Free GED Math Practice Test

What this test copies from the real one

Most free GED math tests online are a list of multiple-choice questions with the answers underneath. That is useful for checking whether you know a skill, but it is not what test day feels like. The real Mathematical Reasoning test does four things those lists do not, and all four are here.

Questions

About 46

Time

115 minutes

No calculator

First ~5 questions

Passing score

145 of 200

It comes in two parts, and the first one has no calculator

The test opens with a short section of about five questions where the calculator is not available. You get it back for the rest of the test. Students who have only ever practiced with a calculator in hand tend to lose marks in those first five minutes on arithmetic they know how to do, simply because they have not done it unaided in months. Our test locks the calculator for the same opening stretch.

It uses all five question formats

Alongside multiple choice, the real test asks you to type an answer into a box, choose from a drop-down inside a sentence, drag values into position, and click a spot on a coordinate grid. Each format has its own small traps: a fill-in-the-blank box will not accept a dollar sign in some fields, and a drag-and-drop item is marked wrong if any one tile is out of place. You will meet all five here.

The formula sheet is available on every question

The real test hands you a formula sheet, and it is worth knowing what is on it before you sit down. It has the area, perimeter, volume and surface-area formulas, slope, the quadratic formula, the Pythagorean theorem, simple interest and d = rt. It does not have compound interest, percent change, unit conversions or the distance-between-two-points formula. Students lose marks every year assuming those will be there.

The questions are new every time

A practice test you can retake only helps if the second attempt tests the same skill with different numbers. Ours builds each question from scratch when you press start: different values, different contexts, different answer choices. So retaking it tells you whether the skill stuck, which is what you need to know.

The five formats, and what each one punishes

Each format on this test has its own way of losing you a mark that has nothing to do with whether you can do the math. Knowing them in advance is close to free marks.

Practice tests that are multiple choice only leave four of those five untested. Ours uses all of them, which is why a score here can come out a little lower than on a multiple-choice-only site, and a lot closer to what you will meet on the day.

How to get the most out of it

Take it once, cold, before you study

Run the timer and take it before you revise anything. A score you are unhappy with is far more useful at the start than a comfortable one: it tells you which of the four score-report categories is costing you marks, and it stops you spending three weeks revising what you were already good at.

The breakdown at the end uses the same four categories as the real score report: quantitative problem solving with rational numbers, quantitative problem solving in measurement, algebraic problem solving with expressions and equations, and algebraic problem solving with graphs and functions. Your weakest one is where the next hour of study belongs.

Read the wrong answers as carefully as the right one

This is the part most people skip, and it is where the improvement lives. Each wrong option on a multiple-choice question here corresponds to a specific, nameable mistake: using the diameter where the formula wanted the radius, forgetting the one third in the cone formula, applying a percent in the wrong direction, subtracting coordinates in opposite orders when finding a slope.

Open an explanation and you will see what each wrong option represents. Find the one you picked. That sentence is usually worth more than the correct solution, because it names the habit to break rather than the answer you needed this time.

Getting a question wrong twice for the same reason is the expensive kind of mistake. Getting it wrong twice for different reasons means you are learning.

Then switch to topic sets before you take another full test

Full tests measure; short sets teach. Once you know your weak categories, work through ten-question sets on one skill at a time until the explanations stop telling you anything new. Come back for a second full test after that, with new questions, to check the improvement is real and not just familiarity.

Use the tools while you practice

Open the formula sheet even when you know the formula, so you learn where things sit on it. Use the on-screen calculator rather than your phone: the key layout is different, and test day is a bad time to discover that. Both sit in the toolbar on every question.

What your result does and does not tell you

At the end you get a raw score, a percentage, and an estimated band on the 100–200 scale the GED uses, where 145 passes.

That band is an estimate, and deliberately a range rather than a single number. GED Testing Service has never published the table that converts raw answers into scaled scores, so nobody outside the organization can tell you what you would score on the real test. A practice site showing an exact scaled score has invented it. Ours shows a band, says it is a band, and explains the reasoning. The full version of that argument is on our passing score page.

What the result is good for: tracking direction across several attempts, and finding weak categories. What it is not good for: deciding whether to book the real test off a single sitting.