The Best Dental Revision Platforms for UK Dental Students in 2026: An Honest Ranking

Every dental student hits the same week. The reading list is longer than the term, three people in your year have recommended three different websites, and one of them costs money you would rather spend on a loupe fund. So you open a tab and type "best dental revision platform" and get a page of listicles written by someone who has never sat a BDS exam.

This is our attempt at a better version of that page. It has an obvious problem, which we should deal with first.

How we ranked these

The list is ranked for one specific reader: a student on a UK BDS programme who wants to pass their next university assessment. That is not the same reader as a qualified dentist doing CPD, or a graduate sitting the ORE, and a platform that is excellent for one is often wrong for the other. Where that happens we say so rather than marking it down.

Four things decided the order:

1. Curriculum fit. Does the content map onto what a UK dental school actually assesses, or onto a neighbouring syllabus you would have to filter yourself?
2. Format fit. Does it make you retrieve answers in the shape the exam asks for, or does it mostly make you recognise material you have already seen?
3. Cost of entry. Can you find out whether it suits you before you pay?
4. Cost of upkeep. How much of your revision time goes into maintaining the tool rather than learning from it?

Two things deliberately did not count: how long a company has existed, and how many questions it advertises. A bank of 20,000 questions for the wrong syllabus is worth less than 500 for the right one.

The ranking

1. 1

   DentPass

   Best all round for UK BDS Years 1 and 2.

   Built for one curriculum and no other: the GDC core BDS syllabus as UK dental schools teach it. Questions come in the two formats your papers use, single best answer and short answer, with an explanation on every one, plus timed mock exams, image spotter papers and a 3D head and neck atlas. Right now there are more than 16,000 live questions across 127 topics, with Year 1 complete and Year 2 underway.

   The reason it sits first is narrow and specific: nothing else on this list is written against a UK BDS year plan. Everything else is either a different syllabus you have to filter, or notes rather than questions.

2. 2

   Dentalnotebook

   The best free notes in UK dentistry.

   Dentalnotebook is a set of written notes covering a wide spread of dentistry, put together by a UK dentist, with summaries at the top of most pages and quizzes on some. It is free, it is well organised, and it is genuinely good at the job of explaining a topic you have just met for the first time.

   It is notes, not a question bank, and it is organised by subject rather than by your year plan. That is not a criticism, it is what it is for. Read there, then test somewhere else.

3. 3

   Anki

   A superb engine, and you still have to supply the cards.

   Anki is free, open source, and its scheduler is excellent. It is also, since Anki 24.11, the same FSRS algorithm DentPass schedules with, so the gap between the two is no longer the maths. For the things dentistry expects you to know cold, nerve supplies, drug classes, tooth notation, setting times, a well made deck reviewed daily is still hard to beat.

   The catch is that Anki supplies the engine and you supply the content. A shared deck written by a student in another country for another syllabus is a liability, and building your own is slow. Anki also tests one fact at a time, which is not what a single best answer question does to you.

4. 4

   Pastest (Dentistry)

   The right answer once you reach MFDS.

   Pastest is a long established UK exam publisher, and its dentistry product is aimed at postgraduate dental exams, MFDS and the like, alongside finals level material. If that is the exam in front of you, this is a serious product from a company that has been doing this for a very long time.

   It sits fourth here only because of who this list is written for. For Year 1 physiology or dental materials it is pitched several years above you.

5. 5

   Quesmed

   The strongest medical platform, and medical is the point.

   Quesmed is built for UK medical students and doctors: UKMLA, MRCP, MSRA, UCAT, with question banks, mark schemes and videos. It is a polished product and medical students rate it.

   For a dental student the overlap is real but partial. Year 1 and 2 physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology and immunology genuinely do share ground with medicine. Everything oral does not, and you pay for the whole bank either way.

6. 6

   Passmedicine

   The workhorse of UK medical revision, still a medical syllabus.

   Passmedicine has been a fixture in UK medical schools for years, and the concise notes attached to its answers are the reason. The same caveat as Quesmed applies, only more so: nothing in it was written with a dental examiner in mind.

   Worth it if you are intercalating, or if your school runs joint biomedical papers with medicine. Not worth it as your main bank if it is not.

7. 7

   ExamineDental

   Dental specific, weighted towards finals and beyond.

   ExamineDental describes itself as a dental revision and interview preparation platform covering finals, MFDS and the ORE. It is dentistry rather than medicine, which already puts it ahead of a general medical bank for relevance.

   The weighting is towards the end of the course and past it. If you are in third year and up, it is worth a look; in first year, less so.

8. 8

   Revise Dental

   Free, dental, and worth a bookmark.

   Revise Dental is a not for profit dental revision site. Anything free and dental is worth having open in a tab, and community run resources often cover the odd corner that commercial products skip.

