CPA Review For Free – Can You Pass With This Alone?

CPA Review For Free is a genuinely free option for CPA exam review.  Unless you purchase a printed version you spend nothing to join the online community and use the study materials provided.  Given the money you’ve already invested in education and registration fees, free review is very appealing.


How good can it be if there’s no charge?

Created by three experts with years of experience teaching CPA review courses, the questions and simulations provided are actually quite difficult and extensive.  

Still not sure if you can trust this material exclusively to prepare you for the exam?  Let’s find out.

Quality Material – As Far As It Goes

There are roughly 2,000 practice questions available on the CPA Review For Free site.  The site is fairly easy to navigate, with questions appearing after you click the link on each subtopic.  The questions are challenging, although not former exam questions.

In fact, former users comment that the questions are more difficult than the actual exam.

You can group practice questions by keyword.  This is a great feature, allowing you to focus in on topics that you are especially concerned with and evaluate your progress.  Simply type in a keyword or phrase and the site will give you all the questions that apply to your topic.

Looking for guided study material?  Hoping for lectures or text to review?  There aren’t any, at least not for free.  This site provides practice questions and a community of your peers for blogging and forum posts.  

If you want simulation practice or study material you can purchase it from the site.  The costs are low.  You get what you pay for, though.  The materials are condensed and not anywhere near as extensive as other courses available.

Pros and Cons 

Former student feedback on this site is mixed.  Some students found the site very helpful, others did not.  We will summarize their feedback here.  It’s important to note, however, that we did not find anyone who used this site as their only review course prior to sitting the exam:

  • Practice Questions – The difficulty of the exam questions was a positive for some users and a negative for others.  The majority found their confidence was lower on exam day because they had used this site and scored so low. 
  • Format – The questions are not formatted identically to the CPA exam.  This is a drawback since part of preparing for the exam is developing a familiarity with the questions and a strategy for mastering them.
  • Diagnostic Report – There isn’t one.  You know which questions you answer incorrectly, but there is no report to help you redirect your study efforts.  There’s also no guided review of any kind.
  • Sub Topics – Difficult questions on a subtopic level were important to many students.  The site offers practice questions on sub topics that other review courses don’t spend much time on.  If you are struggling with an issue or topic, this extra practice can make the difference for you.

CPA Review For Free – Why Not?

In our opinion, CPA Review for Free is a good supplemental source for practice questions, especially on difficult subtopics such as the IT portion of BEC.  You can’t get too much practice, and free is definitely the right price. 

This is not a full course, though, and shouldn’t be considered one.  Without the foundational review material present in other courses you run the risk of not preparing adequately for the exam. 

Regardless of the price, there are a few reasons to avoid CPA Review For Free even for supplemental purposes.  If you struggle with test anxiety, you shouldn’t become a member of this community.  The difficulty of the questions and the non-exam formatting will only increase your discomfort on test day.  

Stick with practice tests formatted to the exam, like those offered by Wiley CPA Review, to supplement your efforts.