LeetCode problems with classic problems hosted on GeeksforGeeks and Coding Ninjas, and every problem links to a video and article. Striver also maintains the much longer A2Z DSA sheet (450+ problems, beginner to advanced) and a short last-minute revision sheet.

Topic Coverage Compared, Pattern by Pattern

Raw counts mislead. What matters is whether each interview pattern gets enough reps that you can recognise it in an unseen problem. Here is how the three compare by pattern, rated as None / Thin / Good / Strong based on the problems each list contains.

Two things jump out. First, NeetCode 150 strictly contains Blind 75, so the comparison is really NeetCode 150 vs Striver SDE. Second, those two have complementary strengths: NeetCode is stronger on modern LeetCode patterns (sliding window, monotonic stack, advanced graph problems, hard 2-D DP), while Striver is stronger on classic textbook problems (greedy scheduling, binary search on answer, Morris traversal) and implementation problems.

What Each Sheet Misses (and Where to Fill the Gaps)

Blind 75 gaps

• Monotonic stack. No Daily Temperatures, no histogram. These are common in Amazon and Flipkart rounds. Fill from the monotonic stack guide.
• Weighted graphs. No Dijkstra, no MST, essentially no union-find beyond premium problems.
• Binary search on answer. Koko Eating Bananas, Capacity to Ship Packages, Split Array Largest Sum are absent. See binary search on answer.
• Backtracking breadth. Only Combination Sum and Word Search.
• Design problems. No LRU cache, which is one of the most asked problems in India.

NeetCode 150 gaps

• Classic greedy scheduling. N meetings in one room, minimum platforms, job sequencing, fractional knapsack. These are interview staples in Indian companies and OAs.
• Binary search on answer depth. Has Koko and a few others, but not book allocation / aggressive cows style problems.
• Some tree classics. Views of a binary tree, boundary traversal, Morris traversal, flattening.
• LFU cache and stack/queue implementation questions.
• Segment trees and Fenwick trees (also missing from Striver SDE). Rare in typical SDE rounds but appear in some OAs; see segment and Fenwick trees if you target those.

Striver SDE Sheet gaps

• Sliding window variety. Fewer modern variable-window problems like Minimum Window Substring or Longest Repeating Character Replacement than NeetCode.
• Harder 2-D DP. Regular expression matching, burst balloons, distinct subsequences, interleaving string are more represented in NeetCode.
• Some graph problem shapes like Word Ladder, Reconstruct Itinerary and Swim in Rising Water.
• Bit manipulation. Lighter than the other two.
• Intervals. Merge Intervals is there; Insert Interval, Non-overlapping Intervals and Meeting Rooms II style problems are thinner.

How Long Each Sheet Really Takes

Online claims like "finish Blind 75 in a week" assume you already know every pattern. Here is a more honest estimate, assuming you attempt each problem yourself first, read a solution only after a time box, and re-solve the ones you missed. These are planning estimates, not measured data; your speed depends on your starting level.

If those numbers feel slow, notice where the time goes: about 30 to 40 minutes of a genuine attempt, 15 minutes understanding the solution, 10 to 15 minutes writing it cleanly yourself, plus a later re-solve. Skipping the attempt makes the list go three times faster and teaches you a third as much. The guide to preparing while working full time has weekly schedules that fit around a 9-hour job.

Speeding up without cheating yourself

• Skip what you can do in 10 minutes. If you solve Two Sum, Valid Anagram or Reverse Linked List instantly, mark it done and move on.
• Batch by pattern. Five sliding-window problems in a row is faster than five random problems, because the template stays loaded.
• Write code in one language only. Switching languages per problem slows you down; pick one using Java vs Python vs C++ for DSA.

Who Each Sheet Fits Best

If you are switching from a service company, the honest answer is that interview loops at Amazon, Flipkart, PhonePe, Razorpay or Atlassian draw on both styles. That is why the combined plan below uses NeetCode 150 as the spine and borrows Striver's classics.

