Pastest vs FRCEM Tutor vs MRCEM Success comparison

If you are sitting MRCEM Primary, MRCEM Intermediate SBA or any FRCEM written component in the next six months, the qbank choice you make this week is one of the few decisions that will materially change your pass mark. Three names come up in every WhatsApp study group and Reddit thread: Pastest, FRCEM Tutor and MRCEM Success. They are not interchangeable. Each was built by a different team, prices differently, and has a different temperament when you actually sit down to grind 100 questions a night after a busy resus shift. See also our guide to the best MRCEM Primary question bank for 2026. See also our guide to EMF Premium vs Pastest vs MRCEM Success compared.

This is the head-to-head a registrar would write for a colleague over coffee. No affiliate spin, no “all three are great”. By the end you will know which one to subscribe to first and when to add a second.

TL;DR — which qbank for which exam?

MRCEM Primary: Start with MRCEM Success for the user interface and curriculum mapping, then layer FRCEM Tutor for sheer question volume (the 3,500 SBAs plus the 3,000-question Knowledge Tutor is the biggest haul on the market for £20–£35). Pastest is a respectable third option if you prefer their textbook-style explanations and AI Tutor mode, but at £60–£80 for three to twelve months it is significantly pricier per question than the other two.

MRCEM Intermediate SBA: MRCEM Success is the consensus first pick — recall-flavoured questions, clinical relevance, low price. Add FRCEM Tutor in the final 6–8 weeks for fresh stems and timed mock practice. Pastest currently has no live MRCEM Intermediate product page (their MRCEM line is Primary-only as of May 2026), so it drops out of the three-way race at this stage.

FRCEM written (SBA / final): Coverage is thinnest across all three. FRCEM Tutor branding implies FRCEM-level coverage but the question banks themselves currently stop at MRCEM Intermediate SBA; for the FRCEM SBA you will be pairing one of these qbanks with RCEM Learning, recall papers and a structured curriculum resource. See also our guide to our wider FRCEM SBA question bank comparison.

EM Final Exams earns no commission on the products reviewed below. The only product we sell is EMF Premium, disclosed wherever it appears in the comparison.

Prices below are in GBP. As a rough guide for 2026: £1 ≈ $1.27 USD ≈ ₹107 INR — check current FX at xe.com before purchasing.

Quick decision matrix

What are Pastest, FRCEM Tutor and MRCEM Success — and who runs them?

Pastest is the long-established UK medical-exam publisher most candidates first met during finals or MRCP revision. The brand has been around for decades, runs on a Shopify-style subscription model, and its MRCEM line is currently a single product: MRCEM Primary. Their pitch is a polished interface, an integrated textbook, 3D anatomy visuals and an “AI Tutor” mode that lets you ask follow-up questions on any stem.

FRCEM Tutor is a specialist EM-only platform built by emergency medicine clinicians. Despite the name, the live qbanks cover MRCEM Primary (3,500+ SBAs plus a 3,000-question “Knowledge Tutor” spaced-repetition tool) and MRCEM Intermediate SBA (1,250+ questions). It is a progressive web app, installable on phone or desktop, and includes peer-benchmarked performance histograms.

MRCEM Success was launched in 2015 by a team of UK doctors and now claims over 22,000–25,000 doctors have used it. It is the most “MRCEM-native” of the three, with 3,100+ Primary questions, 1,800+ Intermediate questions, 1,000+ revision notes, recall-style stems and an interface candidates consistently describe as the cleanest of the lot.

How do they compare at a glance?

Prices verified on the providers’ own pages on 30 May 2026. Pastest’s MRCEM Primary product page currently displays the MSRA pricing widget (£39.99 / £59.99 / £79.99 for 3, 6 and 12 months) — the MRCEM-specific tier shown elsewhere on the site is £59.99 / £69.99 / £79.99 for 3, 6 and 12 months. Always confirm the live checkout price before subscribing.

Which has the biggest question bank?

On headcount, FRCEM Tutor wins MRCEM Primary clearly: 3,500 core SBAs plus 3,000 Knowledge Tutor items gives ~6,500 attempts. MRCEM Success has 3,100+ Primary SBAs. Pastest sits at 1,500 — smaller, but with longer textbook-style explanations.

For MRCEM Intermediate SBA, MRCEM Success leads (1,800+) over FRCEM Tutor (1,250+). Pastest has no current Intermediate product.

Volume is not everything. Diminishing returns hit on the second pass — by then you have seen every stem twice and you are mostly drilling the 15–20% you keep getting wrong. A 1,500-question bank done twice and properly reviewed will out-perform a 3,500-question bank rushed once.

Which has the most realistic, exam-style questions?

The repeated theme in candidate feedback — across review blogs, social media and study-group threads — is that MRCEM Success questions feel the closest to the real paper. Their stems are short, the distractors are tight, and they openly market recall-flavoured questions written from past papers. Testimonials on their own site phrase it the same way: “the closest to the real exam”, “more so than any other website”.

