Management Consulted vs Crafting Cases: Which Case Interview Prep Service Is Better?
Key Insights:
- Crafting Cases Sells Self-Paced Courses: The product line is video instruction and drills you work through alone, with no live coaching hours attached.
- Management Consulted Pairs Content With Coaches: Black Belt includes 10 hours of 1:1 coaching with former McKinsey, Bain, and BCG consultants alongside the case library.
- Stacked Course Costs Close The Gap: Buying every Crafting Cases course runs $1,208, which is more than half of Black Belt's price and still leaves you practicing without feedback.
Most candidates comparing Management Consulted and Crafting Cases are trying to answer one question. Do you need someone to teach you the method, or do you need someone to watch you use it? Both platforms are built by former consultants, and both take case structuring seriously. They just solve different halves of the problem.
At Management Consulted, we have coached 15,000+ candidates through consulting recruiting since 2008. That gives us a clear view of where self-study stops working and where it never worked in the first place. Here is an honest look at both options.
What Both Platforms Do Well
Crafting Cases and Management Consulted agree on the most important thing in case prep. Memorized consulting frameworks do not survive contact with a real interviewer. Both platforms teach you to build a structure from the problem in front of you rather than reaching for a template.
Both are also generous with free material. Crafting Cases gives away its Case Interview Fundamentals course, which seems to have good reviews. Management Consulted publishes a full Case Interview Guide, firm profiles, salary data, hundreds of free articles, a free case prep course, plus their premium Black Belt case prep program. You can learn a great deal from either without spending a dollar.
And both are built by people who sat in the interviewer's chair. That matters more than most candidates realize. Advice from someone who has only taken case interviews is fundamentally different from advice from someone who has scored them.
Where Crafting Cases Excels
The free course is the strongest free asset Crafting Cases offers, and it is genuinely good. It runs seven days, breaks case interviews into six building blocks, and pairs each concept with practice drills. If you have done a handful of cases and feel stuck, it will move you.
Crafting Cases also lets you buy narrowly. The paid courses are sold separately, so you can spend $70 on mental math without buying anything else. That is useful when you have diagnosed one specific weakness and want to fix only that.
The teaching itself is patient and detailed. Crafting Cases spends real time on why interviewers ask what they ask, not just what to say back. For a candidate who learns well from video and has the discipline to practice alone, that depth is worth a lot.
Where Management Consulted Excels
Nobody at Crafting Cases watches you case. That is the structural difference, and it is the one that decides outcomes. You can complete every course and still walk into a McKinsey first round having never been interrupted, redirected, or pressure-tested by someone who has done the interrupting professionally.
Black Belt includes 10 hours of 1:1 coaching with former McKinsey, Bain, and BCG consultants, plus 600+ practice cases, unlimited drills, and digital assessment prep for tools like McKinsey Solve and the BCG Online Case. It starts with a 30-minute onboarding call and a personalized roadmap, and most candidates finish in six to ten weeks. A full year of All Access Pass (all of their digital assets) is included.
Management Consulted also covers the parts of recruiting that happen before the case. Expert resume and cover letter editing, networking strategy, and application timing are all inside the program. Crafting Cases does not sell any of that, because it is a case-teaching business rather than a recruiting business.
The outcome gap is the reason candidates pay for coaching. Roughly 80% of Black Belt candidates land at least one offer, against an industry rate under 3%. Self-study alone does not produce that spread.
Management Consulted vs Crafting Cases At A Glance
| Management Consulted | Crafting Cases | |
| Price | Black Belt $2,250, or $350 per coaching hour | Free core course; paid courses $70 to $397, $1,208 for all five |
| Coaching staff | Former McKinsey, Bain, and BCG consultants | No live coaching offered |
| Case library | 600+ practice cases plus unlimited drills | Drills embedded inside each course |
| Digital resources | Assessment prep, courses, salary and firm data, job board, blog, YouTube channel | Video courses, blog, YouTube channel |
| Support model | 1:1 coaching, resume editing, recruiting strategy | Self-paced, no personalized feedback |
| Prep plan structure | Personalized roadmap, six to ten week program | Seven-day course, then self-directed |
Which One Fits Your Situation
Crafting Cases makes sense if you are early, cash-constrained, and have not yet built a base. Work through the free course, drill the two building blocks you are weakest on, and see how far that takes you.
Management Consulted makes sense if you're early have no base, and especially once you have interviews scheduled or a firm target you cannot afford to miss. That is the point where the limiting factor stops being knowledge and starts being execution under pressure. A coach who has interviewed candidates at MBB can tell you in ten minutes what six more solo cases will not.
Look at the math before you assume self-study is the cheaper path. Five Crafting Cases courses cost $1,208 and include zero minutes of feedback. Black Belt costs $2,250 and includes ten hours of it, plus the case library, assessment prep, and resume work. First-year consulting compensation runs $112,000 to $192,000, so the full program is one to two percent of your first year. You can check the numbers in our Consulting Salaries Report.
The Verdict
Crafting Cases is a strong teacher and a weak training partner. It will show you how a consultant structures a problem, and it will do it well. What it cannot do is tell you whether you are actually doing it, because nobody is listening.
If you want a complete system with a coach attached, that is what Black Belt is built for. Start with the Black Belt program and get on a call with someone who has scored these interviews for a living. The candidates who land offers are rarely the ones who studied the most. They are the ones who got corrected the fastest, and implemented the expert coaching.