Official SAT tests released by the College Board are the absolute gold standard for SAT practice questions. Each official practice test contains real questions given to actual students at previous administrations of the SAT.
In this article, I'll show you where to find all official SAT practice tests online. This comprehensive guide gives you access to more practice tests than any other guide out there. Most of these tests are free and are great practice to get started with your SAT prep. We'll also discuss how to use these practice tests to help you get the most improvement possible out of them.
I've divided the sources of SAT practice tests into a few categories based on what version of the SAT the tests follow. There are three basic versions:
All free tests are released publicly by the College Board and made available for download without copyright concerns.
Tests based on the current SAT are by far the best to use for SAT practice since they're exactly like the SAT. While you can still use old SAT practice tests, it's important to be aware of out-of-date question types, scoring systems, and sections.
Just like the new test, SAT practice exams are going digital, too.
In 2022, the College Board announced that the SAT would soon be administered only on a computer . The new digital format of the standardized exam began in March 2023 for international students and in March 2024 for U.S. students. Pencil-and-paper tests are now only available to students with testing accommodations .
If you’re going to take the SAT digitally, you’ll want to take digital practice tests that emulate the most current version of the exam. Here's our roundup of the most accurate simulations of the new digital SAT.
The closest you can get to taking the actual SAT is the free, full-length practice exams in Bluebook, College Board’s online testing platform. The six available practice tests provide you with a sneak peek of the interface, format, and scoring of the online test, so they’re a useful tool as you prepare for the digital format.
In addition to full-length exams, Bluebook also offers previews of individual questions from the actual SAT. Even these are useful as you’re trying out the digital interface and learning what kinds of math problems and reading prompts to expect.
To access the practice exams, download the free Bluebook Exams app. You’ll want to install the program on your laptop or tablet rather than on your phone so you can best approximate the experience of taking the digital SAT.
If you do not have a device at home and need to take practice tests and the actual SAT on a tablet or laptop provided by your school, you may need to ask permission before downloading Bluebook to a campus device to complete practice tests. Seek out your school’s official test administrator if you need support.
Since 2015, College Board has partnered with Khan Academy to provide SAT prep resources. These free resources include a course designed to familiarize you with the different skill sets tested on the digital SAT. For example, you can explore the different levels of SAT Math topics (e.g., problem-solving, algebra, and geometry) and Reading and Writing questions, from grammar and argument to connecting ideas or texts.
The course provides reading materials, video tutorials, and practice questions as well as lessons and test-taking strategies designed to help you better understand what to expect on the new digital SAT. Khan Academy’s Official Digital SAT Prep also offers diagnostic quizzes and a full-length test to prepare you for the online version of the test.
The College Board began offering digital versions of the PSAT in fall 2023. The digital PSAT is comparable to the digital SAT in terms of format. So paying attention to your performance on the PSAT is important when it comes to preparing for the SAT.
Khan Academy hosts digital PSAT practice tests as well, so if you’re trying to maximize your preparation, consider taking those sample exams and reviewing the lessons and explanations provided before moving on to the digital SAT practice tests.
The College Board suggests that if you’re planning to register for the digital SAT, you should not take paper-based practice tests to prepare unless you have testing accommodations for a paper-based test. Ultimately, you want to take practice tests in the exact same conditions and format in which you’ll take the real thing. If you’ll be taking the test digitally, then, you’ll want to practice with digital tests to get a feel for how it looks, how the software works, and how the new sections are set up.
If you do have testing accommodations to take the SAT on paper after March 2024, you should use the most recent printable practice tests that reflect the new format of the digital SAT for these same reasons—even though you won’t be using the digital software, your test will still be structured like the digital version.
Another exception for using paper practice tests would be if you don’t have easy access to a computer for practice tests. In that case, using these printable practice tests modeled from the new digital format is the next best thing. They won’t fully mimic the digital testing experience, but they are still excellent study resources for your test preparation.
If you work through all four of the available practice tests (available digitally or as printable versions) and are looking for even more practice, though, you can use previous versions of practice tests that were created before the switch to the digital SAT. Just keep in mind that these tests are based on a different version of the SAT, which was longer (three hours instead of just over two), had longer questions (e.g., longer reading comprehension passages), and was divided into three sections rather than the digital SAT’s two.
That said, if you’re just looking to get into test mode, drill specific topics, and get some extra practice, reviewing previous versions of the paper SAT can still be helpful. Stick with official tests from the College Board and Khan Academy because those are the gold standard when it comes to familiarizing yourself with how questions will be worded. We also suggest using practice tests only from the past five years so that the type, style, and wording of the questions will be closer to what you’ll see on the digital format.
Ignore any questions that you know will no longer show up . For example, the new digital SAT will no longer test your reading skills with passages from historical documents. They also won’t ask you to determine whether an idiomatic phrase is written correctly (e.g., whether it should say as a means through versus as a means of), and they’ve eliminated prompts that assess your ability to discern homophones and commonly confused words, such as affect and effect or waist and waste.
These are the only four official practice tests for the SAT currently offered after the switch to the digital SAT in 2023-2024. If you’re going to use paper-based practice tests to study, these are definitely the ones to start with.
These are the only eight official practice tests for the SAT offered between 2016 and 2023–2024, provided by the College Board itself. These are helpful tests to use when studying for the SAT.
** The College Board removed these two practice tests from their website, but you can still access them via the links we've provided.
The College Board does not recommend using practice tests older than five years . However, if you're just looking for extra questions to think and work through, the tests in this section follow the old 2400-point format of the SAT, with separate Reading, Math, and Writing sections. This test had its last administration in January 2016.
B e sure to note the major changes between the old and current SAT. Here's how you should be using these older practice tests:
Official SAT Practice Test 2013–14: Questions | Answers
Official SAT Practice Test 2012–13: Questions | Answers
Official SAT Practice Test 2007–08: Questions | Answers
Official SAT Practice Test 2004–05: Questions | Answers
All of the other years are repeats of these tests, including 2011-12, 2010-11, 2009-10, 2008-09, 2006-07, and 2005-06. You might find these on other forums or websites. Don't waste time taking these tests, as they're the same tests as the four above.
Before the redesigned SAT in 2016, the last time the SAT changed was in 2005. This was back when I took it and earned a perfect SAT score.
The following links are a hidden gold mine of old tests that few students know about, so by taking these tests, you'll have that much more of an edge over current students.
However, there are important caveats to know before taking these tests:
Be grateful you didn't need to do some of these old-format questions—analogies were the main reason that the SAT got a bad rap for forcing students to memorize vocab!
Official SAT Test 2004-05: Questions | Answers
Official SAT Test 2003-04: Questions | Answers
Official SAT Test 2002: Questions + Answers
Official SAT Test 2001: Questions + Answers
We've given you all official SAT practice tests above, but is there anything else you can use for quality SAT practice? Each of the following resources contains more official, quality SAT practice.
On top of full-length practice tests, the College Board website offers a decent number of sample SAT questions for the Reading and Writing and Math sections. I highly recommend using this resource for extra SAT practice.
In total, you'll get the following for each section:
Price: Free!
The College Board has partnered with Khan Academy to offer free and official online SAT prep to test takers. Khan Academy offers full-length tests as well as practice questions with answer explanations for both the paper and digital versions of the exams. All of these practice prompts are useful regardless of which format of the SAT you're planning to take.
Although the website doesn't offer a comprehensive prep program, it does offer a lot of extra, high-quality SAT practice questions not available elsewhere.
Khan Academy's best feature is its tutorial videos, which teach you step-by-step how to approach and solve specific SAT question types, from Math questions dealing with linear functions to Reading and Writing questions focused on parallel structure.
This 2023 edition of the official SAT prep book contains all four of the practice tests available online through the College Board, in addition to over 300 pages of additional instruction, guidance, and information about the test. You’ll also gain access to Bluebook, the College Board’s online software for taking the official practice tests for the digital SAT. (Just make sure you buy a new copy of the book, or make sure your used copy comes with an unused access code.)
The Official Digital SAT Study Guide is a great buy if you want all of the information about the new digital SAT in your hands (as opposed to on your screen). Packed with detailed descriptions of the two sections you’ll see on the SAT, sample questions and drills for each question type, explanations for each answer, and test-taking tips and strategies, you can’t go wrong with this prep resource.
There's an art to using official SAT tests effectively and getting the biggest improvement from your time investment. Here are five critical strategies to keep in mind when taking the tests:
Most students have issues with time pressure on the SAT. Adding just two minutes to a section's time limit can change your score by as many as hundreds of points. So don't deceive yourself about your abilities; the point of practice tests is to identify your weaknesses.
Here are the official time limits for each section as well as how much time you should (approximately) spend per question:
| Digital SAT Section | Time | Number of Questions | Time per Question |
| Reading and Writing | 64 minutes | 54 | 71 seconds |
| Math | 70 minutes | 44 | 95 seconds |
The SAT last two hours and 14 minutes. I've heard from hundreds of students how difficult it is to stay focused and avoid careless mistakes at the end of the test. Just like training for a marathon, you have to make sure you have enough endurance for the SAT—which is why it's so important to take each SAT practice test in one sitting.
If there's no possible way for you to take a practice test in one go, it's OK to split it up over a few days. Ideally, you'll split up the test in such a way that you're not stopping and starting midway through any module.
In the end, it's better to do some practice than none at all. Just make sure to time yourself on each section.
The point of taking practice tests isn't to just do a lot of questions—it's also to learn from your mistakes.
For every test, spend time reviewing the mistakes you made as well as every question you got right. If you don't know why you missed a question, don't just gloss over it! Doing this keeps you from being able to identify and attack your weaknesses. As a result, you'll end up making the same mistakes over and over again, ultimately hampering your score.
In short, prize study quality over quantity. I'd rather you take three practice tests with detailed review than six practice tests with no review.
I've found from experience with thousands of students that this number of tests gets you really comfortable with the SAT in all respects—timing, endurance, stress, etc. You can definitely take more tests if you want, but make sure to balance this with focused prep on your weaknesses so that you can ultimately make faster progress.
Some students can learn perfectly by themselves with practice tests—they'll see a mistake they made and instantly realize why they made that mistake and avoid it in the future. Most students, however, need additional help to pinpoint their weaknesses and teach them the key skills and strategies for doing well on the SAT .
Good options for extra support include tutors, prep programs, and classes. To do well on the SAT, you'll need to determine what kind of support works best for your particular learning style (as well as your budget). Our free guide can help you figure out what kind of support is right for you.
Want to get a super high SAT score? I scored a perfect SAT score, and I teach you what it takes to get a perfect score yourself.
Here are the best study guides for SAT Reading, SAT Writing, and SAT Math, available anywhere. I guarantee you that these guides will improve your score!
These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.
