"Free question bank" describes four different products, and conflating them is how candidates end up mid-revision against a paywall they did not expect. This page replaces our earlier free-versus-paid comparison with the current, more precise picture: the four meanings of free, the trial-friction taxonomy that predicts your experience, what happens to your work when access ends, and a transparent statement of where iatroX's own free access sits, because older descriptions of our model are out of date and this page supersedes them. Checked 29 August 2026.
The four meanings of free
Completely free bank: a full, permanently accessible question set for an examination, no payment ever, the rarest and most valuable form. Limited free set: a fixed sample, dozens to a few hundred questions, permanently free, useful for judging question style and explanation quality, insufficient as preparation on its own. Time-limited trial: full access for days, after which payment gates everything, which is an evaluation window, not a resource. And the refund window: a paid purchase with a short cooling-off period, sometimes marketed adjacent to free, which is a consumer protection, not free access. A fifth pattern deserves naming because it decides your experience before any question loads: card friction. No-sign-up questions, no-card accounts, and card-required trials are three different bargains, and the card-required trial's business model is partly your forgetting to cancel, which is not an accusation, it is a diary reminder.
The questions that matter more than the label
Whichever meaning applies, four checks predict whether free access is genuinely usable. What is included: explanations, analytics, mocks, mobile access, tutor features, since a free tier with questions but paywalled explanations teaches half a lesson. What happens at the end: whether saved progress, notes and bookmarks survive trial expiry or non-payment, and whether a trial converts automatically to paid. Whether the free layer is representative: samples curated to flatter differ from random draws of the real bank. And whether free requires anything expensive in another currency: data harvesting, relentless upgrade prompts, or verification hurdles. A free tier that passes all four is a real resource; the market contains both kinds.
Where iatroX's free access honestly sits, as of August 2026
Stated precisely because our older pages said it loosely. Permanently free, in full: askiatroX, the cited clinical search; the medicines guides; the calculators; and complete question banks for MRCP Part 1, MRCEM SBA, the PSA and PARA, which are whole banks, not samples. Free samples: across the other examinations in the platform, free questions let you judge style and explanation depth before any payment. Paid: the all-access learning subscription, complete banks across 40+ examinations, the Socratic Tutor, mocks and the study planner, at £29 monthly or £99 yearly, with no card required to use the free layer. Any older article describing all iatroX banks as completely free described an earlier model and is superseded by this paragraph; the current design is a genuinely free clinical layer plus clearly separated paid learning, and we would rather state that plainly than be caught implying more.
When paid preparation is justified
The honest decision rule, category-wide. Free full banks, where they exist for your exam, can carry serious preparation, and candidates on tight budgets should exhaust them before paying anything. Paid banks earn their fee where they add what free tiers structurally lack for your exam: complete blueprint coverage, full timed mocks at true format, adaptive targeting and spaced repetition, explanation depth with sources, and governance, named review, corrections routes, update discipline. Price that decision with the 90-day method, /blog/how-to-compare-qbank-prices-90-day-method, and weigh volume claims with the counting taxonomy, /blog/what-does-5000-questions-mean-qbank-counting; free versus paid is a per-exam, per-candidate calculation, not a tribe.
Frequently asked questions
Are free banks lower quality than paid ones?
Not inherently: free full banks exist as acquisition layers for platforms, ours included, and are built to the platform's standard; the quality question is per-bank, judged on explanations, currency and governance, not on price.
Do free trials count as free banks?
No, and budgeting as if they do is the classic error: a trial is for evaluation, and preparation plans should be built on access you will still hold in week six.
What should I check before relying on any free tier?
The four checks above, plus one habit: screenshot what the free tier promises on the day you start, because tiers evolve, and your plan deserves the version you signed up to.
How do the big paid banks' free offerings compare?
By the same taxonomy: most major UK providers publish limited free sets or timed trials rather than complete free banks, and the four checks above, inclusions, expiry behaviour, representativeness and friction, sort them faster than any brand reputation; run the checks on each provider's current pages, since tiers change quarterly.