The best TARA preparation in 2026: every option compared

Start with the free official materials.

UAT-UK, the body that actually writes and runs TARA, says outright:

"all necessary preparatory materials are available, free of charge, to all candidates." Nobody knows the real test better than the people who write it.

The catch is volume. It's six interactive items in total, so it's a genuine taster of the format, not a full revision plan.

Once you've worked through those, four platforms offer a dedicated TARA question bank:

GhostPrep, Exams Ninja, MyTARA and Taraprep. GhostPrep is one of them, and this page reviews all four the same way, including us.

Beyond those four, a tutor or a live taught course is the other route — real-time teaching and one-to-one attention that no amount of self-serve practice fully replaces.

We don't offer either, so if that's genuinely how you learn best, GhostPrep is unlikely to be the best prep for you personally. More on when that's worth paying for further down.

Whichever you pick, how you actually use it is a separate question, and this page does not answer it. Our guide to how to prepare for the TARA has the twelve-week plan, what to do with the free archive, and the timing data that decides most scores.

We judged every provider against six things, applied the same way regardless of who came out ahead: whether the question bank is original material or repackaged official past papers, whether every question comes with a worked explanation, whether the price is published at all, whether there's a usable free tier, how closely the practice interface matches the real computer-based test, and what each option openly doesn't do.

GhostPrep is one of the four platforms reviewed on this page. We've named exactly where the other three beat us.

This is meant to be an honest comparison of the TARA preparation that's actually out there, not a sales pitch, and the choice is yours to make.

UAT-UK publishes six interactive Pearson VUE items free to every candidate: three specimen tests with explained answers and three sample exams, one per module.

UAT-UK describes them as built on "the exact format and software used for our live tests", so they're the single most accurate practice interface that exists, simply because they run on the real thing.

UAT-UK also publishes a free legacy archive:

BMAT Section 1 papers from 2003 to 2023 and TSA Section 1 papers from 2008 to 2023. Both share meaningful overlap with TARA's Critical Thinking and Problem Solving question types, so they're useful extra volume once the six official items are done.

And UCL's own Computer Science admissions page is direct about how far this needs to go:

"the TARA exam does not require any subject knowledge so applicants do not have to conduct additional revision for the exam." If you've worked through the free materials and feel ready, you may not need to buy anything at all.

The quick-skim view; full detail on each provider follows in the sections below. Two Taraprep notes: its explanations are unverified on the paid bank, and it states no bank-wide guarantee that its questions are original.

Here's how that breaks down:

Depends what you're optimising for. Here's each of the four, plainly.

1. GhostPrep

£19.99 a month, or £79.99 for a 12-month Season Pass, with a genuine free tier alongside both.

Our practice bank runs to 2,316 questions and mock papers, and every question follows a published, staged review process before it goes live, covered in full on our how we write questions page rather than repeated here.

Good for: students who want a large volume of practice questions that are highly accurate to the real exam, a documented, checkable process behind every question, a Pearson VUE-style practice interface, and a refund if it isn't the right fit.

Not so good for: anyone who specifically wants live teaching or one-to-one attention, since we don't offer either.

2. Exams Ninja

Sold as separate modules (£29 to £59 each) or a full bundle around £99. Their question bank runs to 2,311 questions, just a handful behind GhostPrep's 2,316, and that lead only widens as we keep adding more.

If raw volume used to be the reason to pick Exams Ninja, it isn't much of one any more.

Good for: students who want an established provider, one that's covered TARA alongside its wider range of admissions tests for a while now.

Not so good for: anyone who wants a refund if it doesn't work out, since none is offered, or who wants to know upfront that access is capped at 12 months, since that detail sits only in the terms and conditions, not the price page.

Exams Ninja doesn't publish a question-writing process the way we do, so there's no public way to check how each question is built, worth bearing in mind if that matters to you.

3. MyTARA

The free tools here include a practice bank, a full mock simulator, a dashboard, a personal statement builder and interview practice, all at no cost. Paid options are a £249 four-week live course or one-to-one lessons from £40 to £45 each.

Good for: the only one of the four with a real live taught course built in, alongside a free tier that covers more than just practice questions.

Not so good for: anyone who specifically wants fresh, TARA-written material. Most of its roughly 1,600 questions are relabelled TSA (2008 to 2023) and BMAT (2003 to 2023) past papers, and only one paper in the whole set is an official TARA sample.

4. Taraprep

Priced as a single one-off payment of £75 for 10 months of access, against a free tier with a diagnostic mock.

Good for: anyone who'd rather pay once than commit to a subscription, and the only competitor here that publishes its own scoring methodology, showing how it converts a raw mark into the 1.0 to 9.0 scale UAT-UK uses.

Not so good for: anyone who wants a large bank to work through. At "700+" it's the smallest of the four, and that figure appears to include the questions used across its 11 mock papers rather than sitting on top of them as a separate drilling bank.

Only two options actually exist. GhostPrep's own TARA 9.0 Blueprint runs to 34 chapters and 682 pages, with 500 original questions and a full worked solution for every one.

The only other TARA-specific book we found is UniAdmissions' Ultimate TARA Guide, 208 pages with around 250 questions, roughly half the number in GhostPrep's book.

It's listed as a 2025 Edition, which is telling:

TARA's first live sitting was in 2026, so it's fair to ask how much of that edition was written for TARA specifically rather than carried over from an earlier test.

None of Exams Ninja, MyTARA or Taraprep sell a book at all, so if a physical or printed revision resource is specifically what you're after, it's a two-way choice.

None of the four question banks above can do what a live course or a tutor does. A course lets you ask questions in real time as you're taught, rather than working through material alone.

A tutor goes further still, focusing entirely on your specific gaps and answering the exact questions you have. For some students, that's simply how they learn best, and no amount of self-serve practice replaces it.

It's also expensive relative to everything above it. Published rates for large UK admissions tutoring firms run from around £86 an hour up to £150 an hour, and package-based providers charge from roughly £595 for as little as four hours.

Named examples with published TARA rates include The Profs, Keystone Tutors, Dukes Plus and Oxbridge Applications.

Worth weighing against that cost:

UAT-UK and UCL have both said, in their own words further up this page, that TARA doesn't require subject knowledge or additional revision.

What you'd actually be paying for is the live interaction and personal attention above, not content you're missing, and for some applicants that's worth it regardless of price.

Not a ranking. A set of scoped answers, because "best" depends entirely on what you actually need.

Here's the detail:

Starting price is the cheapest way in. Full access price is what it costs to unlock everything on offer.

Here's how that breaks down:

GhostPrep's £19.99 monthly option, cancel any time, is the lowest way into a paid TARA question bank of the four. The £79.99 Season Pass is for anyone who already knows they want a full 12 months and would rather pay once.