   Coverage varies by topic in the way volunteer run resources always do, so treat it as a supplement rather than a spine.

9. 9

   Quizlet

   Fine for vocabulary. Risky for anything you will be marked on.

   Quizlet is fast, free to start, and there is a set for almost everything. For learning names, notation and definitions it does the job.

   The problem is that nobody checks the sets. When you revise from another student's cards you inherit their mistakes and their misunderstandings, and you have no way of telling which is which. That is a bad trade for content you will be examined on.

10. 10

    US dental board platforms (INBDE and NBDE)

    Excellent products. Wrong country.

    The American board preparation market is mature and some of its products are outstanding. They are also built around a different licensing exam, different drug names and doses, different materials regulations and a different scope of practice.

    You will find the odd useful anatomy or pathology chapter. You will also find yourself learning things that are not true here, which is the worst possible use of revision time.

The comparison table

Platform	Built for	Main format	Free access	Best used for
DentPass	UK BDS undergraduates	Single best answer and short answer questions, timed mocks, image spotters	Free plan, no card	Testing yourself on your actual syllabus
Dentalnotebook	UK dentistry, students and dentists	Written notes, some quizzes	Free to read	Understanding a topic the first time
Anki	Anything you build cards for	Spaced repetition flashcards	Free, paid iOS app	Facts you must never forget
Pastest (Dentistry)	Postgraduate dental exams	Question bank	Subscription	MFDS and finals level
Quesmed	UK medical students and doctors	Question bank, mark schemes, videos	Subscription	Intercalation, shared biomedical topics
Passmedicine	UK medical exams	Question bank with concise notes	Subscription	Shared physiology and pharmacology
ExamineDental	Dental finals, MFDS, ORE, interviews	Question bank and notes	Subscription	Later years and interview prep
Revise Dental	UK dentistry, not for profit	Notes and resources	Free	Supplementary reading
Quizlet	Any subject, user generated	Flashcard sets	Free tier	Vocabulary and naming
US board platforms	US licensing exams	Question banks and video	Subscription	Not the UK curriculum

Which one is right for you

Where DentPass is not the right answer

A ranking that puts its author first is worth nothing unless it also says where the author loses. Four places we do:

• You are in fourth or fifth year. Year 1 is complete and Year 2 is being filled in now. The clinical years are not there yet. If finals are this year, most of this list is more use to you than we are.
• You revise without an internet connection. Anki works offline and your collection is a file you own outright. We need a connection, and no amount of scheduling parity changes that.
• You are sitting a postgraduate exam. We do not write MFDS or ORE content and we would rather say so than sell you something at the wrong level.
• You have no money at all. Our free plan is real and needs no card, but it is a sample. Dentalnotebook, Revise Dental and Anki cost nothing and will get you a long way.

The one thing that matters more than the platform

Whichever you pick, the effect size comes from the same place: closing the book and trying to produce the answer, early and often, rather than reading it again. Retrieval feels worse than re-reading and works better. A student doing daily questions on a mediocre platform will beat a student re-reading notes on a perfect one, comfortably.

Pick the tool that gets you testing yourself with the least friction, then use it most days. Everything else on this page is a detail.

Questions we get asked

What is the best dental revision platform for UK dental students?

For a UK BDS undergraduate in Years 1 or 2, we would say DentPass, because it is the only one on this list written against the UK BDS year plan rather than a neighbouring syllabus. We build it, so weigh that accordingly. For free notes, Dentalnotebook. For pure factual recall, Anki. For postgraduate exams like MFDS, Pastest.

Can dental students use Passmedicine or Quesmed?

Yes, and for the biomedical science that dentistry shares with medicine, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology and immunology, they are useful. Both are built for medical exams though, so the clinical material, the oral biology, dental materials and dental anatomy your papers actually test are not in them. Most dental students who subscribe end up using a small fraction of the bank.

Is Anki better than a dental question bank?

They do different jobs. Anki is the better tool for facts you must recall instantly and never lose. A question bank is the better tool for practising the decision an exam asks you to make, which is choosing between five plausible options. Students who do well usually use both.

Is there a free way to revise for BDS exams?

Yes. Dentalnotebook and Revise Dental are free to read, Anki is free on desktop and Android, and DentPass has a free plan that needs no card. A student with no budget at all can get a long way on those three.

Are American dental question banks any use in the UK?

Rarely worth it. The US board exams cover a different scope of practice, different drug names and doses and different regulations. Some basic science chapters transfer, but you have to already know the syllabus well enough to tell which parts do, which rather defeats the purpose.

Head to head comparisons: DentPass vs Anki, DentPass vs Quesmed, DentPass vs Passmedicine, DentPass vs Pastest, DentPass vs Dentalnotebook, DentPass vs Quizlet.