Almost nothing official for PTE Academic is free. Pearson sells the Official Guide, sells the question banks, and sells the Scored Practice Tests — and unlike IELTS, there is no free full mock test built from real questions waiting for you on the official site.
That sounds like bad news and mostly is. But PTE has one thing no other exam in this series offers, and it is the reason to spend money here rather than elsewhere: the Scored Practice Tests are marked by the same automated engine that marks the real exam. For a machine-scored test, that is as close to a real result as practice can get. For IELTS, no amount of money buys you that, because a human examiner on the day is a different instrument from a human examiner in practice.
What official material exists, and what it costs
| Material | What it contains | Access | Free? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scored Practice Test | A full 2-hour test, real timing and format, authentic questions, marked by the official scoring engine. Three versions, each single-use. | 1 year from purchase | No — about $36 per test |
| Official Guide to PTE Academic | Test structure, strategies, practice tasks with walkthroughs, scoring information, 20 support videos and worksheets | 24 months | No |
| Official Guide Question Bank | 380 authentic questions across all task types, with tips and sample answers, retryable | 24 months | No, bundled with the Guide |
| PTE Academic Question Bank | 340 questions across all task types, with tips and sample answers. Not scored — you see right or wrong and compare with samples | 6 months | No |
| Official PTE AI Practice | AI-driven practice; sold in bundles with the Scored Practice Tests | Varies | No |
Bundles bring the per-item price down: a package with one Scored Practice Test plus AI Practice access runs around $60, and the full bundle of all three tests with the Guide and AI Practice is around $120. Prices vary by market, so treat these as the shape rather than a quote.
Note the two separate question banks. The 380-question bank comes with the Official Guide; the 340-question bank is sold on its own with six months' access. They are different products, and buying the Guide and then the standalone bank separately means paying twice for overlapping material.
Why the Scored Practice Test is the one to buy
PTE is scored entirely by machine. Your speaking is assessed by an algorithm listening for fluency, pronunciation and content; your writing by an algorithm reading for form, grammar, vocabulary and development. There is no examiner forming an impression.
That has an unusual consequence for practice: a machine-scored practice test is not an approximation of your result, it is a sample of the same measurement. The Scored Practice Test reports an overall score and the four skill scores on the same 10–90 scale as the real exam, generated by the same engine.
Pearson is careful to say the practice score is an indicator rather than a guarantee, and that is fair — question sets differ in difficulty and you will be less nervous at home. But the gap between a practice score and a real score is far narrower here than for any human-marked exam.
Two practical notes. Each test is single-use, and repurchasing the same version gives you the same questions, so buy a different version rather than retaking one. And with three versions available, the sensible pattern is one early as a baseline and one late as a rehearsal, keeping the third in reserve.
The enabling-skills trap
PTE does not just score the four skills. It also reports enabling skills — grammar, oral fluency, pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary and written discourse — and, more importantly, most PTE tasks are integrated: a single task contributes to more than one skill score.
The consequence catches people out. Weak pronunciation does not only damage your Speaking score; because speaking tasks feed into other scores, it can quietly drag down results that look unrelated. Candidates who see a low Reading score and spend a month on reading sometimes find the real cause was that "Read Aloud" — a speaking task — was feeding a poor signal into it.
This is exactly what a scored practice test is for. A question bank tells you whether an answer was right. Only a scored test shows you how the score actually distributes.
How PTE compares with the other boards
The pattern is consistent: what you pay for is not the questions, it is the score. TOPIK gives you a full paper and the answer key free because listening and reading mark themselves. IELTS gives you the questions free and charges for examiner judgement. PTE charges for nearly everything but is the only one whose practice marking is identical to the real thing.
Getting value without buying everything
Do not buy the question banks first. They are unscored, which means they tell you whether answers were right — something free material elsewhere also does. The scored test is the thing you cannot get any other way.
Use free general English practice for the input skills. Reading and listening at PTE level can be practised with any authentic English source. The specific PTE task formats need familiarisation, not endless repetition.
Practise speaking to a microphone, on a timer, with no listener. This is the single biggest adjustment for candidates coming from IELTS. There is no examiner nodding you along, the recording starts on a countdown, and a long pause ends the capture. Rehearsing that is free.
Then buy one Scored Practice Test, early enough that you still have time to act on the result. A scored test taken the week before your exam is an expensive way to confirm what you already suspected.
If the score says you are not ready
Our PTE Academic preparation guide covers the structured route, and the PTE score chart covers what the 10–90 scale means against CEFR levels and institutional requirements.
If you are still choosing between tests, IELTS vs TOEFL vs PTE vs Duolingo and which is easier, IELTS or PTE are the places to start — and note that for Canadian Express Entry it is PTE Core, not PTE Academic, that is accepted. For what score you need, see English test score requirements by country.
The same guide exists for the other boards: IELTS, TOPIK, JLPT, DELF, DELE and the Goethe-Zertifikat.
Frequently asked questions
Are there free official PTE practice tests?
Not full ones. Pearson's official material — the Guide, the question banks, the Scored Practice Tests — is paid. This is the opposite of IELTS, where full official mock tests are free.
How much is a PTE Scored Practice Test?
Around $36 for a single test, with bundles from roughly $60 to $120 depending on what is included. Prices vary by market.
Is the practice score the same as the real score?
Not guaranteed, but closer than for any human-marked exam, because the same automated engine marks both. Pearson describes it as an indicator of proficiency rather than a prediction.
How many Scored Practice Tests are there?
Three versions, each with a different question set, each single-use and valid for one year. Repurchasing the same version returns the same questions.
Should I buy the question bank or the scored test?
The scored test, if you are buying one thing. The question banks are unscored, and the score distribution is the information you cannot get anywhere else.
What are enabling skills?
Grammar, oral fluency, pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary and written discourse, reported alongside the four skill scores. Because PTE tasks are integrated, a weakness in one can depress scores that look unrelated to it.