Physics & Maths Tutor (PMT) vs Save My Exams: A full comparison for GCSE and A-Level students

Physics & Maths Tutor (PMT) and Save My Exams are two of the most-used revision resources in the UK. They both help students prepare for GCSE and A-Level exams, but they take very different approaches: one is a free ad-supported library of past papers and notes, the other is a paid platform of examiner-written resources. Here's how they compare and which one fits which student.

Physics & Maths Tutor (PMT) is a free, ad-supported UK revision website that's been running since 2013. Despite the name, it covers nine subjects across GCSE, IGCSE and A-Level: Maths, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Economics, Geography, English, Psychology and Computer Science. The site is built around downloadable PDFs and HTML pages: past papers with mark schemes, topic-organised exam questions, revision notes, worksheets and solution banks.

Strengths. PMT is genuinely free at the point of use and has one of the deepest board-specific past-paper archives online. It ranks strongly on Google for pretty much any UK spec topic, which is why so many students end up there whether they meant to or not. There's also a paid side with Easter revision courses, Oxbridge and medical admissions prep (PAT, UCAT), and one-to-one tuition from around £20 an hour.

Where it's less strong. The site is static: no accounts, no progress tracking, no personalisation. There aren't any video lessons, flashcards, quizzes or AI marking, so it's a reference library rather than a study platform. Ads and cookie overlays can feel heavy on mobile, and the subject range doesn't stretch to KS3, IB or AP.

Save My Exams (SME) is a UK-founded subscription revision platform launched in 2017, positioning itself as "The Home of Revision". It covers GCSE, IGCSE, AS, A-Level, IB, O-Level and AP across AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC, CCEA and Cambridge International. The core content is examiner-written revision notes, topic-tagged exam questions, past papers with mark schemes, flashcards and mock exams. Around £48 a year on the annual plan, with a partial free tier.

Strengths. The subject and exam-board coverage is unusually broad, especially for Cambridge International students who often struggle to find UK-quality resources for their spec. Notes and questions are written by teachers and examiners, and the topic-tagging makes it easy to drill a specific area. SME claims 2.5 million+ students worldwide use the platform.

Where it's less strong. The platform is text-first: video teaching is limited and AI marking isn't a headline feature.

A feature-by-feature look at how the two platforms line up.

Honestly, the best move is to find what works for you, and it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Plenty of students use PMT's past papers alongside Save My Exams' notes.

What's great is that PMT is free at every point, ad-supported. Save My Exams has a partial free tier before the annual plan kicks in at around £48.

Broadly, PMT suits students building their own revision routine around free past papers and topic questions. Save My Exams suits students who want examiner-written notes and a polished, board-mapped experience. If you want video teaching plus notes plus AI-marked practice in one place, Cognito is worth adding to the shortlist.

Cognito is designed to be an all-in-one platform that supports you from learning the content, to remembering it, to knowing how to apply it in your exams. So when you sign up, you can add all of your subjects to your dashboard, ready to go, as you can see below.

Each subject is broken down into sections and subtopics, all mapped precisely to your specification. That means you only ever learn what you actually need to know for your paper, and you can see at a glance what's left to cover.

Each topic has a short video lesson and/or beautifully designed revision notes, and some have a little cheat sheet that summarises everything on one page. It's good for last-minute revision, or printing out and sticking on the wall.

Once you've learned a topic, you can build your own quiz mixing any set of topics you've covered. Cognito uses spaced repetition and interleaving to decide what to bring back and when, adapting to how you're doing. These are the two study techniques with the strongest evidence base in cognitive science.

And when you're ready for exam-style practice, you can work through real exam questions with typed answers. Then either self-mark against the mark scheme point by point, or use AI marking to check your answer against the examiner's points.