The Combined 12-Week Plan (About 200 Problems, No Duplicates)

This plan uses NeetCode 150 as the backbone and adds roughly 45 to 50 Striver SDE problems that fill NeetCode's gaps. It assumes around 12 to 14 hours a week. Students can compress it to 6 to 7 weeks.

From week 8 onward, add one unseen timed problem twice a week (LeetCode weekly contest problems 2 and 3 work well) and at least one mock interview every two weeks. The 30-day plan is a compressed version of this if your interview is already scheduled.

How to Actually Use a DSA Sheet (Method Beats List)

Two candidates can finish the same sheet and get completely different results. The difference is almost always process. Here is the method I recommend to everyone in mentoring sessions.

1. Time-box the attempt. Easy: 15 minutes. Medium: 30 to 35 minutes. Hard: 45 minutes. If you have no working idea by then, read only the first hint or the approach summary, not the code, and try again for 10 minutes.
2. Write the pattern, not just "done". In your tracker, log the pattern name and the one-line key insight, for example "Car Fleet: sort by position, monotonic stack of arrival times".
3. Re-write from scratch. After reading a solution, close it and code it yourself. Typing along while watching a video does not count.
4. Re-solve on a schedule. Mark each problem Green (solved alone), Yellow (needed a hint) or Red (needed the solution). Re-solve Yellow after 7 days and Red after 3, 7 and 21 days.
5. Say it out loud once a week. Pick three problems and explain them as if in an interview: clarify, brute force, optimise, code, test. This catches gaps that silent solving hides.

What Interviewers Think About These Sheets

Interviewers know these lists as well as you do. Many deliberately avoid exact sheet problems, or ask a known problem with a twist: Two Sum where the input is a stream, LRU cache with a TTL, Number of Islands where cells are added one by one (which turns it into union-find). A candidate who memorised the original solution often stalls at the twist; one who understood the pattern adapts.

Practical implications:

• If you recognise a problem, say so. "I have seen a similar problem" is fine and honest. Then still walk through the reasoning; interviewers grade the process, and many will switch to a variant anyway.
• Expect follow-ups beyond the sheet solution. Complexity proofs, memory limits, what changes if input does not fit in memory, how you would test it.
• Company-tagged lists complement sheets. In the last two to three weeks before a specific company, add their recently reported problems; company guides such as Amazon or Google interview prep list the commonly reported focus areas.

Google and some high-bar teams lean toward unfamiliar problems, where list practice is necessary but not sufficient. Amazon, Microsoft India and many Indian product companies more often ask problems close to the well-known pool, where a good sheet gives a larger direct payoff. Treat these as tendencies, not rules, and confirm the format with your recruiter.

Mistakes to Avoid With DSA Sheets

• Sheet-hopping. Doing 40 Blind problems, switching to Striver, then starting NeetCode. You end up with three half-done lists and weak patterns everywhere. Commit to one backbone.
• Counting problems instead of patterns. "I did 300 problems" means little if 200 were easy array questions. Track pattern coverage.
• Never re-solving. Without re-solves, most of what you learned in week 2 is gone by week 10.
• Watching videos as a substitute for attempting. Videos are great after an honest attempt and terrible before one.
• Skipping hards entirely. You do not need many, but 10 to 15 well-understood hards (Trapping Rain Water, Median of Two Sorted Arrays, Merge K Lists, Word Ladder, Edit Distance) raise your ceiling on mediums.
• Ignoring the other rounds. Product-company loops also include system design for 2+ YOE and behavioural rounds. A perfect sheet run does not help if you fail those.
• Starting with the sheet when fundamentals are missing. If you cannot implement BFS or a hash-map frequency count from memory, the sheet will feel impossible. Spend two to three weeks on fundamentals first with the DSA roadmap.

The short version: NeetCode 150 as the spine, Striver's classics as patches, Blind 75 as the final revision set, and a disciplined re-solve schedule on top. That covers the patterns Indian product companies and FAANG India teams ask about without spending six months on overlapping lists.

Frequently Asked Questions

Pranjal Jain

Ex-Microsoft SDE · IIT Kanpur · Founder of Prepflix. Helps engineers crack startup and product company interviews across India.