DentPass vs Dentalnotebook: Notes or Questions for Dental Revision?
Dentalnotebook is the best free notes resource in UK dentistry and we recommend it without reservation. This is a comparison of two things that do different jobs, and why you probably want both.
By DentPass · · 5 min read
Some comparisons are a contest. This one is not, and it would be dishonest to write it as though it were.
Dentalnotebook is a free set of dental notes written by a UK dentist, covering a wide spread of the subject with summaries and the occasional quiz. It is well organised, it is readable, and it costs nothing. If you are a UK dental student and you do not have it bookmarked, bookmark it.
DentPass is a question bank. The two sit at different points in the same process, and the useful question is not which is better but which one you should have open right now.
Read on Dentalnotebook when a topic is new and you need it explained. Test on DentPass when you think you know it and want to find out whether you do. Doing the second reveals what you should go back and read, which is the whole loop.
Why notes and questions are not substitutes
Reading a good explanation and answering a question about it feel like the same activity. They are not, and the difference is the single most replicated finding in the study of learning.
Reading produces fluency. The words look familiar, the diagram is one you have seen, and the topic feels handled. Fluency is a poor predictor of whether you can produce the answer under exam conditions with nothing in front of you.
Retrieval, closing the page and trying to generate the answer, feels worse and works better. It is harder because it is doing the thing reading never does: strengthening the path you will need when the paper is in front of you.
So the mistake is not using notes. The mistake is using only notes, finishing a chapter, feeling ready, and finding out in January that you were not.
Side by side
| DentPass | Dentalnotebook | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Question bank for the UK BDS curriculum | Free written dental notes |
| Best moment to use it | After a lecture, and again before the exam | When a topic is new to you |
| Organised by | Year, system and topic | Subject area |
| Tells you what you got wrong | Yes, with an explanation on every question | Not its purpose |
| Timed exam practice | Yes | No |
| Tracks your weak topics | Yes | No |
| Cost | Free plan, or Premium from £129 a year | Free |
| Covers career and dental life content | No | Yes |
What Dentalnotebook does better than us
- It is free, with nothing held back. Our free plan is a sample; theirs is the whole site.
- It explains things from scratch. An explanation attached to a question assumes you have met the topic. A notes page does not have to.
- It covers the rest of dentistry. Careers, training pathways, textbook reviews, the parts of professional life a question bank has no reason to touch.
- It reaches past the undergraduate years. Qualified dentists use it too. Our clinical years are still being written.
What we do that notes cannot
- Force retrieval. Over 16,000 live questions across 127 topics, in the two formats UK dental schools examine you in: single best answer and short answer.
- Show you the wrong answers. A single best answer question is hard because several options are defensible and one is more correct. Only practice on that shape of question trains it.
- Put you under the clock. Timed mock papers you can build by year and topic.
- Diagnose. Per topic analytics, so the reading you go back and do is the reading you actually need.
- Examine images. Spot papers drawn from several hundred image questions, plus a 3D head and neck atlas.
A revision loop that uses both
- Lecture, then read. Same day if you can, use a notes page to make sense of what you just sat through.
- Test before you feel ready. Twenty questions on the topic. Expect to get some wrong; that is the point, not a sign you read badly.
- Read only the gaps. Take the questions you missed back to the notes and read that section again, not the whole chapter.
- Come back in two days, then a week. Spacing beats total hours, and it is not close.
- Sit a timed paper before the real one. The first time you work against a clock should not be in the exam hall.
Questions we get asked
Is Dentalnotebook good for dental students?
Yes. It is free, written by a UK dentist and covers a wide spread of dentistry in a readable way. We recommend it as reading material alongside question practice, which is a different job.
Do I need a paid question bank if the notes are free?
You need retrieval practice, and there are free ways to get some of it, including the quizzes on Dentalnotebook and our own free plan. What a paid bank buys you is volume at the right level, both exam formats, timed papers and analytics that tell you where the marks are going. Whether that is worth it depends on how close your exams are and how well the free options are working.
Can I just read notes and skip questions?
You can, and it is the most common way to feel prepared and underperform. Reading builds familiarity, which is not the same as being able to produce an answer without prompts. Test yourself earlier than feels comfortable.
Which should I use first?
Notes when the topic is new, questions the same day, then notes again only for what you got wrong. Reading everything before testing anything wastes the diagnostic value of the questions.
Find out what you actually know
Read the notes, then test yourself on over 16,000 questions written for the UK BDS curriculum, with an explanation on every answer. Free plan, no card needed.
See also: our full ranking of dental revision platforms, DentPass vs Anki and how to revise head and neck anatomy.