Test Prep Insight is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more
Best SAT Prep Courses
Our comprehensive guide to the best Digital SAT prep courses and classes available online
With high GPAs becoming the norm in high school, a top SAT score is the best way to stand out. The right choice depends on your learning style, plus whether you need the accountability of a live SAT prep class or the efficiency of a premium self-paced course. From ‘SAT prep classes near me’ to the latest digital platforms, our team tested and rated the best online SAT courses to help you find the perfect fit.
In the video above, Lara from the Test Prep Insight team shares our picks for the best SAT prep courses and classes. She covers pricing, course formats, practice tests and Qbanks, live classes, plus who each SAT course suits best. For more detail, continue reading our full written guide below.
There’s a reason Kaplan is the popular choice among students and their parents for SAT prep – their curriculum is simply the best around. Led by some killer video-based lessons in their self-paced online course (much more on these below), the Kaplan study plan guides students through everything they must learn to properly prepare for the Digital SAT.
The study plan staggers lessons and practice work by exam section topics, with a logical lesson sequence that starts with simpler concepts and gradually builds in complexity. In this respect, it is much like Princeton Review’s curriculum, which is a very good thing in our opinion.
Students are guided step-by-step through lessons (live online and recorded), targeted assignments, SAT practice exams, and more. The entire course has an extremely cohesive and detailed design that keeps you working efficiently toward your goal.
One of Kaplan’s interactive video lectures
For most Kaplan students, the main coursework is Kaplan’s live online lessons. Those who choose the self-paced program do their primary learning through video lessons instead.
The live classes are led by top-tier SAT instructors, who are all vetted for their teaching and communications skills, plus their expertise.
Our team found Kaplan’s live lectures to be particularly effective in terms of both structure and execution.
Additionally, the instructional work is complemented by some truly top-notch Digital SAT practice material.
While Kaplan only offers 500 or so practice problems, which is less than most competitors provide, we found the practice work to be really well put-together.
One of Kaplan’s SAT practice question text explanations
In short, while other courses are about quantity, Kaplan is all about quality, with a first-rate curriculum led by some awesome instructional tools.
Superb SAT Video Lessons
Kaplan offers superb video-based lessons. In our opinion, Kaplan’s video lessons are even better than Princeton Review’s.
Whereas Princeton Review uses their cool invisible whiteboard approach, Kaplan takes a more conversational approach to teaching. Their lessons are clearly catered to teenagers, with a casual approach that students will find relatable.
The instructor is often onscreen, sitting on a couch with a Starbucks coffee in hand, just talking to the camera. I know that sounds informal, but is very purposeful and well designed. He or she simply chats like a friend while breaking down everything you need to know with stories, jokes and helpful mnemonics.
And when it comes time to demonstrate a point, the instructor grabs a tablet and stylus to work problems right onscreen via the digital whiteboard.
Example of SAT video lesson from Kaplan
The high production value and frequent segment changes in these video lessons really ups the engagement level for students while keeping their attention. Not to mention these clips are only 5 to 12 minutes long.
Moreover, the instructor will often pull in a high school student to help present the lesson through use of examples.
In short, our team loved this casual, conversational approach to teaching SAT subjects. While we don’t think it would necessarily jive with teaching an MCAT course, for the SAT, it works perfectly.
UWorld has spent years perfecting high-stakes test prep, and their Digital SAT course is built specifically for the student who doesn’t want to sit through a long classroom lecture. While traditional providers like Kaplan and Princeton Review lead with live instruction, UWorld focuses on independent study. We recommend it as the top choice for self-driven learners who want the most realistic practice material available, without the high price tag of a live class.
Ideal For Independent Learners
The center of the UWorld experience is their question bank. We found these practice problems to be more realistic than almost any other program on the market. In many cases, the difficulty level is actually a step above the real exam, which is a great way to build confidence before test day.
UWorld SAT dashboard
What makes this program truly stand out is how it handles answer explanations. Instead of just giving you the right answer, UWorld provides a deep dive into the why behind the question. Every explanation includes colorful illustrations and step-by-step breakdowns of why every single incorrect choice is wrong. This teaches you how to follow the test maker’s logic, making it an ideal fit for students who learn best by doing rather than just listening to a teacher.
