When a student put his/her first step in CP (Competitive Programming), he interacts with different types of platforms, where he/she can solve problems, take part in Contests and many more. There are various platforms like HackerRank, InterviewBit, HackerEarth, Leetcode, Codechef, CodeForces and many others.
In the beginning stage, one should always start with basic platforms like HackerRank, and Hacker Earth. They give you a proper beginner setup from where you can grow properly. Once you are ready to enter into contests and solve problems, then platforms like LeetCode, Codechef and Codeforces play a crucial role. Now among them, which is the best platform for competitive programming?
No doubt, all these platforms are doing in their respective fields. Now here, "field" is only the thing that makes one better than the other. Taking an example between Codechef and CodeForces, we know that both are at the top-notch in terms of contests and problems. Besides, all these things somewhere Codeforces has an edge over Codechef in terms of Contests and for the competitive programmer, contest plays a crucial role. The frequency of contests in CodeForces is more than in Codechef. But again, if we have to suggest to beginners among these, then Codechef has an edge over CodeForce. The reason is the flexibility that Codechef provides you, CodeChef also focuses more on the learning of a student. This platform provides you various games for a student, like one-to-one contests in debugging, completing the code and many more. This somewhere creates fun in coding and makes it more interesting.
Thus, if a person is a beginner in Competitive Programming then it is suggested to prefer or give more time to CodeChef than CodeForces and can interchange later on when he becomes handy in solving problems and giving contests.