TEAS Study Guide: What to Use, What It Costs, and What "Free" Gets You

The current official TEAS study guide is ATI's own manual — the ATI TEAS Study Guide 2026–2027, ninth edition, sold by the people who write the exam — $19.99 as an ebook, $24.99 in print, from ATI's own store. That answers the question most people bring to this page. The more useful questions are the ones almost nobody answers: which books on the shelf are written to the wrong blueprint, what the "2026–2027 addendum" you keep seeing actually is, and why no study guide — official or otherwise — can tell you the one thing a timed drill tells you in an hour.

The official manual, and what the "addendum" actually is

ATI publishes exactly one official study guide, in ebook and print. It is written to the TEAS 7 blueprint — the version of the exam that has been current since June 2022, with no Version 8 announced in any official channel.

Here is the part that confuses people every admissions cycle: ATI also publishes a running "Study Guide Addendum" for the 2026-2027 manual. Candidates see a dated addendum and assume the exam changed. It didn't. The addendum is errata — ATI's own description is corrections "captured in addendums, which list the page number the correction is on." Book fixes, page by page. The exam blueprint is untouched. If you own the print manual, download the addendum from ATI's ATI's study manual page and pencil the corrections in; if you're deciding whether to panic about a format change, don't. The format — 170 questions, 150 scored, 209 minutes, four locked sections — is the same blueprint the full TEAS 7 format, section by section has carried all cycle.

Is the official manual worth owning? As a content reference, yes — it is the only book whose author also writes the exam. What it is not is a diagnosis, a pacing coach, or a format rehearsal. More on that below.

The edition trap in third-party guides

Walk the results page for this query and count the editions. As of this writing, some of the best-selling third-party TEAS books on major retail sites are still editions written to the TEAS 6 blueprint — the version the exam replaced in June 2022 — and even the official manual's previous editions outrank the current 2026-2027 one in retail search. None of this is a scam; it is old stock with strong review counts, and review counts are what retail surfaces. But TEAS 6 and TEAS 7 differ in exactly the ways a study guide exists to cover, and a candidate who preps section timings from a TEAS 6 book is rehearsing the wrong exam.

So one rule before any purchase, from any publisher: find the blueprint statement. A current guide says TEAS 7, names the four sections with their real question counts and clocks, and mentions the alternate question formats — multiple select, fill in the blank, ordered response, hot spot — that make up to 15% of the exam. A guide that describes a different section structure, or only multiple choice, is describing a test you will not take. We would give you a brand-by-brand verdict if we could source one honestly; we can't, so we give you the test instead — thirty seconds with any book's format chapter against the published format numbers settles it.

"Free TEAS study guide PDF" — the honest answer

There is no free official TEAS study guide PDF. ATI sells its manual and does not give it away; a "free PDF" of the official guide is either not official or not legitimately free, and a pirated book is a bad foundation for a nursing career either way.

What legitimately exists free is different: free content-review guides on nursing and test-prep sites (useful for refreshing topics, with the same edition caveat as the books), and — the thing a PDF can never be — a free timed run under the real format. Your first full-length section drill here is free with an account: Reading or Mathematics, real question counts and clocks, the TEAS 7 question formats live and interactive, a worked explanation on every item, no card required. what the free drill includes — and what it doesn't spells out the boundary honestly.

A study guide shows you the material. A timed drill shows you yourself against the material. Those are different products, and only one of them is routinely counterfeited as a "free PDF."

A guide can't diagnose you

Every study guide, including ATI's, has the same blind spot: it cannot tell you which of its pages you personally need. Candidates consistently report that how recently they took anatomy & physiology and algebra predicted their prep window better than any fixed number of weeks — a guide can't see your transcript, and it can't see you lose four minutes to one stubborn passage either.

That is why the order matters: diagnose first, then study from the guide with a target list. Take one timed section drill cold, read the worked explanations on everything you missed — when we built our 274-item bank, every math key had to survive an independent computational solve before it shipped, and the explanation shows the solve — and walk into the manual knowing whether your problem is content, pacing, or formats. the diagnostic-first study plan turns that first result into a week-by-week schedule, and what your percent means against real program floors keeps the number honest while you improve it.

Pairing a guide with timed practice

The combination that works is boring and effective: the official manual (or a verified-current third-party book) for content review, and timed, format-true practice for everything the book can't rehearse — the clock, the section locking, the all-or-nothing scoring on multiple-select items, the four-function calculator with no fraction key. The complete 170-question, 209-minute simulation with per-section clocks and the 10-minute post-Math break is the Full tier ($89, one-time); unlimited section drills are Starter ($49, one-time); the first drill is free. The full comparison of what each adds to a book-based plan lives on how the full simulator matches the blueprint.

Start with the free drill. If it tells you your content is fine and your pacing isn't, you may need less book than you think.

Sources: ATI's official study manual page (atitesting.com) and ATI's published TEAS 7 format specifications.