Bite-Sized Lessons
UWorld doesn’t waste your time with fluff or long-winded lectures. Their library of over 100 video lessons consists of short clips that are all under 10 minutes. This makes it incredibly easy to squeeze in a study session during a lunch break or between after-school activities. The instructors use a conversational tone and plenty of on-screen graphics, which keeps the material engaging. They use a modern approach to SAT prep, recognizing that most teens simply cannot sit through a 40-minute video before even getting to the actual practice work.
Smart Tools
The platform itself is a near-perfect mirror of the official College Board testing interface. Practicing in this environment helps eliminate test-day anxiety because the screen layout and tools will already feel familiar. The performance tracking is also sleek, showing how your speed and accuracy compare to other students. You can even use the “My Notebook” tool to tag questions and create digital flashcards directly from the problems you missed.
Keep in mind that UWorld doesn’t offer video solutions for their practice questions or a formal score guarantee, so it’s best for students who are already motivated and comfortable with text-based feedback. If you want the quality of a $1,000 class for a fraction of the price, UWorld delivers.
Princeton Review offers one of the most well-developed and detailed SAT curriculums in the test prep space (perhaps only trailing Kaplan). It was clear to us after taking this course that every inch of their study plan has been expertly curated, down to the last word.
Your assigned study plan guides you step-by-step through all of the necessary content review and SAT test taking strategies in a course structure designed to build on itself and maximize material retention.
Princeton Review accomplishes this through first-rate live classes, video-based lessons, practice questions, books and more.
Princeton Review’s streamlined course interface
This package of impressive study resources is led by the live class work and video lectures. The live classes are taught by SAT instructors with decades of experience, who know the exam inside and out and have honed their communication skills to near perfection.
In addition, the video lessons are incredibly engaging and well-crafted (more on these below).
Backing up these instructional channels, Princeton Review also provides a set of content-rich textbooks and high-quality practice material that hammers home the concepts taught through the classes and recorded lessons.
Altogether, this is an extremely powerful and comprehensive Digital SAT prep course that impressed our team.
Fantastic Live SAT Classes
A clear highlight of the Princeton Review course is their live online classes. Meeting for 18 hours over the course of several sessions, both the instructors and the curriculum are awesome. The Princeton Review classes don’t waste any time on fluff or rarely tested topics. It’s all business.
Princeton Review SAT video lesson
That’s not to say these classes are boring, though. Because of the instructors’ knowledge and communication skills, we found the classes to be engaging and swift moving. For teens who need live classes, yet struggle to focus, we really like Princeton Review.
Stellar Score Guarantees
In addition to the company’s Self-Paced and Essentials prep options, Princeton Review also offers SAT 1400+ and SAT 1500+ Tutoring courses.
As you might guess based on the names of these courses, Princeton Review essentially guarantees that you’ll score at least 1400 or 1500 on the Digital SAT, respectively, or you get your money back.
Now, these courses do not come cheap, and there is some fine print attached. But still, if you’re aiming for acceptance into a top-tier college, it’s hard to argue with those types of score guarantees.
In fact, Princeton Review offers the best score guarantees in the entire industry (even better than Kaplan, Magoosh and PrepScholar).
PrepScholar lands near the top of our best list for a number of reasons, with one of the main highlights being their insane volume of Digital SAT practice work.
Offering over 4,100 practice questions and 7 practice exams, this Digital SAT prep course blows the competition out the water when it comes to practice material (more on this below).
However, PrepScholar is much more than an accumulation of SAT practice questions – they also offer a comprehensive SAT prep curriculum through a set of very detailed lessons.
A snapshot from one of PrepScholar’s video lessons
Their lesson plans, which cover just about every testable subject on the Digital SAT, are a mix of text-based instruction and video lectures. The detailed text-based lessons provide more than enough information to master a given topic.
That said, we did find them a little dry at times – which can be an issue when trying to hold a high school student’s attention. This was one of our only complaints with this SAT prep course though.
The video lessons are very good, but we just wish they had these video-based lectures for every lesson topic (they only have them for most topics). Our team was also very impressed with the structure of PrepScholar’s coursework, which uses a classic “learn, practice, review” pattern.
You start by reviewing necessary content and learning a strategy, then test your knowledge with a quiz. Following this set of practice questions, you then review your answers to learn from your mistakes.
