If you are gearing up for the October 2026 CPALE, here is a straight rundown of what is new on the platform this cycle — what it costs (nothing, in most cases), what you get, and where to find it.
The National Preboard is free
Every Saturday through 10 October, CPA Review PH runs a free National Preboard: a full CPALE day's subject pairing — 140–170 items depending on the day (RFBT days run 100 items on their own), 180 minutes, under real exam conditions, no shortcuts, no open notes.
You do not need a paid subscription to sit one. Registration is open to anyone preparing for the board, whether you are a platform subscriber, on the free trial, or just found this post while researching your review options. There is no entry fee.
| What you sit | What you get |
|---|---|
| A full CPALE day's subject pairing (140–170 items depending on the day, 180 minutes) | A national ranking against everyone else who sat that day |
| Timed, exam-format conditions | A diagnostic showing exactly which topics to fix before October |
| Free registration | A shot at a Premium prize for top finishers each week |
Each week's top scorers win a free month of Premium access — so the diagnostic value is free either way, and a strong week pays for itself.
The point of a national ranking is context you cannot get from a private mock exam. Scoring 80% on a mock you built for yourself tells you very little; scoring 80% against everyone else who sat that identical set, on the same day, under the same clock, tells you where you actually stand. That comparison is the whole reason a preboard exists, and it only works if enough people sit the same paper at the same time — which is exactly what the weekly cadence is designed to produce.
The schedule runs weekly on Saturdays through 10 October, cycling through all three exam days so you can sit each subject pairing — MAS/Auditing, Taxation/RFBT, and FAR/AFAR — at least once before the real thing. Because the rotation repeats, you are never more than a few weeks from a chance to re-sit a day you want another crack at, with a fresh diagnostic each time. Reserve your seat to see which day is open next and lock in a slot.
Paper mocks: an early experiment
Not everyone wants to sit a mock on a laptop, and plenty of review centers and self-study groups still prefer paper — closer to the actual PRC testing room, where you are filling in a physical answer sheet with a pencil, not clicking a radio button. This cycle, CPA Review PH is piloting a paper-based mock built for exactly that preference: the questions stay on screen, but you print an answer sheet and shade your answers on paper exactly as you would on board exam day, then photograph the sheet and upload it. The system reads the shaded bubbles and returns the same diagnostic the online mock gives you. It is available on the free trial, on any subject plan, and on Premium.
This is a genuine early experiment, not a mature feature. It is live because we want testers to put it under real conditions — different phone cameras, different lighting, different printers and paper stock — and tell us what breaks before we lean on it harder. If you try it and something does not work the way you expect, that feedback is exactly what this pilot phase is for.
One instruction matters more than the rest: print on A4 or long bond at 100% scale — not "fit to page", and never short bond, or the corner markers fall off the page and the scan fails. Philippine print shops default to short bond and to "fit to page" scaling to save paper, and either one shifts the corner markers just enough that the scan cannot square up the sheet — the read fails, and you have to reprint and resit. Ask specifically for A4 or long bond, 100% scale, and you avoid the whole problem before it starts.
If you want to try it, start a paper mock and print the sheet from there.
Put this into practice.
AI tutor and a 6-subject question bank, built for the CPALE. Seven days free, no card.
A question bank mapped to the actual blueprint
The bank now holds 5,600+ questions across all six CPALE subjects, and every one of them is tagged to its specific BOA Resolution No. 30 area — not just its subject.
That distinction matters for how your weak-topic report reads. A report broken down only by subject tells you "study more Taxation." A report broken down by Res 30 area tells you it is specifically Transfer Taxes and Tax Remedies dragging your Taxation score down, while your Income Taxation is solid. That is the difference between a study plan and a guess, and it is why the platform's topic reporting mirrors the exam's own structure — the same areas BOA Resolution No. 30 assigns — rather than a generic subject split.
Practice sessions, mock exams, and the National Preboard all draw from the same tagged bank, so the weak-topic patterns you see in a quick practice set carry through to your mock results and your preboard diagnostic. You are not reconciling three different breakdowns of your own performance — it is one map, used everywhere on the platform.
An AI tutor that grounds itself in your own mistakes
Get a question wrong in practice, and you can ask the AI tutor a follow-up right there. It does not reach for a generic explanation of the topic — it reasons from the material behind that specific item, so the explanation addresses the exact misunderstanding that led to your wrong answer, not just the general rule you already half-remember from your reviewer.
That grounding matters most on the questions that trip people up for a specific, fixable reason — a provision you mixed up with a similar one, a formula applied to the wrong scenario, a step skipped under time pressure. Ask "why is this wrong" and you get an answer anchored to the actual item in front of you, with a path back to the source material if you want to go deeper.
Report a question, and a CPA checks it
When you review an answer — in practice or after a mock — you will find a "Report a question" control, including a "Wrong Topic" category for items you think are miscategorized. Every report goes to a CPA for review before anything on the platform changes.
It is a direct channel from you, the person actually sitting these questions, to the people responsible for keeping the bank accurate. If a question reads ambiguously, if an explanation seems off, or if an item feels miscategorized under the wrong Res 30 area, reporting it puts a real reviewer on the case — not an automated re-check, a person with CPA-level subject knowledge looking at the specific item you flagged.
Looking ahead: the CPALE changes in 2029
If you are sitting in 2026, 2027, or 2028, none of this affects you — the current six-subject structure and BOA Resolution No. 30 blueprint apply through then. But the Professional Regulatory Board of Accountancy has approved a significant restructuring for 2029 onward: FAR and AFAR merge into a single subject, MAS is replaced by Business Analysis and Reporting, and a brand-new Information Systems and Controls subject is added.
If 2029 is anywhere in your planning horizon — whether you are retaking, reviewing early, or just curious — read the full rundown of the 2029 CPALE changes.
Ready to put any of this to use? Reserve a seat at this Saturday's National Preboard, or register for a free trial to try the question bank and AI tutor yourself.