What's free here, and what a paid plan adds
240 practice questions are free and need no card. A paid plan unlocks the whole bank of 3,642 real KS2 questions, every past paper from 2016 to 2025, the full mock tests, and the detailed progress report for grown-ups.
What you get without paying anything
240 real KS2 questions across all four subjects — arithmetic, reasoning, grammar and punctuation, and reading. Every question is marked instantly against the official mark scheme.
Short answers are checked against the mark scheme automatically. Written answers — the reading inference questions, the "explain how you know" ones — are read by AI applying the same mark scheme, with a one-line explanation of what earned or lost the mark. Either way you can change the mark if you disagree, and on a 3-mark inference question you sometimes should.
A free account keeps its progress. Scores save to the account rather than the device, so a child can practise on a tablet and pick up on a laptop, and the grown-ups' dashboard still shows their history.
That dashboard is free too, in its standard form: total tests, average and best score, progress over time, score by subject, strongest topics, weakest topics, and a full record of every test with an export to CSV.
No card is needed to start, and there is no trial that quietly turns into a subscription.
What a paid plan unlocks
- All 3,642 questions rather than 240 — the full bank, across every subject.
- Every past paper from 2016 to 2025, sat either timed at real paper length with automatic submission, or untimed with instant marking after each question.
- Full mock tests, always timed, with no feedback until the end — the closest thing to the real thing.
- The detailed report on the grown-ups' dashboard: whether scores are improving, how timed papers compare with untimed practice, past papers broken down by year, pace and whether rushing is costing marks, which topics are losing the most marks in absolute terms rather than percentages, and the weekly practice habit.
What it costs
£5.99 a month, or £59.90 a year — the yearly plan works out at £4.99 a month, so two months are effectively free.
One account covers one child. Cancelling takes two clicks from the grown-ups' dashboard and can be done at any time; access continues to the end of the period already paid for.
Card details are handled entirely by Stripe on their own hosted pages. No card number is ever typed into this site, and none is stored here.
Which is right for you
The free 240 questions are enough to find out whether your child will actually use it. That is a real question and worth answering before spending anything — plenty of well-intentioned subscriptions go unused.
The paid plan earns its keep in one specific situation: when you want past papers under real timing, and you want to know where the marks are going rather than just what the score was.
If you only want a handful of arithmetic questions a few times a week, the free tier will genuinely do. Official past papers are also published free by the Department for Education, as PDFs you mark yourself — that is a legitimate alternative, and the honest difference here is the instant marking and the analysis, not access to the papers themselves.
Frequently asked questions
Is SATs Practice Arena free?
240 KS2 practice questions are free with no card required, along with the standard progress dashboard. The full bank of 3,642 questions, past papers and mock tests need a paid plan.
How are written answers marked?
Short answers are checked against the official mark scheme automatically. Written answers, such as reading inference questions, are marked by AI applying the same mark scheme, with a short explanation of what earned or lost the mark. The mark can always be overridden.
How much does SATs Practice Arena cost?
£5.99 a month or £59.90 a year. The yearly plan works out at £4.99 a month. One account covers one child.
Can I cancel a SATs Practice Arena subscription?
Yes, at any time, in two clicks from the grown-ups' dashboard. Access continues until the end of the period you have already paid for.
Are KS2 SATs past papers available free elsewhere?
Yes. Official past papers are published free as PDFs by the Department for Education on gov.uk. A paid plan here adds instant marking against the mark scheme and analysis of where marks are being lost.