This is a classic and proven learning process used in a number of online SAT prep courses. And one final point worth noting is PrepScholar’s clear step-by-step guidance through their lesson work and practice tests.
Students are given clear direction on what to study and when, which is directed by PrepScholar’s smart, adaptive software. All in all, PrepScholar is a formidable online prep course with competitive pricing that should work well for students who learn well through reading and aren’t 100% reliant on visuals.
Mountains of SAT Practice Material
The most eye-popping feature of the PrepScholar package is their level of practice work. PrepScholar provides an astounding 4,100+ SAT practice problems and 7 full-length tests.
To put things in perspective, the next closest competitor barely offers 3,000 practice problems – less than half of what PrepScholar boasts.
In addition, their volume of practice exams is bested only by Princeton Review. These are some extremely impressive numbers that our team couldn’t believe at first (particularly their practice questions figure).
PrepScholar SAT answer explanation
This is a huge benefit to students that should not be overlooked. And to be clear, the quality of these practice problems doesn’t suffer because of the high quantity. They are all excellent, and we appreciated their thoughtful substance and feel.
So for students who thrive on “learning by doing” through practice work, or just want to maximize their amount of practice material for long term study, PrepScholar will likely be your best option for boosting your Digital SAT score.
One more thing worth mentioning: PrepScholar also offers college admissions consulting – a smart option if you want everything in one place. Beyond SAT prep, you get essay coaching, application strategy, and a dedicated consultant who works with your student throughout the admissions cycle.
Magoosh’s ultra-affordable pricing isn’t the only reason they’ve earned a spot on our roster of top online SAT courses. They also deliver the goods.
When you sign up for one of the Magoosh self-paced SAT prep plans, you get access to their library of 200+ video lessons, 1,750+ practice problems, 3 practice exams, and a ton of fantastic problem explanations.
While the format of the video lessons isn’t our favorite, with a slideshow-style presentation and basic production value, the quality of content cannot be disputed. And the practice problems designed by Magoosh’s SAT experts do a fine job replicating real Digital SAT questions.
A typical Magoosh lesson
In fact, our team of test prep experts actually prefers the Magoosh text and video-based solutions to many of the problem explanations you get with other SAT prep companies on this very list.
The text explanations are thorough and well-executed with graphics, equations and diagrams. And the video lessons are an extremely valuable benefit for visual learners.
We still can’t figure out how Magoosh offers thousands of video-based solutions for their problems when much more expensive courses don’t offer any.
In short, yes, Magoosh offers incredible bang for your buck (which we discuss more in the section below), but they are much more than that.
They offer a solid prep program built on some pretty incredible study resources that we are confident will work for most students.
Tremendous Value For Students
As mentioned above, the biggest selling point of the Magoosh SAT course is its price tag. This course really is for students (or parents) working with a limited budget.
The company’s two online prep courses, which are identical in terms of content, differ only in terms of bonus live classes. These two packages run for right around $130 and $400, respectively.
Magoosh’s clean and easy-to-use dashboard
The Kaplan and Princeton Review self-paced options come somewhat close to this affordable pricing, but Magoosh remains the pricing king, especially with respect to their new live online class format.
To be clear, our team doesn’t just look at price and call it a day. We weigh the cost of the prep course against the actual value of the study materials, classes and more. When it comes to Magoosh, they deliver on both value and quality, helping to boost students’ Digital SAT scores.
Though our team of test prep experts was a little skeptical of this prep course given their unique entry into the SAT prep space through ABC’s Shark Tank, Prep Expert’s online prep program absolutely delivers.
Centered around founder Shaan Patel’s 100 homegrown test-taking strategies, Prep Expert offers one of the best instructional packages in Digital SAT prep.
Each and every one of their SAT instructors has either earned a perfect score on the SAT or scored in the top 1% (evidencing their mastery of the exam), and has been trained to teach Shaan’s methods.
The live online classes are engaging, informative and one of the best methods of teaching Digital SAT prep we’ve seen. In total, the classes add up to 36 total hours of first-rate instruction and cover both content review and strategy sessions.
One of Shaan’s video lectures
These top-notch live online lessons are supplemented with video lectures from Shaan Patel himself and official SAT practice material. While the delivery format of the video lessons isn’t our favorite, we like Shaan’s teaching abilities and the content of these prerecorded lectures.
