Most AP prep is either free and shallow, or excellent and expensive

Free — nonprofit, no paid tier

A genuinely free nonprofit, and the best-known name in free online instruction: strong video teaching, exercise sets, and teacher dashboards with class rosters. We have deliberately left most rows blank — their AP-aligned coverage and tooling change over time and we have not audited it subject by subject, so we will not put marks in boxes we have not checked. What we did count, in August 2026, is the breadth: fifteen AP courses named in their library — Statistics, Calculus AB and BC, the new Precalculus, Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Science, Physics 1 and 2, both economics, World History, Art History, US Government and US History. Deliberately narrow rather than incomplete: there is no Psychology, no English, no Human Geography and no computer science, so a student taking those will find nothing here at all.

AP Classroom comes with an AP course at a participating school; the cost is the exam fee, which College Board resets annually

The official source, and nothing here replaces it: College Board defines every AP course, publishes released free-response questions, and provides AP Daily videos, Progress Checks, and official practice through AP Classroom at no extra cost to students in an AP course. Access runs through a teacher at a school that has completed the AP Course Audit, and official practice exams are released by that teacher rather than opened by the student — though a self-studying student can still sign in to My AP for AP Daily. The price shown is the exam fee, not a prep fee: for 2026 College Board publishes $99 per exam in the US, Canada, US territories, and DoDEA schools, reduced to $53 for students with demonstrated need, with $129 elsewhere and a $40 late-registration fee. Fees are reset annually — check the current year before you budget.

Free diagnostic, then $29/month or $79/year for students; a teacher plan at $129/year

The closest thing this market has to a direct analogue of what we do, and the one we watch hardest. The student plan is $29/month or $79/year and covers every subject they carry: study guides for every topic and unit, multiple choice including stimulus-based items, progress tracking, dozens of free-response prompts per unit, AI grading of your essays, official and generated cheatsheets, score calculators that predict by rubric point, key-term lists that export to Quizlet, and guided notes keyed to AMSCO textbooks. The $129/year teacher plan adds bulk grading of a whole class’s free response, quiz creation into Google Forms, PDF and Google Docs export, and printable free-response with scoring guidelines; a cheaper grading-only tier exists whose price we have not checked. Two honest notes: their full-length timed practice exams were, when we looked, limited to the AP History subjects with more promised, and student AI grading is one essay at a time while bulk grading sits on the teacher plan. Their widely-quoted grading-accuracy claim is their own measurement rather than an independent audit — ours is not audited either. On breadth they advertise all 38 AP subjects; we confirmed Seminar, Research, Italian and Japanese are among them but did not itemize the rest, so that figure stays out of the numeric column — it is their claim, not our count. The three Career Kickstart courses (Cybersecurity, Networking, Business with Personal Finance) are too new to be in that 38.

Free Basic tier; teacher Ultra is $24.99/month or $149.99/year (student tiers priced separately)

Positions itself as the free alternative to Quizlet, and the free Basic tier is genuinely generous: create your own notes and flashcards, free study modes, custom hints and multiple-choice options on cards, and browsing across millions of shared sets. On the teacher side, Ultra is $24.99/month or $149.99/year (billed as $12.49/month) and unlocks unlimited AI summaries and teacher tools, monitored AI chat activities for students, unlimited auto-graded assessments, unlimited chats with their Kai assistant, extra question types, and the ability to assign AP mock exams and practice — which is why the mock-exam row is marked partial rather than blank, though we have not confirmed those mocks are full-length and timed. Two things to keep in mind: the student-facing tiers are priced separately and we have not verified those, and much of the note and guide library is user-uploaded, so accuracy varies set to set rather than being guaranteed.

Paid per subject by package tier and access window; at 180 days a Study Guide is $49, a QBank $59, and a full Course $149, with 20% off three or more

Best known for the depth of its answer explanations — every multiple-choice and free-response item is worked step by step — alongside video lessons, study guides, flashcards, and performance analytics built to the College Board framework. You buy one subject at a time, and you pick both a package tier and how long you want it for: at a 180-day window a Study Guide runs $49, a question bank $59, and the full Course $149, and buying three or more subjects takes 20% off the total. Shorter windows are offered and cost less, so treat those figures as the 180-day rate rather than a floor. There is a separate school and district line with classroom, school, and district reporting, priced by quote. Two caveats worth carrying into a purchase: the catalog is a subset of the AP course list rather than all of it — fifteen subjects when we counted in August 2026, aimed squarely at the highest-enrollment exams — and per-subject buying adds up fast if you sit more than one or two exams.

