The rule for this whole article
Every resource below is described by what it is FOR. There is no single best. There is best-for-learning, best-for-drilling, best-for-simulating. Prices checked October 2026; sales move them constantly.
Free: the foundation (use all of these)
- Professor Messer's videos + notes. The free video course that carries thousands to passes. Best for: first explanation of everything. Limitation: passive. Pair with drilling or retention leaks.
- CompTIA's own objectives PDF. The exam's table of contents, free. Best for: verifying coverage. If a resource doesn't map to it, the resource is entertainment.
- SecLern free tier. Original questions with full explanations, practice drills, labs, games. Best for: daily drilling with weak-spot targeting at $0.
Cheap ($10-25 on sale): the workhorses
- Jason Dion's Udemy courses. Video plus practice exams, perpetually 'on sale' around $10-15. Best for: structured video + exam-feel questions with explanations. Buy on sale; never at list price.
- A used study guide (book). Previous-edition books go cheap and 80% transfers. Best for: readers who retain from pages. Check the edition matches your exam version for the delta topics.
Premium ($59-99): the simulators
- MeasureUp ($59-99). Official CompTIA partner practice. Best for: exam-day familiarity from an approved source.
- Boson ExSim-Max ($99). The realism benchmark with deep explanations. Best for: final verification when money is less tight than time. Three exams, hundreds of questions, one year of access.
The cheapest stack that passes
Messer (free) to learn + SecLern free to drill daily + Dion on sale ($10-15) for exam-feel questions + the objectives PDF to verify coverage. Total: under $20. Add Boson only if simulations still feel alien two weeks out.
A sample week with two resources
Monday-Friday: 30 minutes of Messer videos (one domain section) + 20 minutes of SecLern drilling on THAT section the same day. Learn then train, never one without the other. Saturday: one lab or PBQ set plus ports/acronym games. Sunday: off, or flashcards only. Weekend Dion practice test every second week, reviewed question by question. Total cost if Dion is on sale: under $20 plus the exam fee.
What to avoid
- Anything selling so-called 'actual test content'. Stolen content risks your certification and teaches memorization of possibly-wrong answers.
- Single-resource studying. Video-only learners fail simulations; question-only learners fail scenarios. Learn, drill, simulate: three verbs, ideally three resources.
- Where SecLern fits: the drilling + simulating layer with weak-spot targeting. Videos teach; we train. Most passers use both, and our free tier is built to be the free half of that stack.
How to judge any new resource in five minutes
Ask four questions. First, does it map to the official objectives, line by line, or does it sell a vibe? Second, does it explain why wrong answers are wrong, or only mark the right one? Third, does it make you produce an answer, or only let you recognize one? Fourth, does it tell you what to do next when you miss, or leave you to guess?
A resource that fails the third question is entertainment. A resource that fails the fourth is a question dump with a login. Neither is automatically bad, but neither will carry you to a pass on its own.
The four jobs, and what fills each
Learning needs explanation: a video course, a book, or written lessons. Drilling needs questions with explanations and repetition over time. Simulating needs full-length, timed sittings that feel like the exam. Verifying needs the official objectives document and, ideally, a second source for any fact you plan to rely on.
Most study plans fail because they buy four versions of the same job. Three video courses is not a stack. One course, one question bank, one simulator, and the objectives PDF is a stack.
What we do not sell
We do not sell stolen test content, and we do not claim a pass guarantee. We do not sell a video course, so if you learn best from long-form video, keep the free course in your stack. We do not have a mobile app store listing. We do sell original practice questions, labs, and lessons, and the free tier is a real free tier, not a trial that expires.
That matters for this comparison because a recommendation from us is not neutral. We include SecLern in the stack because we built it, and we say so. Judge the rest of the list on the four questions above.
Three budgets, three honest stacks
Zero dollars: the free video course, the official objectives PDF, and the free tier here. This works. It is slower, because you have to be disciplined about daily drilling without a paid nudge.
About twenty dollars: add one discounted exam-question set for exam feel. Buy it on sale, use it once properly, and review every miss. Do not collect question banks.
About one hundred dollars: add a reputable simulator for the final two weeks. Use it for two full sittings, not for daily practice. The value is fidelity and explanation depth, not volume.
What actually predicts a pass
The people who pass are not the ones who bought the most. They are the ones who answered a lot of questions they had not seen before, reviewed the misses honestly, and sat full simulations under time. Resources support those three behaviors. If a purchase does not increase one of them, it is a distraction with a receipt.
Where to go next
This page is the general stack. The per-certification lists go deeper on one exam at a time, and they are the pages we update when a vendor changes a price or a version: Security+ websites, Security+ practice tests, Network+ resources, A+ resources, CCNA labs and CySA+ resources.
Read one of those once you have picked your exam, and use this page to decide what kind of resource you are actually missing. The order matters. A candidate who buys a second video course when the gap is graded practice has bought the same job twice, which is the mistake described above, and no amount of discounting makes it a stack.
A note on prices and claims
Prices in this guide were checked in October 2026 and sales move them constantly. We do not quote competitor pass rates because we cannot verify them, and neither can most of the sites that do. Treat any specific pass-rate claim, including one from a vendor you like, as marketing until it comes with a method and a sample.