If you want to familiarize yourself with the SAT or PSAT on a budget, you could buy a test-prep book. You can even find many of them for free at your local library. But these books are usually huge, and they don't work well for everyone. You might try browsing the collection of test-prep books at your local library or book store, and you might find one that is written in a way that makes sense to you. Or you might not. If you search at your library, you may also find that the books are out of date. The SAT changed its format radically in the spring of 2024, and most libraries don't turn over their collections very rapidly. If you'd prefer an online course to a thick book, there is also Khan Academy's SAT Prep Course, which was developed in partnership with the College Board (the company that creates the SAT) and is also available for free.
Assuming that you're already reasonably well-educated and you don't need a three-pound test-prep book or a 50-hour course, why not just take practice tests, which are freely available from the very company that writes the real tests? The College Board publishes 7 practice tests that you can download in PDF format, and 7 digital practice tests that you can take using their Bluebook
app. They have also very generously made available a databank of nearly 3000 practice problems.
Unfortunately, the free resources provided by the College Board have their flaws. The practice tests and the practice problems all have explanation
, but the explanations are, according to popular opinion, not worth much. The practice problem databank is useful, but inconvenient. We here at CheapSATPrep offer preparation materials, some free and some for a small fee, to accompany the official College Board resources.