In addition, the Digital SAT practice work that hammers home his strategy teachings doesn’t get any better, as it’s all derived from real, previously administered SAT exams. Prep Expert was a must on our best list after having tried and verified their intelligent SAT strategies (more on these below).
Shaan Patel’s 100 SAT Strategies
The most unique, and coolest, feature of the Prep Expert course is their set of 100 Digital SAT test-taking strategies. These techniques were self-designed by founder Shaan Patel himself when he was studying for the SAT (and ACT).
Although that may have been a decade or so ago, these strategies still work, and work well. The video lessons and live classes revolve around tips like, “remove nonessential appositives,” “tackle line-cited questions first,” and “ace exponents.”
What a typical live class session looks like
These strategies are integrated into the lesson plans as the central theme. Your instructor identifies a pain point of the Digital SAT, or a way in which they try to trick you. He or she then shows you why and how the technique works, then solves a few Digital SAT practice problems to demonstrate.
When applied to practice questions, it is clear these Prep Expert strategies work. Many of these tips we hadn’t seen before, but we think they make a ton of sense. They are both practical and fairly easy to remember, which is crucial for any strategy to be effective.
Master the Bluebook App: The Digital SAT is taken exclusively on the College Board’s Bluebook application. Don’t just practice content; practice the interface. Get comfortable with the built-in annotation tools, the countdown timer, and the specific “mark for review” features before test day.
Learn the “Desmos” Calculator: Unlike the old paper test, the Digital SAT embeds the powerful Desmos graphing calculator directly into the math section. It can solve many systems of equations and geometry problems for you instantly. Learning to use Desmos effectively is the fastest cheat code to improving your Math score.
Understand Adaptive Testing: The Digital SAT is module-adaptive. How you perform on the first module determines the difficulty (and score ceiling) of the second module. You must treat the first module with extreme care – silly mistakes there can cap your maximum possible score.
In-Person SAT Prep vs. Live Online
Many parents search for “SAT prep classes near me,” hoping for a traditional classroom setting. However, most major providers have shifted away from local centers:
Kaplan and Princeton Review still run in-person classes, but only in select major cities.
Local Tutoring Centers exist, but curriculum quality varies wildly by location.
For most students, I think a Live Onlinecourse is the best choice. It offers the same structure and accountability as in-person learning but gives you access to the company’s best national instructors, rather than whoever happens to live in your town.
FAQ
Do I need a Digital SAT prep course?
The answer here is very likely yes. With college admissions being more competitive than ever, you’ll likely need a top-tier Digital SAT score to stand out from the crowd. And in order to get the score, you will almost certainly need a prep course of some kind, whether an online SAT prep course or old-school, in-person class.
How much do Digital SAT prep courses cost?
Digital SAT prep courses can cost anywhere from $100 up to $2,000 or more, depending on what features and level of support you need. On average though, most families spend between $300 and $1,000 on a Digital SAT prep course.
Will a Digital SAT prep course raise my score?
Compared to self-studying or no studying at all, a prep course will very likely raise your score. The Digital SAT is a tricky and difficult exam that you need test-specific strategies to master, and a prep course will provide the necessary material.
Do I need a SAT prep class?
You do not strictly need a SAT prep class to get a good score. Plenty of students reach their target score with free resources and a self-made study plan. That said, a structured SAT prep class can make a big difference if you struggle with discipline, feel lost about where to start, or need to raise your score quickly. Live online SAT prep classes and in-person courses provide a clear calendar, homework between sessions and a teacher who can answer questions in real time. If your student has already taken an official SAT and fallen short of their target, a focused prep class ahead of the next test date is often worth the investment.
Are online SAT prep classes as good as in-person ones?
In our experience, a good live online SAT prep class is just as effective as most in-person programs. The key drivers of score improvement are lesson quality, practice material and student effort, not whether the teacher is on a screen or in the same room. Online SAT prep classes also give you more schedule flexibility and access to top tutors, regardless of where you live.
Do I need more than one SAT book?
Many students do well with a single, solid SAT study guide plus online practice tests. However, if you are aiming for a top percentile score, pairing one big all-in-one SAT book with a second, more specialized resource (for example, a math-heavy workbook) can be helpful.
Editor's Choice 
Value Pick 
