Save My Exams Alternatives: 7 Free and Cheaper Options

Quick answer

• Root Tutor is the strongest Save My Exams alternative if you want to be taught and marked, not just given a library: it builds practice papers in your exam's style and marks them like an examiner. Free to use, no card needed.
• Exam boards (AQA, Pearson Edexcel) publish real past papers and mark schemes on their own sites.
• Physics and Maths Tutor collects papers and topic questions for GCSE, IGCSE and A-level.
• Seneca, Cognito and BBC Bitesize cover learning content for free; Revision Village suits IB maths.

The best Save My Exams alternative for GCSE, A-level and IB students is Root Tutor. Instead of a library of notes with answers behind a paywall, Root teaches you step by step, builds practice papers in your exam's style from your own topics and exam board, and marks them like an examiner. Root is free to use, no card needed.

You open a Save My Exams question, try it, and the model answer you need to check yourself is locked. That is the moment most people search for an alternative. Here are seven, judged on what you actually lose when you stop paying.

Everything below about other tools comes from their public pages, checked on 11 October 2026. We have not paid for each product. Prices and features change, so check before you buy anything.

What you lose when you hit the Save My Exams paywall

The paywall mostly costs you answers, not questions. Save My Exams says on its join page that it offers "a lot of our resources for free", and that membership adds answers to all exam questions and past papers, all PDF downloads and solution videos (currently maths only). It also notes that payment is taken in full upfront and plans renew automatically.

So a good alternative has to replace three things:

1. Questions in your exam's style, matched to your board and specification.
2. A way to check your answers, ideally with feedback on where marks went.
3. Something to learn from when you don't understand a topic yet.

The second one matters most. Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) reviewed ten common study techniques and rated practice testing and distributed practice as high utility, while rereading and highlighting came out low. Questions you can't mark are only half a practice test.

For a full price breakdown and a head-to-head with one rival, see our Seneca vs Save My Exams comparison. This page is the wider list.

The 7 alternatives at a glance

1. Root Tutor: practice papers that get marked, plus a tutor that teaches

Root Tutor replaces the thing Save My Exams charges for, the feedback, and adds the teaching it doesn't do. Root is the all-in-one AI tutor for IB, GCSE & A-Level. It plans your study sessions, teaches the way you think, and gets you ready for every test.

Practice papers in your exam's style. Test prep makes practice papers from your topics, your teacher's material and your exam board, and the questions get harder as you go. Every answer is checked by a second solve before you see the paper.

Marked like an examiner. Your answers, including photos of your working, are marked against a mark scheme. Then you get your strengths, what needs work and what to study next, with a button to turn the questions you missed into flashcards.

A tutor when you're stuck. Tutor teaches step by step and won't just hand over the answer. Each unit has its own tutor that remembers your past sessions, your weak spots and your files, so the conversation about electrolysis picks up where you left it.

Built for the IB, supports UK courses. Root was built for the IB by an IB student and supports GCSE, IGCSE and A-level.

Cost: Root is free to use, no card needed, and new accounts get a 7-day free trial of everything.

2. Exam-board websites: the real papers, free

Exam boards publish their own past papers and mark schemes, but you mark them yourself. AQA has a past paper and mark scheme finder, and Pearson Edexcel says its past papers "are available free to teachers and students". OCR, WJEC and CCEA publish their own too.

The catch: Pearson says only teachers can see papers sat within the past 12 months, so the newest series may be locked. Mark schemes are also written for examiners, not students. Our guide on how to use past papers explains how to self-mark properly. For the IB, past papers usually come through your school, so ask your teacher or IB coordinator.

3. Physics and Maths Tutor: papers and topic questions in one place

Physics and Maths Tutor saves you hunting across board websites. Its past papers page lists GCSE, IGCSE and A-level papers and mark schemes from AQA, CAIE, Edexcel, OCR, Eduqas and WJEC, across sciences, maths, English, economics, geography, history, psychology and computer science. It also has revision notes and questions sorted by topic from past papers, plus solution banks for A-level maths.

What it lacks: no marking or feedback, no IB, and the pages carry adverts alongside its paid tuition and courses. Pages open without an account.

4. Seneca: free courses that quiz you as you read

Seneca is for learning a topic you haven't understood yet, not for exam papers. Its homepage says it "can be used for free an unlimited amount" and covers 95% of the exams taken in the UK, with levels from KS3 up to A-level and the IB Diploma.

Its help centre lists 600+ free exam-board courses, with Premium adding Smart Learning mode, unlimited Cram questions and, from the Exam Boost package up, AI-marked exam questions and mini mocks. So the exam-style written practice is the part you pay for.

5. Cognito: free videos, notes and quizzes

Cognito is a free way to relearn a topic before you test yourself on it. Its homepage lists video lessons, revision notes, flashcards, a bank of over 1.5 million quiz questions and exam-style questions with AI marking, for KS3, GCSE, A-level, IB and AP. Its FAQ says all its notes, videos, quizzes and flashcards are free, and a Pro subscription "removes usage limits".

What it lacks: it is a content library, so it won't plan your revision or remember which topics you keep getting wrong across subjects.

6. BBC Bitesize: free explanations up to GCSE

Bitesize is a free first stop for GCSE explanations. Its levels page runs from early years to GCSE in England, up to National 5 and Higher in Scotland, and includes IGCSE.

What it lacks: no A-level section in its levels list, no IB, and its short tests are much simpler than real exam questions.

7. Revision Village: IB maths, free plan with limits

Revision Village is an IB maths question bank, and most of it is paid. Its homepage covers Analysis and Approaches and Applications and Interpretation at SL and HL, with a question bank filtered by topic and difficulty, mark schemes, video solutions, past paper walkthroughs, mock exams and an AI helper called Newton AI. It also lists other IB subjects.

The catch: its pricing page says the free plan covers only a subset of topics in a course. The question bank, practice exams, past papers and Newton AI are part of Gold, sold as a one-off payment from $249, as listed on 11 October 2026.

How to replace Save My Exams for free: a worked week

Say you're in Year 11 sitting AQA GCSE Chemistry, and your free Save My Exams answers have run dry.

• Monday: relearn bonding with a Cognito video or a Seneca section. 25 minutes.
• Wednesday: do the bonding questions from a past AQA paper, then mark them with the AQA mark scheme.
• Saturday: sit one full AQA paper to time and mark it.
• Sunday: list every question where you dropped marks and go back to those topics only.

That costs nothing and it works. Roediger and Karpicke (2006) found that students who tested themselves on a passage remembered far more a week later than students who reread it, even though the rereaders felt more confident. Our guide to active recall explains why the effort is the point.

The hard part is the marking. Mark schemes are written in examiner shorthand, such as "ecf" (error carried forward) and lists of answers to accept or reject, and you have to decide whether your answer counts, then work out which topics your lost marks point to, across every subject, every week. Root is an AI tutor and study system that keeps every class, topic, note and file in one place and teaches step by step. Its Test prep mode makes practice papers in your exam's style from your topics and exam board, marks your answers like an examiner against a mark scheme, and tells you what to study next, and Revision mode runs a quick check-up that shows which topics are remembered, shaky or not yet learned. Here is everything Root does, in one page, and if you want to try one paper tonight, you can use it free, no card needed.

Which Save My Exams alternative should you choose?

Most students need one tool that marks and teaches, plus the real papers from their board. Before paying for anything, check whether your school already gives you a login.

For more free options, see our best free revision websites in the UK, and for IB students, our best IB study resources.