FRCEM Tutor stems tend to run a notch longer, with more illustrated teaching content and embedded video. Useful when you are learning a topic, slightly more time-consuming when you are speed-drilling. Their Knowledge Tutor — quick-fire facts on spaced repetition — is the standout learning feature on the platform and is what many users cite as the reason they pick it for Primary.

Pastest questions are more “textbook with an SBA wrapper”. The explanations are long, the integrated textbook is genuinely useful, and the AI Tutor lets you ask “why is X wrong?” in plain English on any stem. The trade-off is that Pastest questions are less aggressively engineered to mimic the RCEM examiners’ style. If you have used Pastest for MRCP or MRCS, you will recognise the house style.

How do the prices stack up?

This is where the gap is widest.

• FRCEM Tutor is the cheapest of the three: £20 for two months, £25 for three, £30 for four, £35 for six. Per question, the Primary bundle works out to a fraction of a penny — easily the best £/SBA on the market.
• MRCEM Success starts at £30 per qbank (Primary or Intermediate, sold separately). Tiers scale up for longer subscriptions on the membership-levels page; the £30 entry point is highly competitive.
• Pastest is the premium option: £59.99 for three months, £69.99 for six, £79.99 for twelve. You are paying for the polish, the textbook, the AI Tutor and the brand. Discount codes (e.g. their May 2026 MAYBANK10 / MAYBANK25 promotions) bring it down 10–25% during sales.

An honest framing: if budget is constraining your decision, FRCEM Tutor and MRCEM Success together will still cost you less than a single Pastest annual subscription, and between them they will outperform a solo Pastest run for the Primary.

What is the mock-exam mode like on each?

All three offer unlimited timed tests — there is no artificial cap on how many mocks you can run. The differences are subtle:

• FRCEM Tutor auto-calculates time based on question count or lets you set a custom limit. The peer-benchmarked histogram is the standout: your score sits inside a daily-updated distribution of every other candidate who has done the same mock, which is the best single predictor of readiness available across the three platforms.
• MRCEM Success mocks are described by users (and in their own testimonials) as “extremely useful and representative of what comes up”. The interface for setting up a fully-customisable revision or mock session is the cleanest of the three.
• Pastest offers a tutor-mode versus timed-test split, with the AI Tutor available in tutor mode. Mock data is shown against the overall cohort, but there is no real-time histogram in the same way FRCEM Tutor presents it.

If your number-one source of exam-day anxiety is “am I actually ready?”, the FRCEM Tutor histogram is the feature most likely to give you a defensible answer.

How good are the performance analytics?

All three offer the obvious metrics: percentage correct, time per question, breakdown by topic, flagged-question lists. The genuinely differentiating features are:

• FRCEM Tutor’s peer histogram — the only one that shows where you sit in the live distribution of candidates, updated daily.
• MRCEM Success’s subcategory breakdowns — granular enough that you can see, for example, that you are 82% on toxicology but 41% on ophthalmology, and rebuild your last fortnight around that gap.
• Pastest’s performance insights — clean, well-presented, but more focused on weak-area drilling than peer comparison.

Is the content kept up to date?

RCEM updates its syllabus, guidelines and SLOs regularly, and a qbank that lags by a year will quietly feed you outdated guideline pathways.

• MRCEM Success explicitly markets “up to date guidelines and algorithms” and is mapped to the 2021 RCEM Clinical Syllabus.
• FRCEM Tutor notes its content is reviewed in response to user feedback and is mapped to current SLOs.
• Pastest states questions are mapped to the latest MRCEM Primary syllabus.

None of the three publishes a public changelog. If currency matters to you (it should — toxicology, sepsis and trauma algorithms move every couple of years), use the free trial on each to spot-check a handful of recent-guideline questions before subscribing.

How well do they work on a phone?

This matters more than candidates expect. The realistic study pattern on EM rotation is “ten questions on the night shift coffee break, fifteen on the bus home”. A clunky mobile experience kills your daily streak.

• FRCEM Tutor is the most mobile-native of the three. It is built as a progressive web app you can install to the home screen on iOS or Android, and the layout is engineered mobile-first.
• MRCEM Success offers full mobile compatibility through a responsive web app. Candidates consistently call out the mobile UI as the best of the three for daily drilling.
• Pastest is web-responsive and works on a phone, but the experience is more obviously a desktop product shrunk down. Long explanations and the AI Tutor are best on a tablet or laptop.

What are real candidates saying?

Dr Anja Guldemond, an Emergency Medicine ST1 in the North West who passed MRCEM Intermediate first time in January 2026, wrote up her revision strategy on Medics & Me. She used RCEM Learning as her primary resource and added MRCEM Success and FRCEM Tutor alongside it: “I worked through each question bank once and then repeated all the questions I initially got wrong until I could answer them confidently.”

