Free Resources to Prepare for the ACT® Test

You can prepare for the ACT® Test to a surprising extent for free. The hard part isn't finding free resources — it's knowing which ones are actually good and in what order to use them. This guide walks through the best free resources for self-studying the ACT® Test, and exactly how and when to use each.

Official Practice Tests

The ACT® does a good job releasing practice tests for students to use. These are made by the same company that creates the test, so the concepts and format are exactly what your student will see on test day. That makes them the single best free resource available — and the right place to start.

Practice tests are most useful for establishing a baseline. Once a student knows where they stand, targeted study of specific weak areas becomes possible. For a newcomer, an official test taken untimed first — to understand mistakes — then later under real timing is the most efficient way to begin.

The ACT® publishes a free official practice test (Preparing for the ACT®) as a downloadable PDF. Start there before reaching for any third-party material.

How to take a free online practice test and study from the results

Learning the Concepts

There's a lot of free ACT® material on the internet. Without a sense of what's actually on the test and which resources teach it well, students waste time searching and end up frustrated. Here are the sources I trust, and how I'd use each.

PrepScholar

PrepScholar has been around a while, and their free blog content is generally solid. A lot of it mirrors the content on my own site, so if reading the same idea explained a second way helps it click, they're worth a look.

Kaplan

Kaplan makes the official online test-prep products for the ACT®, so they're legitimate, though their books can be a little odd — I get into that in my Kaplan review. What's worth knowing here is that Kaplan offers a free trial, which can be a low-stakes way to test whether a structured course is the right move.

Magoosh

Magoosh is a solid online ACT® resource and offers a free full-length practice test. My recommendation: use this only after you've exhausted the free official practice tests above. More on the paid product in my Magoosh review.

The Princeton Review

The Princeton Review has the best test prep books after the official ones, and they offer a free practice test plus a range of free events worth checking if any are relevant to your student. I cover the company in detail in my Princeton Review review.

Alexander Charles Tutoring

My own site has everything a student needs to understand the content on the ACT® Test, and it's free. A lot of guides claim to be complete. This one is built off years of experience and a deliberate method: I read the ACT® Technical Manual to understand what's actually tested, then went through every practice test ACT®, Inc. has released to decode the gap between what they say they test and what they actually put in front of students.

The result teaches the tested material in the most efficient, straightforward way I know how. If you're going to self-study, start with my ultimate guide to self-studying.

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is the best free resource for learning fundamentals a student may have missed or never been taught. It's the foundation the rest of my material builds on. If your student struggles with several mid- to high-level concepts on the ACT® Test, they should self-study these topics to mastery first. Two specific starting points:

• English: grammar and sentence diagramming — the ACT® English Test is mechanical. A student first needs to recognize the grammatical subject of a sentence; every other rule stems from it. Work through Units 1–5 and Unit 8 (diagramming sentences).
• Math: Algebra basics — this whole course covers the fundamentals of algebra. A student who learns these concepts can handle many, if not most, of the questions on the ACT® Math Test.

Books From Your Local Library

Many of the best ACT® prep books are available free from your local library — no need to buy them. For which titles are actually worth your student's time, see my review of ACT® prep books.

Free resources can take a motivated student a long way. If at some point you want a straight read on whether your student's progress is on track — and what a focused plan would look like from here — that's what I help families with. Here's how I work with families.

→The Ultimate Guide to Self-Studying for the ACT®