GRE preparation is no small task, and there are many GRE prep books available to help you. But which ones are worth your time and money? How reliable are unofficial GRE prep books?
This article answers these questions, comparing the pros and cons of the most popular and “best” GRE prep books on the market today so that you can approach the GRE exam equipped with the best possible materials.
The short answer: We recommend that you only use the official GRE prep books published by ETS. Read on to find out why.
| ETS | Kaplan | Manhattan Prep | Princeton Review | Magoosh | |
| Title | GRE Super Power Pack | GRE Prep Plus 2024–2025 | 5 lb. Book of GRE Practice Problems, 5th ed. | Princeton Review GRE Prep, 36th ed. | GRE Prep by Magoosh |
| Official? | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Pricing (current Amazon price, paperback) | $32.40 (3-book bundle) | $22.99 | $36.99 | $20.38 | $16.94 |
| Page count | 1,209 (3 books; official guide alone is 585) | 648 | 1,044 | 704 | 468 |
| Real practice questions included | 600 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Real practice tests included | 4 (2 in the book, 2 online) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Summary | The best option because it provides real questions from past exams | A large bank of “imitation” practice questions, not the real thing | Lots of material, but verbal questions are not great and some editions appear to suffer from publishing errors | A fairly standard prep book marred by errors in many of the quant questions | An affordable guide to the basics that lacks coverage of many topics |
| ETS |
| Title: GRE Super Power Pack |
| Official? Yes |
| Pricing (current Amazon price, paperback): $32.40 (3-book bundle) |
| Page count: 1,209 (3 books; official guide alone is 585) |
| Real practice questions included: 600 |
| Real practice tests included: 4 (2 in the book, 2 online) |
| Summary: The best option because it provides real questions from past exams |
| Kaplan |
| Title: GRE Prep Plus 2024–2025 |
| Official? No |
| Pricing (current Amazon price, paperback): $22.99 |
| Page count: 648 |
| Real practice questions included: 0 |
| Real practice tests included: 0 |
| Summary: A large bank of “imitation” practice questions, not the real thing |
| Manhattan Prep |
| Title: 5 lb. Book of GRE Practice Problems, 5th ed. |
| Official? No |
| Pricing (current Amazon price, paperback): $36.99 |
| Page count: 1,044 |
| Real practice questions included: 0 |
| Real practice tests included: 0 |
| Summary: Lots of material, but verbal questions are not great and some editions appear to suffer from publishing errors |
| Princeton Review |
| Title: Princeton Review GRE Prep, 36th ed. |
| Official? No |
| Pricing (current Amazon price, paperback): $20.38 |
| Page count: 704 |
| Real practice questions included: 0 |
| Real practice tests included: 0 |
| Summary: A fairly standard prep book marred by errors in many of the quant questions |
| Magoosh |
| Title: GRE Prep by Magoosh |
| Official? No |
| Pricing (current Amazon price, paperback): $16.94 |
| Page count: 468 |
| Real practice questions included: 0 |
| Real practice tests included: 0 |
| Summary: An affordable guide to the basics that lacks coverage of many topics |
The GRE is developed and administered by ETS (Educational Testing Service), and the official books published by ETS are also your best choice when it comes to studying for the GRE.
ETS currently publishes three up-to-date official GRE prep books:
All three books are included in a discount bundle called the GRE Super Power Pack, and all three are available in ebook or paperback format. At the time of writing, the bundle is available on Amazon at a price of $32.40 for the paperbacks or $30.78 for the ebooks.
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The key advantage of using ETS’s own prep books is that they contain real questions from past GRE tests.
While each new installment of the test obviously features new questions, the basic principles informing how these questions are formulated have not changed. That means the practice questions in these books are very similar to those you’ll encounter on the real test.
Building up familiarity with the types of questions you’ll encounter on the GRE will give you a big advantage on test day. The practice questions and tests in the book all come with answer keys and full explanations, meaning you can not only check your answers but learn from your mistakes—and gain a deeper understanding of the logic behind each question type.
The same goes for the essay questions: full sample responses are given, accompanied by commentaries that allow you to understand what the examiners are looking for in your written responses.
Beyond practice tests and questions, the Official Guide also offers a variety of advice on approaching the test:
| Note: Although these books were published before the introduction of the “shorter GRE” (in September 2023), they are still relevant and complete now. No new question types have been added to the test, so these books still cover everything you will see on the test today. The only point to bear in mind is that the Analyze an Argument question type has been removed from the test. Skip the portions of the book that deal with it, and focus your GRE study plan on the other question types! |
But there are a lot of other test prep books out there. Why do we only recommend the official ETS books? Isn’t it a good idea to prepare using a wide range of materials?