That pattern shows up repeatedly across the doctorsUK and JuniorDoctorsUK communities: pick two qbanks, do each once, then drill your wrong-answer log. Almost no one who passes uses three. Candidates who fail more often have three subscriptions and finished none.

The recurring summary from those threads:

• “MRCEM Success is enough to pass both the Primary and SBA” — but use the textbook sections and ramp up properly in the final weeks.
• “Do FRCEM Tutor and MRCEM Success, then do the MRCEM Learning practice tests” — and above all else, learn the anatomy.
• “MRCEM Success felt easier than the real Primary” — a recurring caveat that supports pairing it with FRCEM Tutor (whose stems run harder) for Primary specifically.

What are the pros and cons of each?

Pastest

Pros: Cleanest, most polished interface of the three. Genuinely useful integrated textbook with searchable content. AI Tutor mode is the only one of the three that lets you ask follow-up questions in plain English. 3D anatomy imagery is a nice-to-have for the Primary. Strong brand recognition and customer-support infrastructure.

Cons: Smallest Primary bank at 1,500 questions. No live MRCEM Intermediate product. Most expensive of the three (£60–£80 vs £20–£35 elsewhere). Question style is more textbook than RCEM-flavoured. No peer-benchmarked histogram. Mobile experience is web-responsive rather than mobile-first.

FRCEM Tutor

Pros: Best value by a long stretch — £20–£35 for a Primary subscription is hard to argue with. Largest combined question pool (3,500 SBAs + 3,000 Knowledge Tutor). Knowledge Tutor’s spaced-repetition design is unique among the three. Peer-benchmarked histogram is the single best “am I ready?” tool on the market. Installable as a mobile app. Built specifically for EM candidates by EM clinicians.

Cons: UI is functional rather than beautiful — looks dated next to Pastest. Stems run longer, which slows down speed-drilling. No AI assistance. Intermediate bank is the smallest of the live options (1,250+ vs 1,800+ on MRCEM Success). No FRCEM-level final-written coverage despite the brand name.

MRCEM Success

Pros: Most “MRCEM-native” of the three — recall-flavoured stems, exam-pattern distractors, clinically grounded. Largest Intermediate SBA bank (1,800+). Consistently praised UI. Strong customer service and responsive feedback on flagged questions. 1,000+ revision notes act as a built-in textbook. Mature platform with 25,000+ alumni and 95%+ recommend rate per their own data.

Cons: Repeatedly described in candidate feedback as “slightly easier than the real exam”, so on its own may underprepare you for the hardest Primary distractors — pairing helps. No peer benchmarking. No AI features. No spaced-repetition tool. Primary and Intermediate are sold as separate subscriptions, which adds up if you are sitting both within a year.

Which one should you actually subscribe to first?

Honest answer, with the caveats stated:

• You have £30–£40 total and need to pass MRCEM Primary: Subscribe to FRCEM Tutor for three to four months (£25–£30). Use the Knowledge Tutor daily, work through the main bank twice, and supplement with RCEM Learning’s free anatomy content. This is the highest-yield-per-pound combination.
• You have £60–£70 total and want the best chance at first-attempt MRCEM Primary: Pair MRCEM Success (£30 entry tier) with FRCEM Tutor (£20–£30). Do MRCEM Success first for the curriculum mapping, then FRCEM Tutor for the harder stems and the peer histogram in the final fortnight.
• You are sitting MRCEM Intermediate SBA: MRCEM Success is the default first pick on volume, clinical relevance and price. Add FRCEM Tutor in the last six to eight weeks for additional timed-mock practice.
• You strongly prefer polished UX, learn well from long explanations and want AI follow-up: Pastest is the only option that delivers all three. Worth the premium if those features matter more to you than raw question count.
• You are an FRCEM SBA / final candidate: None of the three covers this level adequately. Build your revision around RCEM Learning, recall papers and a structured curriculum resource, and use the qbanks above only for foundational reinforcement.

How should you actually use a qbank to pass?

The qbank you pick matters less than how you use it. The pattern that consistently produces first-attempt passes:

1. Plan around three months out. Most successful candidates revise intensively for 8–12 weeks rather than half-heartedly for six months. Motivation collapses past the three-month mark.
2. First pass in tutor mode. Slow, read every explanation, build the underlying knowledge.
3. Second pass in timed mode. Build speed and identify your wrong-answer pattern. This is where the peer histogram on FRCEM Tutor pays for itself.
4. Drill your flagged and wrong questions to mastery. The final fortnight should be almost entirely your wrong-answer log, not new questions.
5. Two full mock exams in the final ten days. Sit them at the time of day your exam is scheduled, with the same length break, in exam conditions.
6. Layer RCEM Learning throughout. Free with your RCEM membership, and the closest material to the examiners’ minds. Candidate after candidate names it as the single most important resource for Intermediate in particular.

