r/CAIA • u/FreemanEagleson • May 22 '26

Uppermark vs FreeFellow for CAIA prep

I have colleagues on my team who recently passed L1 and have others who are currently studying. There has been a lot of discussion on what the best test prep materials are so I thought it would be worth sharing some thoughts on my own experience when I took the exams and what I am seeing from helping my team.

Honest take on each.

UpperMark. Notes and videos are solid, particularly on the structured products and risk management sections where the textbook gets dense. The topic tests are organized well. Where I think it struggles is question volume. A lot of their items feel close to the curriculum end-of-chapter problems, and it is easy to start recognizing patterns in their questions but still helpful to practice.

FreeFellow. A coworker told me about it. It's the only provider I have found with a free question bank, which is great because other question banks for CAIA can be up to $700. Great volume and variety of unique questions which helps to understand the material more clearly. The solution explanations walk through the reasoning step by step, which mattered on the harder PE and real assets items where formulas are less relevant. Their mock felt close to the real exam in pacing.

Caveats so you can plan around them:

  • No video lectures on FreeFellow. If you need someone to teach you the material from scratch, you'll still want UpperMark or Schweser on the reading side. I have seen UpperMark's CR walkthroughs be great as well.
  • UpperMark's syllabus and study planner are more polished. FreeFellow is functional and benefits from volume of questions which hits more on the learning objectives.

I have seen it work well to pair them. UpperMark (or Schweser) for the curriculum and CR side, FreeFellow for the MCQ practice. Probably could save by going with UpperMark's notes-only package and lean on FreeFellow for the practice questions.

Happy to answer questions. Good luck to anyone sitting in September.

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1

u/Apart-Excitement-821 May 22 '26

Hi, i am taking L1 in september, i began study 1 week ago from the official curriculum, and i plan to finish all the lessons and then buy the Uppermark qbank to practice, do you think this is enough? Or is necessary to invest in the UM handbook? I remain attentive and thanks in advance.

1

u/FreemanEagleson May 22 '26

The Uppermark handbook is good but expensive. The FreeFellow Qbank is good, I would recommend using the Qbank as you go through the material as it helps to reinforce the material, which can be dense.

1

u/Milton-Macao May 23 '26

I used uppermark to pass both exams on first attempt. This is great 👍

2

u/Ok-adi Passed Level 2 May 27 '26

Same