Free adaptive tier; paid licenses by audience — but AP is a separately-sold “test prep” subject, so none of the headline prices is an AP price

A long-standing practice-question platform with a licensing structure worth understanding before you shop, because the sticker prices are not what they look like. There is a genuinely free forever tier, but it is adaptive Math and Grammar with state-standards alignment — no AP. Paid licenses are then sold by audience: $18 per student per year for schools, $15 per student per year for districts buying at least 1,000 seats with the per-seat price falling as volume rises, $750 per tutor for up to 10 students, and $300 per homeschool per year for up to 2 students. Here is the catch we would want flagged if we were buying: Albert separates “core” subjects from “test prep” subjects, and AP sits in test prep. The homeschool plan spells it out — it includes Core Biology but explicitly not AP Biology. So what AP access actually costs on Albert is a question their public pricing pages do not answer, and we have not found the answer. Ask them directly, and ask specifically about the AP subjects you need rather than about a plan. On breadth they are the strongest of the paid options: we counted twenty-nine AP subjects on their public pages in August 2026, covering thirty of our course ids since their single "AP Calculus" page serves both AB and BC. That makes Albert the provider that turns up as a genuine alternative in more subjects than any other paid name here.

Free — from the University of Colorado Boulder

Free, research-backed interactive science and math simulations out of the University of Colorado Boulder — the closest free analogue to our labs, and genuinely excellent at that one job. It is a simulation library rather than an AP program: no AP-aligned units, no question banks, no scoring.

Free tier plus a paid subscription

An enormous library of user-made flashcard sets, with spaced repetition as the core study mode. Two caveats we would want to know as a student: subscription pricing moves and we have not verified it here, and the content is user-generated, so accuracy varies set to set rather than being guaranteed.

Free to use with an in-app economy; whether there is a paid tier we have not checked

A flashcard app built like a game. Decks are user-made and shared publicly — the one we were shown is a 829-card Microbiology deck by another user — and around them sits the machinery you would recognize from Duolingo: a gem balance, counters for hearts and keys and other items, a per-deck leaderboard, profile avatars, and ten free Super Hearts for every friend you invite. Study is a button with a game controller on it. Notes, Lessons and Imports sit beside Cards, so it is not only flashcards. What we can tell you stops there, and the reason is worth stating: everything above is read off a screenshot of the running app rather than a page we loaded ourselves, so we can describe what is on the screen and nothing behind it. We do not know the price, whether the review scheduling is genuinely spaced repetition, or how accurate any given deck is — and as with every user-generated library, that last one varies deck to deck rather than being guaranteed. Not to be confused with ExploreLearning Gizmos, the science simulation library further down this page; the names collide and the products have nothing to do with each other.

Hourly, negotiated per tutor

The strongest option for individual feedback, and the one we refuse to price. Rates run from volunteer and peer tutoring through independent tutors to premium agency packages, and shift by subject, region, and season. A human reading your work and adjusting on the spot is something no software here matches — including us. Ask any tutor for their current rate in writing.

Per-course or per-package pricing, varies by provider

Group classes, spring review courses, and cram weekends from national and regional prep companies. List prices differ by brand, subject, hour count, and time of year, and are discounted often enough that any figure we printed would be wrong by the time you read it. Ask for the all-in price including materials, and ask how many students are in the room.

One-time purchase, per title and per edition

Still one of the best value-per-dollar options in AP prep, and the format is the honest limit: a book cannot run a simulation, read your essay, or keep a class roster. Practice tests are on paper, so you time and score them yourself. Cover prices change by edition and retailer, so we do not quote one — check the current listing for your subject.

Included with enrollment at a public school; the exam fee is separate

Your teacher is the best resource you have and you are already enrolled. Nearly every row is blank here for a real reason: course offerings, review sessions, lab equipment, and mock-exam practice vary enormously school to school, so the only honest answer is “ask yours”. Everything on this site is built to sit alongside that class, not to replace it.

Free — from the University of Cambridge

Free physics, chemistry, biology and maths problems from the University of Cambridge, and the best answer-checking on this list: questions are marked on symbolic algebra rather than multiple choice, with units and significant figures enforced and hints written by Cambridge staff and undergraduates. The catch is that it is not an AP resource — it targets UK GCSE and A-level, years 7 to 13, and nothing on it is written to a CED. Overlap is strong for AP Physics 1, 2 and C and fair for the maths courses; weaker for chemistry and weakest for biology. Formerly isaacphysics.org, which has redirected here since August 2025. Most rows below are blank because we have not verified them, not because the answer is no.

Paid subscription; a short free trial and an AP add-on are both reported

An AI-tutored practice-question platform, built for the digital SAT and ACT first with AP as a secondary line. Search surfaces its own AP pages for seven subjects — Biology, English Literature, World History, US History, Precalculus, Calculus AB and Calculus BC — so a student outside those is not served at all. Two things we want to be straight about: we could not load acely.com from our build environment, so everything here comes from search results and secondary reviews rather than first-hand checking; and several of those reviews state it practices multiple choice only, with no free-response. If that is right it matters for AP, where the FRQ is usually about half the score — but we have not confirmed it, so the feature rows below stay blank rather than claiming it.