Generally, no. The danger of using unofficial prep books published by third parties like Princeton Review and Kaplan is that the questions and tests they provide—and the strategies they teach you for approaching them—are simply inaccurate. There are two key reasons for this:
Moreover, because of the difficulty of creating accurate GRE questions, test prep companies sometimes make use of the official questions published by ETS—but in a modified form so that they can pass them off as their own materials.
Paraphrased questions like this also tend to “spoil” the real practice questions for you. If you’ve already answered an unofficial practice question and then attempt the real question it was based on, you may get it right—but only because you’ve effectively seen the question before. The questions on the real exam will be completely new to you, so this isn’t good practice.
One other point to note is that some companies publish new, “up-to-date” editions of their prep books every year. As mentioned above, the only change to the GRE in recent years is the removal of the Analyze an Argument section, and ETS last updated its own prep books back in 2017. In light of this, the practice of publishing new editions yearly starts to look fairly cynical.
In short: GRE questions follow a specific format and are carefully calibrated to measure the test-taker’s abilities objectively. There’s no substitute for the real thing.
With the caveat that we recommend opting for the real thing, let’s look at some popular third-party test prep books in more detail.
| Kaplan |
| Title: GRE Prep Plus 2024–2025 |
| Official? No |
| Pricing (current Amazon price, paperback): $22.99 |
| Page count: 648 |
| Real practice questions included: 0 |
| Real practice tests included: 0 |
| Summary: A large bank of “imitation” practice questions, not the real thing |
Kaplan’s GRE prep offering, GRE Prep Plus 2024–2025, offers a high quantity of practice questions (“over 1,500”) and tests, both in the book and available online with the purchase.
It’s a lengthy book that beats most of the competition in terms of the volume of content you get for the price. Selling for $22.99 on Amazon at the time of writing, it’s good value for money—in terms of quantity. But what about the quality of all this material?
Like other test prep books, Kaplan’s publication consists mainly of practice questions and tests. Its usefulness depends on how well these questions prepare you for the real test. As explained above, a third-party publisher can’t compare with the real thing in this regard.
Kaplan can essentially “mass-produce” practice questions because they don’t have to match the high quality standards of those on the real GRE.
With that in mind, it’s good to treat this emphasis on quantity with some skepticism: will working through 1,500 imitation questions help you more than working through a smaller selection of real questions from past GREs? We don’t think so.
The commitment to quantity extends beyond practice materials: this GRE prep book offers a variety of other sections on topics such as stress management and how to apply to graduate schools. It’s not always clear that these are really what the reader was looking for. As one (otherwise positive) Amazon reviewer notes, “some of the book was repetitive … parts just felt like fluff.”
| Manhattan Prep |
| Title: 5 lb. Book of GRE Practice Problems, 5th ed. |
| Official? No |
| Pricing (current Amazon price, paperback): $36.99 |
| Page count: 1,044 |
| Real practice questions included: 0 |
| Real practice tests included: 0 |
| Summary: Lots of material, but verbal questions are not great and some editions appear to suffer from publishing errors |
Of all the third-party test prep books, Manhattan Prep places the greatest emphasis on the quantity of materials it offers. Its 5 lb. Book of GRE Practice Problems, 5th ed., is as massive as the title suggests, running to over 1,000 pages and boasting “1,400+ practice problems.” The price, $36.99 on Amazon, is comparatively weighty too!
The Manhattan Prep brand is also owned by Kaplan, but the 5 lb. differs from the company’s other GRE prep books in its greater focus on the aforementioned “practice problems.” It begins with two “diagnostic tests” (Verbal and Quant) to determine the reader’s current level, and then proceeds with over 30 chapters full of practice problems.
The book is often recommended to people who want to get a great deal of practice in before the exam. The trouble is that many of these questions, while testing related skills, don’t actually resemble the specific types of questions that appear on the GRE. They’re divided into more specific subcategories: “Triangles,” “Ratios,” “Divisibility and Primes,” and so on.
Although these are topics that come up on the GRE, you won’t find them so neatly categorized on the real test. The danger is that you can spend a lot of time “drilling” your weak spots without really understanding how to apply these skills to the real questions.
