A 65% on a BARBRI mock and a 65% on a QLTS mock are not the same thing. The providers set their own difficulty levels, and those levels vary considerably from the actual SRA exam. Treating your mock percentage as a direct proxy for exam readiness is one of the most common calibration errors candidates make.
The figures below are community-reported: aggregated from candidate-reported data on Reddit r/solicitors, The Student Room SQE threads, and SQE study groups on Facebook and Discord between 2023 and 2026. The SRA does not publish comparative data, and no provider has formally validated these numbers. Treat them as directional estimates. The patterns are consistent enough across multiple cohorts to be useful.
The adjustment figure shows the average difference between a candidate's mock score and their real exam score. A positive number means candidates scored higher on the real exam than on the mock (the mock was harder). A negative number means candidates scored lower on the real exam (the mock was easier than the real thing).
| Provider | Adjustment (mock vs real exam) | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| QLTS School | +14.5% | Mocks much harder than real exam |
| Revise SQE | +2.7% | Closest match to real exam difficulty |
| BPP | -4.5% | Mocks slightly easier than real exam |
| ULaw | -8.0% | Mocks easier than real exam |
| BARBRI | -9.1% | Mocks easier than real exam |
| SRA sample questions | -12.0% | Much easier than real exam |
Read the table like this: a BARBRI candidate scoring 70% on their mock should expect roughly 61% on the real exam. A QLTS candidate scoring 55% should expect roughly 70% on the real exam. The SRA sample questions, which many candidates use as a baseline, are the least predictive of real exam performance.
BPP, ULaw, and BARBRI all show the same directional pattern: their mocks are easier than the real exam. This is not a coincidence. Course providers have commercial incentives to give candidates a positive experience and maintain confidence throughout the course. Mock exams that regularly cause candidates to panic in week four of a £3,000 course are bad for retention and referrals.
This does not make their mocks worthless. High-quality question banks with good explanations serve a clear purpose in content learning. The issue is treating your BARBRI percentage as a reliable pass prediction. A 72% on a BARBRI mock does not mean you will pass with margin to spare.
QLTS School stands out as an outlier. Their mocks are consistently harder than the real exam, which makes them uncomfortable to sit but unusually useful as a stress test. Candidates who score 60% on a QLTS mock and panic are often in a stronger position than their score suggests.
Community data puts Revise SQE at the tightest correlation with real exam difficulty, with candidates scoring an average of 2.7% higher on the real exam than on Revise SQE mocks. For a benchmark score, Revise SQE gives you the most honest signal of where you currently stand.
The caveat is question volume. Revise SQE has a smaller bank than BARBRI or Law Drills. Candidates using Revise SQE as their primary question source may exhaust the bank before their exam date and run out of unseen material for final practice.
The 170 SRA sample questions are free and published by the regulator, which gives them an authority they do not deserve as a difficulty benchmark. Community data puts them 12 percentage points easier than the real exam. Scoring well on SRA samples tells you that you understand the format of the question. It does not tell you whether you can pass.
For a full list of every free SQE1 question source, including the SRA samples and six other providers, see the complete free SQE1 questions guide.
No single mock gives you a complete picture. Providers differ in question style, answer explanation quality, topic coverage distribution, and difficulty. Relying on one provider means you are also inheriting its blind spots.
A practical approach for the final six to eight weeks before the exam:
The candidates who tend to over-estimate their readiness are those who have scored consistently well on a single easy provider and have never sat a harder set of questions under timed conditions.
Mock difficulty calibration is not uniform across subject areas. Community reports suggest that course-provider mocks tend to be particularly generous in Business Law and Practice, where real exam questions frequently involve multi-step application across several legal areas simultaneously. Criminal Law and Dispute Resolution are areas where mock and real exam difficulty track more closely.
This means a high aggregate mock score can mask a significant vulnerability. You might be averaging 72% overall, but if your Business Law and Practice questions came from an easy bank and you have never tested yourself on harder integrated questions in that area, the overall figure is misleading.
The SRA does not publish a fixed pass mark, but the indicative benchmark sits around 56 to 60% depending on the sitting. Candidates aiming to pass with some margin typically target 65% to 68% on their primary mock provider.
The January 2026 results breakdown gives the full historical data across six sittings, including the pass rate trend and the consistent FLK1-FLK2 gap.
Once you adjust for provider difficulty, the actual target score shifts:
| Provider | Score needed on mock to predict ~65% on real exam |
|---|---|
| QLTS School | ~50.5% |
| Revise SQE | ~62.3% |
| BPP | ~69.5% |
| ULaw | ~73.0% |
| BARBRI | ~74.1% |
| SRA sample questions | ~77.0% |
These figures use the community-reported adjustments and are approximations. Your individual performance may vary. The point is not to chase a precise number but to understand that the goalposts shift depending on where you are practising.
Aggregate mock scores are a poor diagnostic tool regardless of which provider you use. A 68% overall average does not tell you whether you are at 80% in Contract Law and 52% in Wills and Intestacy, or whether those two topic areas are dragging down a strong performance everywhere else.
The most useful thing you can do with a mock result is not look at the total score. It is to break the result down by topic, compare it against your confidence ratings in each area, and identify where the pattern breaks. Topics where you feel confident but score poorly on timed questions are a different problem to topics where you feel uncertain and score accordingly. Both need attention, but they need different interventions.
A high aggregate mock score from an easy provider is the most common way candidates walk into an exam under-prepared. The score looks reassuring. The topic gaps underneath it are not visible until it is too late.
SQETrack imports your MCQ results from BARBRI and Law Drills and maps them to your topic confidence ratings, so you can see where mock scores mask weak areas.
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