Why Practice Questions Come Before Everything Else
Many candidates begin their CFA preparation by reading. They work through the curriculum, take notes, and plan to start practice questions once they have covered enough material to feel ready. The problem with this approach is that it delays the most important diagnostic signal in your entire preparation: knowing whether you can answer exam-format questions.
Practice questions are the mechanism by which you develop the skill the exam actually tests: applying knowledge to scenarios. Reading develops the ability to recognise that you have encountered a concept before. Those two things feel similar in a study session and are very different on exam day.
The right time to start practice questions is week one, before you have covered all the material, and certainly before you feel ready. Early incorrect answers are informative. They show you the specific gaps between understanding a topic conceptually and being able to apply it correctly in the format the exam uses.
What Free CFA Practice Questions Are Available
CFA Institute official materials
Registration for the Level I exam includes access to the official learning ecosystem, which contains topic-by-topic practice questions and one full-length mock exam. The official materials are the most authoritative source of exam-format questions, since they are written by the same organisation that produces the actual exam.
The official mock exam (180 questions) is particularly valuable and should be saved for the final month of preparation as a full-length readiness assessment. Using it earlier wastes its diagnostic value.
PopCFA free Ethics access
PopCFA provides free access to the Level I Ethics question bank, covering all ten Ethics topics across the Standards of Professional Conduct. Ethics carries 15–20% of the Level I exam weight and is the best topic to begin with, both because of its weight and because Ethics questions are available without any subscription.
Start Level I Ethics practice questions here. No account is required to begin.
Third-party free trials
Most major CFA preparation providers (Kaplan Schweser, Bloomberg Exam Prep, AnalystPrep) offer free trial periods or free question banks of limited size. These typically cover 100–300 questions across the curriculum, which is useful for sampling the style of a provider's questions before subscribing.
Reddit and community resources
The r/CFA community regularly shares links to free practice materials, topic-specific question sets, and past discussions about difficult concepts. The quality varies considerably, but the community is active and knowledgeable about which resources are worth using.
How to Evaluate the Quality of Free Questions
Free questions vary in how closely they match the actual CFA exam. The most important quality markers are:
Question format. Exam-format questions present a scenario (a client situation, a financial analysis context, or a professional scenario) and ask you to apply a principle or perform a calculation. Questions that simply ask you to define a term or identify a formula are not exam-format questions and do not develop the application skill the exam tests.
Three-answer options. The Level I exam uses three choices, not four. Questions with four choices are either adapted from the old Level I format (pre-2021) or from a different exam entirely. This affects your practice, since the elimination strategy for three-choice questions differs from four.
Plausible distractors. At least one wrong answer should be a plausible choice for a candidate who understands the topic approximately but not precisely. If the wrong answers are obviously incorrect, the question is not testing at exam difficulty.
Detailed explanations. The most valuable part of any practice question is the explanation of why each answer is correct or incorrect. An explanation that simply states "A is correct because X" without explaining why B and C are wrong is less useful than one that addresses all three options. Understanding why wrong answers are wrong is what prevents you from making the same error again.
How Many Practice Questions Do You Need?
There is no precise answer, but most candidates who pass Level I on their first attempt have worked through 1,500–2,500 questions across their preparation period. That includes multiple passes through difficult topics, not 2,000 unique questions.
The goal is not to maximise the number of questions answered but to achieve consistent accuracy at a high enough level to pass. A candidate who has answered 1,000 questions and consistently scores above 70% on full mixed-topic sessions is better prepared than one who has answered 3,000 questions and still scores 55%.
Use your accuracy rate as the leading indicator. When you are consistently scoring 65–70% on mixed full-length practice under timed conditions, you are in a competitive range. Below 60%, more targeted practice on your weakest high-weight topics is required.
Using Free Questions Efficiently
Use them early and often. Start practice in week one. Do not wait until you have covered all the material for a topic before attempting questions on it. Attempting questions before you have finished reading is uncomfortable and diagnostic.
Review every explanation, including correct ones. Even when you answer correctly, reading the explanation confirms whether you answered for the right reason or lucked into the correct option. The explanation also reinforces the underlying concept, which builds retention.
Organise by topic, then mix. In your first pass through each topic, use topic-specific practice to build familiarity. Once you have covered all topics, switch to mixed practice that mirrors the exam's random topic distribution.
Track accuracy by topic area. A spreadsheet with columns for topic, questions answered, and accuracy rate gives you an honest view of where you stand. Candidates who do not track this often spend time on topics they are already comfortable with and underinvest in the high-weight topics where their accuracy is weakest.
When Free Questions Are Enough
For some candidates, the combination of CFA Institute official materials, PopCFA free Ethics access, and free trials from major providers is sufficient. This applies most clearly to candidates who:
- Have a strong finance background and are primarily using questions to confirm readiness rather than build knowledge
- Have limited preparation time and need to focus on the highest-weight topics only
- Are retakers who already have a sense of their weak areas and need targeted practice on specific topics
For first-time candidates with limited finance backgrounds, or for candidates preparing for high-weight analytically demanding topics like FSA, Fixed Income, and Equity, a broader question bank provides more comprehensive coverage across the full range of scenarios those topics include.
What Paid Resources Add
A paid question bank adds question volume (typically 3,000–5,000 questions across all topics), topic-level organisation that mirrors the curriculum structure, and question sets calibrated to exam difficulty across the full range of topics. For topics where free resources are thin (particularly FSA, Fixed Income, and Derivatives), a paid bank ensures you encounter the breadth of question types that appear in those areas.
PopCFA provides access to the full Level I and Level II question banks at USD 29.99 per month. The Level I Ethics unit is free without registration.
The decision between free and paid resources is not about quality signal (the best free resources are exam-format questions from credible providers) but about breadth of coverage. If free resources give you enough practice volume to reach your accuracy targets in your weakest topics, they are sufficient. If they do not, a paid bank closes the gap.
Starting Today
The most efficient starting point is free Ethics practice on the topic with the highest exam weight. Ethics practice questions are available immediately, cover all Standards of Professional Conduct topics at exam difficulty, and give you an immediate benchmark for where your Ethics knowledge stands relative to the exam.
From there, the official CFA Institute materials cover the remaining topics at no additional cost if you are registered. Supplement with paid access if your accuracy in high-weight topics (FSA, Fixed Income, Equity) is not reaching the readiness benchmarks as your exam date approaches.
Practice is the preparation. Everything else supports it.