freepracticeSAT.com or The Princeton Review for SAT Math?

By Dr. Daniel Brink, Ph.D. in Mathematics Education, 32 years teaching math · October 28, 2026

Most parents I talk to have heard of The Princeton Review. It has been around a long time and sells everything from an online course to private tutoring. If you are trying to decide whether to spend that money, or whether a free site will do, this page should help.

Full disclosure: I built freepracticeSAT.com. The Princeton Review prices below are the ones on their website on October 28, 2026. Some were sale prices, so they may have changed.

What The Princeton Review sells

Option	Price	What it is
Self-Paced	$299	Online video lessons, drills and practice questions, 5 full-length practice tests with a score report, a year of access. No live teacher.
Essentials	$649 (listed down from $949)	18 hours of live online classes plus the course material.
1400+ Course	$1,849 (listed down from $2,199)	A longer live course aimed at students going for 1400 or higher.
Private tutoring	$175 an hour	One-on-one lessons.
1500+ Tutoring	$315 an hour	One-on-one tutoring aimed at the top scores.

They also offer a money-back or satisfaction guarantee. It comes with conditions, which are on their guarantee page.

All of these cover the whole SAT, reading and writing as well as math.

What you are really paying for

With the self-paced course you are mostly paying for lessons, practice material and their practice tests. With the live courses and tutoring, you are paying for a teacher. That is the real difference, and it matters. A good teacher who sees your work can spot problems a computer cannot, and some students simply study better when someone is expecting them at 6 o'clock on Tuesday.

I have taught math for 32 years, and I will say this plainly: a good live teacher is worth a lot. I wrote a separate article on how to tell whether a tutor really knows how to teach math, because a high score of their own is not enough.

What freepracticeSAT.com does instead

My site is math only, and it is built around finding out why a student loses points:

Free full-length math tests, as many as you want, in the real test format with Desmos on screen. From the second test on, the second module adapts the way the real SAT does.
After each test, the specific mistake behind each wrong answer, and the basic skills underneath it. There are 280 of those basic skills, which I call the DNA of SAT math questions.
For $29, one payment, a day-by-day math plan to the SAT date built from the student's own mistakes, which rebuilds after every test.

It does not give you a live teacher, and it does not cover reading and writing.

What the hours cost

It helps to put the prices on the same footing. Using the prices above:

The Essentials course is 18 hours of live class for $649, a little over $36 an hour, shared with the other students in the class.
Ten hours of private tutoring at $175 an hour comes to $1,750.
Ten hours of 1500+ tutoring at $315 an hour comes to $3,150.

None of that is unreasonable for what a good teacher gives you. The question is whether your student needs those hours for math, for reading and writing, or for both. A practice test can tell you that before you pay.

What I see in students who are stuck in math

After 32 years, the pattern I see most is this: a student stuck around 500 or 550 in math usually does not need more SAT strategy. They need a few basic skills from earlier grades that never quite set, such as working with fractions, negative numbers or distributing, and those skills sit underneath dozens of SAT questions. A course that moves through the SAT topics in order may never stop on them. That is why my site checks every wrong answer against the DNA of SAT math questions and puts the weakest basics first.

For students already above 650, the problem is different: speed, careless slips and the hardest question types. A live teacher or tutor can be well worth it at that stage, especially for a student aiming at a score that matters for a scholarship.

When each one makes sense

The Princeton Review

Your student needs help with both sections.
Your student needs a teacher and a schedule to stay on track.
The budget is there, and you have checked who the teacher or tutor will be.

freepracticeSAT.com

Math is the weaker section.
Your student will work on their own if they know exactly what to work on.
You want to see where the points are going before you spend hundreds of dollars.

These are not either-or. Some families start with free tests on my site to find the problem areas, then hire a tutor for the topics that need a person.

Before you pay for any SAT course

Take one full practice test and look at the math score and the reading and writing score separately. Which one is costing more?
Ask what the course does after each practice test. Does it tell you why you missed questions, or only which ones?
Read the guarantee conditions. Most require finishing all the assigned work.
Ask who the teacher is and what math they have taught.

Find out where the math points are going before you decide. One test is free.

Take a free math test Plan or tutor?

Where these facts come from: