Short answer: The cheapest taught SQE1 course from an established provider is QLTS School's SQE1 Basic at £1,990, followed by the College of Legal Practice at £2,200. The cheapest monthly plan is FQPS Academy at £79 a month. The cheapest complete question bank with full mocks is SQE1 Prep at £69.99 for life. The most expensive option is BPP in London at £7,100. Whatever you choose, the SRA's own fee of £2,006 sits on top and does not vary. Every price below was read from the provider's own website on 20 September 2026.
This is a price-ranked list, not a quality ranking. If you want the case for and against the three big names, read BARBRI vs BPP vs ULaw and the individual reviews of BARBRI, BPP and the University of Law. This post answers a narrower question: what does each route actually cost, and what do you give up as the price falls?
The one cost you cannot shop around
The SRA charges £2,006 for SQE1 (£1,003 for FLK1 and £1,003 for FLK2) for every assessment from September 2026 onwards, VAT exempt, payable when you book. A resit of one paper is £1,003; both papers again is £2,006. The fee is set by the assessment date, not the booking date, so there is no cheaper rate to lock in for January 2027. The full cost breakdown covers SQE2, admission and the rest.
That fixed £2,006 is the reason course price matters so much. A course is the only large number in the budget that you control.
Every SQE1 prep option ranked by price
Entry price first, cheapest at the top. "MCQs" means practice questions with explanations. Pass-rate claims are the provider's own; the SRA publishes no provider figures, so the denominator matters more than the headline.
| Provider | SQE1 price | Format | What you get | Pass-rate claim |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SQE1 Prep | £19.99 a month or £69.99 lifetime | Online, self-paced | 4,400+ MCQs with explanations, full FLK1 and FLK2 mocks, 5,500+ flashcards, study notes for all 144 topics; 5 free questions a day without paying | None claimed |
| Revise SQE (Fink Publishing) | Practice Assessments ebook bundle £32.40 (list £36); online FLK1 or FLK2 mock £40 each, £70 for both | Books, ebooks, audiobooks, online mocks | Per-subject revision guides, mock-exam books, two attempts at each online mock within six months | None claimed |
| Kinnu | £48 a month, 7-day free trial | App (desktop and mobile) | 3,000+ MCQs, 350+ study notes, 4,000+ flashcards, 4 mock exams, AI assistant | None claimed |
| FQPS Academy | £79 / £129 / £279 a month (Revision / Practice / Master), or £189 / £329 / £699 per three months | Online, self-paced, cancel anytime | 400+ / 1,200+ / 5,900+ MCQs, 2+2 / 4+4 / 7+7 FLK mocks, mentor and private tutor access; Master adds four one-to-one sessions | None published |
| Brigitte's FLK | SQE1 Bundle Pack £119.99 (list £241.86), six months' access | Notes and videos | Notes and guides for every subject, 140+ video explainers, 720 practice questions; extra 360-question mock sets £19.99 each | None claimed |
| Law Drills (Practice Works) | SQE1 Pro £195 one payment; SQE1 Max £395 | Online adaptive question bank | Adaptive bank with AI coach, access until 31 January 2027; Max adds at least 12 live tutorials and the premium mocks; free start with 30 credits | Self-reported, conditional on practice scores |
| QLTS School | £1,990 / £2,490 / £2,990 (Basic / Advantage / Premium) | Online, self-paced | 2,500+ MCQs, 5,000+ flashcards, 18 textbooks, 10 mocks (Basic) or 30 mocks (Advantage and Premium), tutor consultation; Premium adds two hours of one-to-one tutoring | 94%, but only among candidates who completed 25 or more mocks (July 2023) |
| College of Legal Practice | £2,200 | Online, 13, 20 or 40 weeks | 2,300+ MCQs, 10 timed progress tests plus 360 revision MCQs, 10 personal supervisions, live seminars, hard-copy manuals, 14 months' continued access | Not published |
| Law Training Centre | £2,700 (Exam-Track) or £2,900 (Flexi-Learn, up to 15 months' access) | Online, on demand | 1,500 MCQs plus 1,000+ mock questions and 2,000+ self-test questions, weekly live workshops, unlimited tutor support, Passplus (one extra attempt) | None stated |
| BARBRI | £2,999 (Accelerated 10 weeks or Focused 20 weeks), £3,299 (Flexible 40 weeks) | Online with learning coach | 3,200+ MCQs, 8 mock tests plus one fully simulated mock, unlimited coach sessions, free course retake within 12 months if you fail | 62% of those who completed at least 90% of the course (July 2025) |
| University of Law | £5,250 outside London, £6,650 London (2026/27 starts); £5,450 and £6,900 from June 2027 | Campus, 14 to 46 weeks, full- or part-time | Digital study manuals included, mocks throughout, revision app, weekly lecturer feedback | 76% first attempt in January 2026, from over 2,000 survey responses |
| BPP | £5,900 (Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Manchester, Leeds, Online), £7,100 London Holborn | Classroom or live online, 4 months full-time or 10 months part-time | Weekly small-group classes, hard-copy and online materials, MCQ practice, internal SQE1-style assessments, drop-ins and one-to-one tutor access | "80%", denominator not stated |
Prices read from each provider's own site on 20 September 2026. Providers change prices between intakes and some run discounts; treat this as the map, and confirm on the provider's page before you pay.
What changes as the price falls
The table sorts by money. What actually varies is four things, and it helps to know which one you are paying for.
Teaching. Above about £2,000 you are buying someone to explain the law to you: recorded lectures, live seminars, supervisions. Below it you are buying practice: questions, mocks, flashcards and notes that assume you can learn the substance from the materials.
Human accountability. BPP and the University of Law run cohorts with timetables and tutors who notice if you vanish. The College of Legal Practice gives ten personal supervisions. BARBRI gives a learning coach. Below £400 nobody chases you, which is either a feature or the reason you fail.
Guarantees. BARBRI's SQE Guarantee lets you retake the course free within 12 months if you fail; Law Training Centre's Passplus gives one extra attempt at the course. Neither refunds the SRA's £1,003 per paper.
Volume. This runs the other way. The cheapest tier is not short of questions: SQE1 Prep has 4,400+, FQPS Master 5,900+, BARBRI 3,200+. What separates providers on volume is the quality of the explanations and whether the mocks are timed and scored like the real thing. The mock score decoder shows how provider mock scores translate.
The total, with the exam fee included
| Route | Course | SRA fee | Total for a first attempt |
|---|---|---|---|
| Question bank only (SQE1 Prep lifetime) | £69.99 | £2,006 | £2,075.99 |
| Question bank plus books (SQE1 Prep lifetime plus the 13-ebook bundle) | £119.98 | £2,006 | £2,125.98 |
| Six months of a monthly platform (FQPS Revision) | £474 | £2,006 | £2,480 |
| Cheapest taught course (QLTS School Basic) | £1,990 | £2,006 | £3,996 |
| College of Legal Practice | £2,200 | £2,006 | £4,206 |
| BARBRI Accelerated or Focused | £2,999 | £2,006 | £5,005 |
| University of Law outside London | £5,250 | £2,006 | £7,256 |
| BPP London | £7,100 | £2,006 | £9,106 |
Add £1,003 for each paper you resit. Under the January 2027 format that is still one fee per paper, so a candidate who fails FLK2 alone pays £1,003 to sit it again, not £2,006.
Who should pay for the expensive end
This is not a post that pretends everyone should buy the cheapest thing.
- Your firm is paying. Sponsored trainees usually go where the firm sends them, and the price is irrelevant to you. Pick on timetable and cohort instead.
- You have never studied these subjects. Non-law graduates coming straight from the PGDL decision often need teaching before practice makes sense. A question bank tells you what you got wrong; it does not build the subject from nothing.
- You need external structure. If you know from experience that self-set deadlines slip, a cohort with a timetable is worth money. Be honest about this before you buy the cheap option and then buy the expensive one in March.
- You failed once on self-study and cannot see why. A tutor's diagnosis has real value on a second attempt, although a well-read score report and the resit guide get most people there.
Who should not
- Law graduates with recent knowledge. You have already been taught contract, tort, land, equity, criminal and public law. What you lack is practice-area content and exam technique, and both are cheaper to buy than a second degree's worth of lectures.
- Disciplined self-studiers. Candidates pass every sitting on self-study with a question bank and books. The evidence for expensive courses raising pass rates is thin, because every provider's figure is self-selected.
- Anyone paying in a weaker currency. International candidates already carry the £2,006 fee; the Indian, Nigerian and Pakistani guides work through the sums.
- Anyone whose real gap is volume. If you know the law and keep failing mocks, more questions with better explanations fix that. More lectures do not.
Monthly or one-off?
Monthly plans look cheap until you multiply them. Six months of Kinnu is £288; six months of FQPS Revision is £474; six months of FQPS Master is £1,674. Law Drills' £195 runs to 31 January 2027 regardless of when you buy. SQE1 Prep's lifetime plan costs the same as three and a half months of its monthly plan, so anyone studying for four months or more should buy lifetime, and a resit costs nothing extra.
The other monthly trap is cancelling too early. Most candidates want their question bank open until the day before the exam and for a resit if it comes to that, so price the plan over the whole run-up, not the first month.
What is genuinely free
- The SRA's own sample questions: 220 questions written by the exam's authors, the best free calibration there is. Our guide to using them explains what they can and cannot tell you.
- Trials and free tiers: Kinnu's seven-day trial, Law Drills' 30 free credits, and SQE1 Prep's five free questions a day plus the free study plan.
- The rest of the free layer is mapped in free SQE1 resources and the under-£100 plan.
Do not pay twice
- Manuals inside the fee. The University of Law includes its digital study manuals in the course fee; BPP includes its materials. Do not buy the books separately as well.
- SQE2 bundles when you only need SQE1. BARBRI's SQE Complete Prep is £5,499 for both stages. It is only a saving if you are certain you will use the SQE2 half with the same provider.
- Two question banks. One bank, worked to exhaustion, beats two banks half-used. Add mocks from a second source (Revise SQE's £70 pair is the usual choice) if you want a fresh set of questions late on.
- A course whose mocks are the old shape. From January 2027 each paper is 170 questions in two sessions of 85 with fixed subjects per session. Ask any provider whether its mocks have been rebuilt for that before you rely on them as a rehearsal.
What to do next
- Write down the £2,006 first. It stops the course fee looking like the whole cost.
- Decide which of the four things above you are actually short of: teaching, accountability, a guarantee, or practice volume.
- Buy the cheapest option that supplies that thing. For most law graduates and most resitters it is practice volume, and the pricing page shows what £69.99 covers.
- Keep the SRA sample questions as your yardstick whatever you buy.