Additionally, a common thread of criticism online is that the Verbal material in the book is much weaker than the Quant material; one Amazon reviewer (a GRE tutor) writes that the Verbal material fails to replicate “the real GRE’s nuances” and warns: “Do not use the verbal questions.”
Finally, several Amazon reviewers note that the Kindle version of the book has serious publishing errors, with “entire chapters” missing and with one reviewer claiming that “questions were mistyped.” Some reviewers also seem to have encountered similar issues with physical copies of the book: pages “missing owing to poor build quality.” It’s hard to recommend a book that prioritizes quantity over quality to this extent.
| Princeton Review |
| Title: Princeton Review GRE Prep, 36th ed. |
| Official? No |
| Pricing (current Amazon price, paperback): $20.38 |
| Page count: 704 |
| Real practice questions included: 0 |
| Real practice tests included: 0 |
| Summary: A fairly standard prep book marred by errors in many of the quant questions |
Like other options, the latest prep book from Princeton Review, Princeton Review GRE Prep, 36th ed., boasts a series of practice tests (2 in the book, 2 online) and a range of practice questions for each topic. It currently sells for $20.38 on Amazon.
Unfortunately, Princeton Review’s books share an issue we saw in Manhattan Prep’s publication: a lack of quality control. While the newest volume currently has only one rating on Amazon, reviews of previous editions don’t paint a good picture. For instance, some reviews of the version for 2022:
This likely results from the practice of publishing a new book every year, even when the test does not change. Having to come up with hundreds of new practice questions on a short deadline can easily result in errors.
For this reason, it’s hard to recommend Princeton’s materials. There’s no point putting your time and effort into drilling with materials you can’t trust.
| Magoosh |
| Title: GRE Prep by Magoosh |
| Official? No |
| Pricing (current Amazon price, paperback): $16.94 |
| Page count: 468 |
| Real practice questions included: 0 |
| Real practice tests included: 0 |
| Summary: An affordable guide to the basics that lacks coverage of many topics |
Magoosh is one company that doesn’t churn out prep books year over years—its current offering is still the simply titled GRE Prep by Magoosh from 2017, which currently goes for $16.94 on Amazon.
It’s a shorter book than the other options, acting more as a sampler of Magoosh’s online GRE prep resources and self-study content than as a comprehensive resource. Like other options, it consists of a series of practice questions of the different types you’ll encounter on the exam. It also contains one full-length practice test and a “1-month GRE study schedule” to help you structure your time.
While the book doesn’t appear to suffer from the same editorial errors as some competitors, it is often seen as lacking in completeness. As one Amazon reviewer states, “for some of the sections, it doesn’t bother explaining why all the solutions are wrong, only some … it throws problems that it did not explain to you how to perform them.”
Or as another reviewer, a professional GRE tutor, puts it, this is “a good fit if you’re trying to go from 50% to 70% on the GRE, but … to go from 80% to 90% … you will need a more serious book.” In other words, Magoosh is accessible and easy to use, but it will leave you unprepared for the full range of topics on the test.
If you’re looking for a supplementary resource to build your vocabulary, Barron’s Essential Words for the GRE is worth mentioning. While we emphasize the importance of using official GRE prep materials from ETS, this book can be a helpful addition for test-takers who struggle with the Verbal section or want to expand their vocabulary systematically.
This book provides a list of over 800 high-frequency GRE words, complete with definitions, example sentences, and practice exercises to reinforce your learning. It also includes word roots and prefixes to help you decode unfamiliar words on test day.
The downside, as with most third-party materials, is that it doesn’t include real GRE questions or accurately simulate GRE Verbal question types. However, if vocabulary building is a significant part of your GRE prep strategy (particularly if you are a non-native English speaker), Barron’s Essential Words for the GRE can serve as a useful supplement to your study plan. Just make sure to combine it with official ETS materials to ensure your preparation is aligned with the actual test.
As we’ve emphasized throughout this article, there’s no substitute for the official GRE prep books from ETS. That same principle drives the curriculum of Menlo Coaching’s GRE Prep Course, which uses 100% official ETS materials to ensure your preparation mirrors the actual exam.
Our 5-week course is designed for students aiming to achieve top-percentile scores, focusing on advanced strategies and authentic GRE questions. By combining the depth and reliability of official content with live expert instruction, our course helps you build the skills and confidence you need to excel.
With refresh modules, structured live lessons, and curated homework, every aspect of the course is tailored to maximize your performance on the GRE. If you’re serious about mastering the test, our course provides the preparation you need—based entirely on the materials that matter most.
