Best Security+ Practice Exams in 2026: An Honest, Ranked Comparison
For CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 in 2026, the best practice exam depends on what you are short of. Boson ExSim-Max is the most exam-realistic: $99.00 for a one-year auto-renewing subscription, 3 exams, 270 questions. FigigExams is the best value: $39 once for lifetime access to 4 exams and 357 questions, with a complete 90-question exam free and no credit card. Professor Messer is the best free option, with a complete SY0-701 video course at no cost and a $119 Success Bundle.Prices and question counts verified 4 September 2026 by FigigExams. Boson figures read from boson.com product pages; FigigExams figures read from the live question banks.
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In this guide
How to judge a CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 practice exam (it is not question count)
Most "best Security+ practice exam" lists rank by question count, which misses the two things that actually decide SY0-701 outcomes: performance-based questions, and whether your feedback tells you what to fix. Security Operations alone is 28% of the exam, so a tool that reports one flat percentage is hiding where your marks went. Here is the rubric used below.
Performance-based questions
SY0-701 opens with PBQs and candidates routinely lose time there. A bank with no PBQ practice leaves you rehearsing the easy half of the exam.
Full-length, timed simulation
The real paper is up to 90 questions in 90 minutes with a 750/900 pass mark. Stamina and pacing are part of the test, so the practice has to be full length.
Explanation and exam tip on every item
An answer key tells you what. A good tool tells you why the other options fail, and leaves you one thing to remember on exam day.
Feedback weighted to the objectives
Security Operations is 28% of SY0-701 and Governance is 12%. A tool that treats every miss as equal will send you to revise the wrong domain.
Access model: lifetime or annual
Security+ preparation commonly runs two to four months, and the exam voucher is already $439. A practice licence that auto-renews is a real added cost.
Try before you buy
You should be able to sit a genuine full-length paper before paying anything. Anything less and you are buying a question bank sight unseen.
CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 practice exams compared at a glance
Every price below carries the date it was checked. Subscription products are marked as such, because a licence that expires mid-preparation is a cost most comparison tables hide. Verified 4 September 2026.
| Practice exam | Price (checked 4 September 2026) | Questions | Free full-length try | Concept-level coaching | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boson ExSim-Max for Security+ | $99.00 / year, auto-renews | 270 across 3 exams | No | No | Exam-day realism and difficulty |
| FigigExams Security+ | $39 once, lifetime | 357 across 4 exams | Yes | Yes | Value and concept-level feedback |
| Professor Messer | Free course; $119 bundle | 3 x 90-question exams in the bundle | Course free | No | Best free course, cheapest paid bundle |
| Dion Training (Udemy) | $89 list, often $15-30 | 540+ across 6 exams | No | No | Course plus exams in one purchase |
| CompTIA CertMaster Practice | ~$139-200 | Official bank | No | Limited | Official-source provenance |
| ExamCompass | Free | Free topic quizzes | Limited | No | Quick free topic drills |
| Exam dump sites | Varies | Scraped | Varies | No | Nothing - avoid |
"Concept-level coaching" means a per-attempt report naming the specific concepts costing you marks and what to revise next, not just a domain percentage. If any figure here is out of date, email [email protected] and we will correct it and re-date the page.
The best free CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 practice exams in 2026
The free Security+ landscape is unusually strong, largely because of one person. Here are the free options worth your time in 2026, and what each is actually good for.
- Professor Messer - a complete free SY0-701 video course, free monthly live study groups and free pop quizzes. It is the single most-used Security+ resource in existence and it costs nothing. His paid Success Bundle is $119 and includes three 90-question exams with PBQs and written notes - the cheapest credible paid bundle on this list.
- FigigExams - a complete 90-question Security+ paper free with no credit card - the same Exam 1 that ships in the paid pack. Every question carries an explanation and a separate Exam Tip, and finishing produces an Exam Coach report plus a Study Path that ranks the five SY0-701 domains by weighted shortfall, so Security Operations at 28% counts for more than Governance at 12%.
- ExamCompass - free topic-level Security+ quizzes, useful for a quick check on one objective at a time. Light on explanations and not a full-length simulation, but genuinely free and genuinely useful for drilling terminology.
The strongest free path for Security+ is unambiguous: learn from Professor Messer, then gate yourself on a full-length timed paper. Messer teaches the material better than anyone at any price; what a video course cannot do is tell you which of the five domains is quietly costing you the most marks under time pressure. That is what a weighted diagnosis on a complete paper is for. And avoid anything advertising "real SY0-701 questions" - CompTIA voids certifications for it.
The best CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 practice exams, ranked and explained
Ranked by overall fit against the criteria above for a typical self-funded candidate. Your priorities may reorder this, which is why every entry says who it is best for.
