Here at Magoosh, I’ve reviewed all the best GRE prep books over the years. Today, I’m happy to announce that I’ve made some updates to our Best GRE Books List! While not all of these books are from this year (some are far from it), this GRE resource offers my honest book reviews and recommendations for the best GRE book options on the market. My goal is to keep you from sorting through the nimiety (that’s excess…a good GRE word) of bad GRE books out there.

Best GRE Books 2020

What do you need to know about the GRE test in 2020? In terms of prep, there have been some changes, mainly from ETS (the test-maker). Now, in addition to two free, computer-based GRE practice tests you can take, called PowerPrep, the test-maker offers two additional, brand-new GRE practice tests called PowerPrep PLUS. Realistic test-taking practice is vital, and these can be great new tools to help you prep for a top score—I’ll talk a little more about how in the GRE book reviews below.

In this post, I review the best GRE prep books/materials on the market (in order), plus a few more books deserving of an honorable mention (in no particular order). I’ll also explain the positives and negatives of each. If you’re just interested in reading about one or two, use the links in the Table of Contents to jump to that section of the post.

Best GRE Prep and Best GRE Study Guides

*HM = Honorable Mention

Now that I’ve revealed my top picks, I’ll give you my honest reviews and tell you why each of these eight books made the list. I’ll give you the pros and cons of each text, and suggest who might want to consider purchasing each book (and who can skip it).

A couple of notes before we continue:

Under most reviews, clicking on each book cover will take you to Amazon.com, which generally has the lowest prices. Please note that the prices listed are subject to change. The particular prices given here are in US dollars and reflect the price of a new edition (unless otherwise noted) in March 2020. You can almost always buy a used version at a discount. Some of the books listed here are not the newest editions. Most publishers change very little content from one edition to the other. If I can save you money by recommending an old edition of a great book, then I’m going to do that!

Time for the good stuff!



1. Magoosh GRE Book

It’s everything you love about Magoosh’s GRE product, in paperback form! For the first time ever, you can now order your very own Magoosh GRE prep book on Amazon. Our GRE students and experts have collaborated to produce the most cohesive GRE guide of all time. Between the covers, this 468-page book packs more than a hundred practice questions accompanied by comprehensive explanations—all pulled directly from our renowned online GRE prep product. Not only is the book loaded with tons of useful information, but each question and answer has been triple checked by industry experts to maximize students’ learning. If you’re in the market for a GRE book, we hope you’ll take a look at GRE Prep by Magoosh!

2. Free GRE eBooks

Okay, they are not really books since unless you print them, you can’t physically hold them and flip through the pages (though an iPad can add a high degree of verisimilitude to the experience). Tangible or not, the eBooks are free and they provide a wealth of helpful strategies. Along with the rest of Magoosh’s free GRE resources, they are a great way to start your GRE journey, before deciding on which book to purchase. Here they are: Magoosh GRE eBooks

3. ETS’s The Official Guide to the GRE Revised General Test, 3rd Edition

This is the holy grail of prep. If you can only buy one book, this is it. The tone of the voice may not be as friendly as the other books on the market. But if you can bear the dry content, you are getting by far the best practice since ETS writes the questions for the test.

Throw in four GRE practice tests, and the best GRE book on the market gets even better.

Here’s the full Magoosh book review: ETS Official Guide to the GRE Revised General Test 3rd Edition Book Review

4. ETS’s Official GRE Verbal Reasoning Practice Questions & Official GRE Quantitative Reasoning Practice Questions



This one’s a twofer. ETS published these two new books in 2014, and boy are we glad they did (they’ve been updated for 2017). The Verbal book contains tons of new questions, written by the makers of the GRE. The strategies are nothing new (you can learn all of those from this blog), but this book is a must-buy, if only for the quality of its practice questions. The Quantitative Reasoning book, on the other hand, contains both helpful practice problems and useful new strategies. A word of warning: these new math problems are really challenging. They’ll definitely require some extra attention, and will help you up your quant game.

5. PowerPrep and PowerPrep PLUS

ETS Site:

PowerPrep 1: Free

PowerPrep 2: Free

PowerPrep PLUS 1: $39.95

PowerPrep PLUS 2: $39.95

By this point, you’ve probably noticed that ETS has a lot of products to help you prepare for the GRE. And they’re all excellent.

This is great news if you have a lot of time and money to spend before the test! Of course, if you don’t, it starts to get a little confusing (and to make it more confusing, ETS has repurposed some old tests! For all the info on this, check out Magoosh’s PowerPrep article).

