Studying for the GRE doesn’t have to be expensive. There are plenty of free GRE study materials out there, and several of them come directly from the test makers themselves. The trick is knowing which ones are worth your time and how to combine them into a complete prep plan.
This is our curated list of the best free GRE resources in 2026: what to use, where to find each one, and how the pieces fit together.
It is possible to prep for the GRE for free and still see real score gains. To do it right, you need access to four things:
One quick currency note before we dive in. The GRE was substantially shortened in September 2023, and the current test is about 1 hour and 58 minutes total: 5 sections, 54 scored questions plus 1 essay, no scheduled breaks, no unscored experimental section. Any resource that describes a 3-hour-45-minute exam or a separate Argument essay is out of date.
Here are the five free GRE resources we recommend, ordered by how we’d actually reach for them. We picked them on three criteria: genuinely free at point of use (not paywall bait), substantive enough to move your prep forward, and either officially produced by ETS or built by an established test prep source.
Magoosh offers three free GRE resources that work together: a full-length practice test, a vocabulary flashcards app with 1,000+ words, and a 1-week trial of the full course (200+ video lessons, ETS-licensed practice questions, AI tutor, and AI essay grader).
Free, full-length Magoosh GRE practice test . Take the full test or just the Verbal or Quant section as a faster checkpoint. You get a detailed score analysis that pinpoints the specific question types and topics where you have the most room to improve, plus answer explanations for every question.
Free Magoosh GRE Vocabulary Flashcards . More than 1,000 of the most common GRE vocab words, free as an iOS or Android app or in your browser. The cards are organized into difficulty tiers from “basic” to “advanced,” so you start where you actually are. Most students see real vocab gains within a few weeks of daily 10-15 minute sessions, and the app makes it easy to review on the bus or in line at the coffee shop.
Free 1-week trial of Magoosh GRE . Full access to the premium course for seven days. That includes 200+ video lessons covering every Verbal and Quant concept on the test, the only prep course with official ETS-licensed practice questions, an AI tutor that walks you through each question step by step, and an AI essay grader that scores your AWA practice. Students who decide to continue past the trial get a 5-point score-improvement guarantee.
The free practice test alone gives you a credible diagnostic. The flashcards alone solve most of the vocab problem on their own. Combine them with the trial and you can complete a substantial chunk of GRE prep at zero cost.
Pro tip: Take the free Magoosh practice test before you start the 1-week trial. That way, by the time the trial clock starts, you already know which lessons and question types to prioritize, and you get the most out of all seven days.
POWERPREP is the official practice software from ETS, the people who actually write the GRE. ETS offers three tiers, two of which are free:
The free POWERPREP tests are the closest thing to the real exam you’ll find anywhere, since they’re built by the same people who write the actual questions. Take POWERPREP 1 first to get comfortable with the on-screen calculator , the flag-and-review feature, and the section-by-section pacing. Then save POWERPREP 2 as a timed diagnostic before test day.
Pro tip: Both POWERPREP tests use a fixed pool of questions. If you take POWERPREP 2 too early in your prep, you lose your most realistic diagnostic. Plan to take it within two weeks of your real test date.
The Manhattan Prep free GRE practice test is a second full-length option from a well-regarded test prep company. You need to create an account, but the test itself is free. The account also includes flashcards, a mobile study app, and study plan guides.
Having two practice tests from different sources is genuinely useful. Your score on each is unlikely to be identical, and seeing where the gaps line up across two different test makers tells you more about your real readiness than any single test would.
Khan Academy is a free educational platform with thorough video lessons across math, science, and other subjects. There isn’t a dedicated GRE prep track, but ETS itself maintains a topic-by-topic mapping from the official GRE Math Review to the relevant Khan Academy sections.
The ETS mapping covers all four GRE math content areas: Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, and Data Analysis. If you’ve forgotten how to handle ratios, exponent rules, coordinate geometry, or probability, the ETS page tells you exactly which Khan videos to watch.
One important note: the ETS-Khan partnership is for Quantitative Reasoning only . There is no official Khan resource for GRE Verbal. For Verbal, you’ll get more out of practice questions and reading challenging material than out of chasing video lessons.
Pro tip: Don’t try to watch every Khan video. Take POWERPREP 1 first to identify which math topics you’re weak on, then pull up just those sections from the ETS mapping.
The ETS Issue Essay Topic Pool is the entire pool of prompts from which your Analytical Writing essay will be drawn. The prompt you see on test day will come from this list.
Since the September 2023 format change, the GRE’s Analytical Writing measure consists of a single Issue task; the old Argument task was removed. That makes this pool genuinely complete: every essay prompt you could possibly see on test day is in there.
Don’t try to memorize answers. Do skim a wide sample to get comfortable with the kinds of statements you’ll be asked to take a position on. For specific drafting strategies and graded student responses at each score band, see our guide to the GRE Issue Essay .
These five resources cover the essentials. Here are a few more worth bookmarking:
The number of free GRE resources can feel overwhelming. Where to start depends on where you are:
The free Magoosh practice test, flashcards, and 1-week trial together can carry you a long way before you spend a dollar. If you want to continue past the trial with structured video lessons, official ETS-licensed practice questions, and a 5-point score-improvement guarantee, that’s what the full Magoosh GRE course is built for.
Rachel has helped students around the world prepare for various standardized tests, including the SAT, ACT, TOEFL, GRE, and GMAT, and she is one of the authors of our Magoosh ACT Prep Book . Rachel has a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature from Brown University, an MA in Cinematography from the Université de Paris VII, and a Ph.D. in Film Studies from University College London.