The premium standard for item quality. Boson's Security+ questions are harder than the live exam in a useful way, the distractors are well built, and the explanations are accurate and referenced. If ExSim-Max is comfortable, the real paper will be. The trade-offs: it is $99.00 for a one-year subscription that auto-renews rather than a purchase; it has the smallest question bank on this list at 270 items across 3 exams; there is no free full-length trial; and feedback stops at a domain percentage rather than naming the concept to fix.
This is ours, so weigh it accordingly - but it sits here on the criteria. It carries 357 questions across 4 full-length exams, against Boson's 270, for $39 once rather than $99 every year. Every item ships with a written explanation and a separate Exam Tip. Finishing a paper produces an Exam Coach report and a Study Path that scores you against CompTIA's published objective weights and ranks revision by weighted shortfall - domain weight multiplied by miss rate. That matters more on SY0-701 than on most exams, because Security Operations is 28% of the paper and Governance is 12%, so an identical number of misses in each is worth very different marks. You can sit a complete 90-question paper free first. Where it loses: Professor Messer's free course teaches the material better than our study guide does, and Dion ships more total questions.
Professor Messer gives away a complete SY0-701 video course, runs free live study groups and publishes free pop quizzes. For learning the material, nothing else on this list competes, and it costs nothing. His paid Success Bundle is $119 and includes three 90-question practice exams with performance-based questions, video explanations and written course notes. The honest limitation is the same one every course has: the practice component is bundled rather than the main product, so the analytics are basic and there is no concept-level ranking of what to revise.
Jason Dion's Udemy Security+ courses bundle 20+ hours of lecture with six practice exams, 540+ questions, downloadable notes and a PBQ simulator, all in one purchase - and Udemy discounts them heavily, so the real price is often $15 to $30. On raw question volume for the money it is the strongest entry on this list. Two caveats worth knowing: buying direct from diontraining.com gets roughly double the questions of the Udemy version, and because Dion already sells a large question bank, a bank you have worked through cannot measure you twice - a second, unseen set of papers is what tells you whether you learned the material or the answers.
CompTIA's own adaptive practice tool, written by the people who write the exam. Provenance is the whole appeal, and for some employers it is the only acceptable answer. The problem is price: CertMaster Practice alone runs roughly $139 to $200, and the full Security+ Complete Bundle is around $900, or about $1,288 with a voucher and retake assurance - on top of a $439 exam fee. For a self-funded candidate that is difficult to justify against a $39 or $119 alternative.
A long-running site of free Security+ quizzes organised by topic, with no signup. Genuinely useful for a five-minute check on one objective while the material is fresh. It is not a full-length simulator, the explanations are thin, and there is no analytics layer, so treat it as reinforcement rather than a readiness gauge.
Sites advertising "real SY0-701 questions" or "Security+ dumps" sell scraped live content. CompTIA's Candidate Agreement is explicit, and CompTIA does revoke certifications for it. Beyond the risk, the answer keys are frequently wrong, so you memorise errors and carry them into the exam - and dumps go stale whenever CompTIA refreshes the objectives.
The cheapest way to get CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 practice exams that are actually worth sitting
If the real question is "what is the cheapest Security+ practice that actually works", Security+ has the best free answer of any certification on this site.
Start at zero. Professor Messer's complete SY0-701 course is free, and a complete 90-question FigigExams Security+ paper is free with no card. That combination - free course, free full-length diagnostic - costs nothing and covers the two things that matter most. Then compare paid options on total cost. Boson is $99.00 a year for 270 questions, about $0.37 per question per year. Messer's Success Bundle is $119 once for three exams plus notes. Dion on Udemy is often $15 to $30 on sale for six exams. The FigigExams pack is $39 once for 357 questions with no expiry, about $0.11 per question, permanently, or $9.75 per full-length exam.
Put the numbers next to the exam fee for perspective: the SY0-701 voucher is $439 as of 1 June 2026, and a retake is another $439 at full price. Every option on this page costs less than a quarter of one exam attempt. The expensive mistake is not choosing the wrong practice exam - it is sitting the real one before a full-length paper said you were ready.
What the FigigExams CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 pack actually includes
Most practice-exam products are a question bank and a score. The reason CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 candidates pick this one is the layer on top of the questions - the part that tells you what to do next. Here is everything in the pack, 4 September 2026.
4 full-length exams, 357 questions
Every paper is timed to the real CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 format and uses every question type the live exam uses. 90 of them are free on Exam 1, with no credit card.
An Exam Tip on every question
Not just an answer key. Every item carries a written explanation of why the right answer is right, plus a separate Exam Tip - the thing to remember on exam day.
Exam Coach: a concept-level report
After every attempt you get a per-concept breakdown across all five exam domains, not a bare percentage - so you know which topics cost you the marks.
Study Path: what to revise next
Your result is scored against the published CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 blueprint weights and ranked by weighted shortfall - domain weight multiplied by your miss rate - so you revise what costs the most marks first, not what simply feels weakest.