FAQs

Is one qbank enough to pass MRCEM Primary?

Yes, candidates pass on a single qbank routinely. MRCEM Success on its own has carried thousands of candidates through Primary on first attempt. The risk with a single bank is exposure bias — you only see one team’s interpretation of the syllabus. Two banks is the sweet spot. Three is overkill.

Is MRCEM Success too easy?

“Slightly easier than the real exam” is a recurring caveat in candidate feedback. The fix is not to drop it — its recall-style stems and clinical relevance are valuable — but to pair it with FRCEM Tutor’s harder, longer stems in the final weeks of Primary preparation.

Does FRCEM Tutor cover FRCEM-level written exams?

Despite the name, the live FRCEM Tutor qbanks currently top out at MRCEM Intermediate SBA. The brand reflects the platform’s broader EM-revision intent rather than current content scope. For FRCEM SBA / final written components you will need to look beyond all three qbanks discussed here.

Can I get a free trial of all three?

Yes. Pastest offers a free trial period through their sign-up flow. FRCEM Tutor has a free demo on both the Primary and Intermediate product pages. MRCEM Success offers sample questions through their dashboard demo links. Use all three free trials before committing — the UX differences are easier felt than described.

How long before my exam should I subscribe?

Three months is the sweet spot for most candidates. The two-month FRCEM Tutor tier (£20) suits late deciders or candidates who only need a focused top-up. The six-month MRCEM Success subscription is overkill unless you are sitting both Primary and Intermediate in the same window.

Are the questions written by UK doctors?

MRCEM Success is explicit that it was founded by a team of UK doctors in 2015. FRCEM Tutor is built by practising EM clinicians. Pastest has a long editorial track record across UK medical exams. All three are written with the UK RCEM syllabus as the reference point, not generic international EM content.

Does Pastest’s AI Tutor actually help?

It is the most genuinely novel feature on Pastest in the past two years. Whether it justifies the price premium depends on how you learn. If you ask “why is this wrong?” and “what’s the underlying physiology here?” a lot, the AI Tutor saves you from constantly switching to a textbook or search engine. If you mostly want to drill questions, it adds little.

What about Passmedicine, BMJ OnExamination or MRCEM Expert?

BMJ OnExamination has historically had a large MRCEM bank, with strong cohort comparison data and mock-exam volume — it is a credible fourth option, particularly if you have already used it for other royal college exams. Passmedicine has lighter MRCEM-specific coverage and is more often used as a supplement than a core resource. MRCEM Expert is a smaller, less widely used platform — some candidates rate its question style highly, but its alumni base is much smaller than the three covered here.

Do I need to learn anatomy from outside the qbanks?

Yes. Anatomy is the single most cited weak area among MRCEM Primary candidates. None of the three qbanks alone is sufficient anatomy preparation. Pair your chosen qbank with TeachMeAnatomy, an anatomy atlas, or the anatomy modules in RCEM Learning.

Are there discount codes for these qbanks?

Pastest runs seasonal promotions (10–25% off) — at the time of writing, May 2026 codes MAYBANK10 and MAYBANK25 were live. Verify any code is still active on the provider site before paying, as promotional codes expire frequently. FRCEM Tutor and MRCEM Success rarely discount publicly; the headline prices are the prices. Email the provider directly for institutional or group discounts if you are organising a study group.

What if I have already started with one qbank — should I switch?

No. Sunk-cost aside, switching mid-revision wastes the most valuable asset you have — your flagged-question and wrong-answer log inside whichever platform you started with. Finish what you started, then layer a second qbank in the final four to eight weeks if you need broader exposure.

How does this fit with a structured revision course?

Qbanks and structured courses are complements, not substitutes. A qbank tests application; a course covers the curriculum systematically. The strongest pattern combines one qbank for active retrieval with one structured resource for coverage.

The honest bottom line

If you want the punchiest summary: MRCEM Success for exam fidelity, FRCEM Tutor for value and volume, Pastest for polish and the AI Tutor. The two cheaper options pair to form the most cost-effective two-bank combination for MRCEM Primary in 2026. For MRCEM Intermediate, MRCEM Success on its own — with a layered FRCEM Tutor month in the final stretch — is the route most first-attempt passes follow.

Whichever you pick, what matters most is the second pass, the wrong-answer log, and finishing what you start. Pick within the next 48 hours, subscribe, and stop researching qbanks.

Facts last verified 30 May 2026. Question counts, prices and product availability change. Always confirm current pricing and tier inclusions on each provider’s checkout page before subscribing.

Next step: If you want a structured, curriculum-mapped course alongside whichever qbank you pick, browse our MRCEM and FRCEM revision courses at emfinalexams.com.

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