Study cards from your own mistakes
Select any explanation and turn it into a saved study card. Your card deck is built from the questions you actually got wrong, which is the only revision list worth keeping.
A free CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 study guide
A full written study guide for CompTIA Security+ SY0-701, readable online with no PDF gate and no email wall, cross-referenced to the exam domains.
$39 once, lifetime, future versions included
One payment unlocks every CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 exam in the pack for life. When the blueprint changes, the new versions are included - you are not re-billed for a new edition.
30-day money-back guarantee
If the pack is not what you needed, you have 30 days to ask for the money back. And you can sit a complete exam free before you pay anything.
Figures read from the live CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 question banks on 4 September 2026. Pack contents grow over time; the price does not change for people who already bought.
The verdict: which CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 practice exam to actually buy
If you want the hardest, most exam-realistic questions, buy Boson ExSim-Max and cancel the renewal once you pass.
If you want the best value, start with FigigExams: $39 once for 4 exams and 357 questions with lifetime access, and a complete 90-question paper free first so you can test the claim before paying.
If your budget is zero, learn from Professor Messer and gate yourself on a free full-length timed paper. That path has passed more people than every paid product on this list combined.
Whatever you pick, do the performance-based questions before exam day. PBQs open the paper, they cost the most time, and they are the single most common reason a candidate who knew the material still ran out of clock.
What a real candidate said about the FigigExams practice exam
Posted on r/ccna in April 2026 about our CCNA exam rather than Security+, but it describes the free-full-paper-plus-end-of-exam-breakdown experience that is identical across every FigigExams certification, Security+ included:
"the free test is way better than boson imo and its free and 105 questions and it shows you the result and what you had wrong in the end, you can use a mock email to create the account idk why you guys hate so much, I have my ccna on tuesday and got 96% on this practice test which really boosted my confidence"
Try the value pick free before you spend a dollar
A complete CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 practice exam, an Exam Tip on every question, and a concept-level Exam Coach report with your Study Path. No credit card.
Start Free Security+ Practice ExamFree full-length exam. The complete 4-exam pack is $39 once, lifetime, future versions included.
Frequently asked questions about CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 practice exams
What is the best free Security+ practice exam in 2026?
Professor Messer is the best free Security+ resource overall, with a complete SY0-701 video course, free live study groups and free pop quizzes at no cost. For a free full-length practice paper specifically, FigigExams gives you a complete 90-question Security+ exam free with no credit card, with an explanation and an Exam Tip on every question and an Exam Coach report plus a Study Path weighted to the SY0-701 objectives. ExamCompass offers free topic-level quizzes with no signup. Checked 4 September 2026.
What is the cheapest Security+ practice exam worth buying?
On sale, Jason Dion's Udemy bundle is frequently $15 to $30 for six practice exams and 540+ questions, which is the lowest paid entry point. For lifetime access with concept-level feedback, the FigigExams Security+ pack is $39 once for 4 exams and 357 questions, about $9.75 per full-length exam with no expiry. Professor Messer's Success Bundle is $119 once and includes notes plus three 90-question exams with PBQs. Boson is the most expensive at $99.00 per year, auto-renewing. Prices checked 4 September 2026.
Which Security+ practice exam has performance-based questions?
PBQs are the part candidates most often under-practise. Professor Messer's $119 Success Bundle includes PBQs, Jason Dion's courses include a PBQ simulator, and FigigExams includes performance-based style items in its Security+ papers with a written explanation and an Exam Tip on each. CompTIA CertMaster Practice includes official PBQ-style content. Free topic quiz sites generally do not. See the Security+ PBQ practice guide.
What score on a Security+ practice exam means I am ready?
SY0-701 passes at 750 out of 900, which is roughly 83% of the scaled range but not a simple 83% of questions. The practical bar is consistently clearing the pass mark on full-length papers you have not seen before, with no single domain far behind - and Security Operations matters most at 28% of the exam. Measured across 192 completed attempts from 129 candidates, the median practice score among candidates working at a genuine pace was 68.9%, so an early paper below the pass mark is normal. See Am I Ready for Security+?
Is Boson ExSim worth $99 for Security+?
Boson has the best reputation for difficulty and its explanations are excellent, so if you want the hardest questions it is a fair buy. Know two things first: it is $99.00 for a one-year subscription that auto-renews, and at 270 questions across 3 exams it is the smallest bank in this comparison. FigigExams is $39 once for 357 questions with lifetime access and a full 90-question paper free, and Professor Messer's $119 bundle includes notes and PBQs. On value per dollar, Boson is the weakest of the three. See the side-by-side comparison.
How much does the Security+ exam itself cost in 2026?
The CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 exam voucher is $439 as of 1 June 2026, up from $425. CompTIA charges the full price for every retake, with no free retest, and there is no waiting period before a second attempt but a 14 calendar day wait from the third. That is why a practice exam costing $39 to $119 is cheap insurance.