Let’s clarify a couple things. First, there are two PowerPreps: the free version (just “PowerPrep“) and the paid versions (“PowerPrep PLUS,” two tests that cost $39.95 each).

No matter what, it’s a good idea to take at least one, and preferably both, of the free PowerPrep tests before your official exam. You’ll get to work with the computer format, and you’ll see questions straight from the test-makers.

If you have time, the PowerPrep PLUS tests do provide great practice—the explanations are a little brief, though it can be good practice to work out the processes on your own—but at a price. If you buy both of these exams, you’re basically paying half of what it costs to take the official GRE.

At the end of the day, it can be tricky to find great GRE practice tests, so if you’re preparing over a long period of time, buying at least one PowerPrep PLUS test is a good idea. But if you have a month or less before test day? You probably don’t need to make the investment.

6. Barron’s 6 GRE Practice Tests

This book is not perfect, even in its third edition, but in terms of sheer content, it is better than the Barron’s general GRE guide. Check out our review of the book here. Everything I wrote about the first edition is still true in both the second and third editions. Bottom line: the questions are solid, but the difficulty is a little off (the questions are on average a little less tricky than the real thing), so it’s better to use this book as a question bank for extra practice, rather than as a source of balanced practice tests.

7. Manhattan Math & Verbal Strategies Set

Manhattan Prep materials are our most recommended after those from ETS and our own, and these books live up to the reputation. The question quality is high, and while the explanations are on the lighter side (similar to other Manhattan products), the book is still a good value. Purchase of this bundle unlocks Manhattan’s six online practice tests as well.

Diving in to the specifics, the math is solid. The lesson sections are perfect for students who have some hazy memory of the topics and need explanations and examples, but they would not be sufficient for students who need to learn from scratch. Verbal is similar. The question difficulty range is solid, and the explanations are a little light.

This bundle is an updated, streamlined version of the Manhattan Prep GRE Set of 8 Strategy Guides. Those are still great resources! Check out our full review of that series: Manhattan GRE Series.

8. Vibrant’s GRE Analytical Writing: Solutions to Real Essay Topics Books

The Vibrant AWA series is a good resource. Not because they’re perfect, but because they contain GRE sample essays — something few books have. They’ll help you craft a decent response to a range of GRE essay topics (that’s if you can ignore the formatting issues that occasionally occur here. Again, these books are not perfect).

The main yellow book has 145 example essays. The other three (labelled Books 1, 2, and 3) are that same content just split into three books. Their explanations are a little robotic and clinical, but they are thorough and clear. Some sample essays seemed a little more complex than they need to be, but they would still be good for practice.

Vibrant breaks down pre-writing steps well with plenty of examples of how to break down a topic. One area where these books could improve is to give more information about scoring, including examples of essays that would receive other scores than a 6 (see Magoosh AWA Samples for sample essays responding to the same prompt that received different scores, including explanations for why they got the score they did). Still, this book would be helpful to students who struggle with writing or are not comfortable writing in academic English.

Not required reading, but definitely helpful if you want to improve your essay score.

GRE Book Honorable Mentions

Manhattan 5 lb. Book of GRE Practice Problems

This book is actually quite good in many respects. And in fact, the publisher of this book is so good that we recommend using Manhattan materials in many of the Magoosh GRE study plans. So why does this very large collection of Manhattan GRE practice problems only get honorable mention?

The truth is that this book’s Verbal practice problems have a number of problems. Unfortunately, the Verbal questions for Manhattan GRE are weak and not as GRE-like as they should be. Some light Verbal practice from this book may help you get familiar with the basic question types and formats. However, relying heavily on this book for Verbal practice will leave you ill-prepared for the real exam. ETS’s actual GRE Verbal problems are different from the ones in the Manhattan 5 lb. Book, in countless subtle-but-important ways.

Math, on the other hand, is where this book really shines. The Math problems are spot-on to the real test. All the math questions are very well designed, aptly capturing the tone, look, feel, and range of the real GRE Math section. The answer explanations are a little light, but sufficient. Given that the Quant half of this book is solid, think of the Manhattan 5 lb. Book as a Manhattan 2.5 lb. book for the purposes of your GRE prep.

(For more info, see our review of the previous edition of the Manhattan GRE 5 lb. Book of GRE Practice Problems.)

The Princeton Review, Cracking the GRE, 2020 Edition

This book is generally substandard, and if after reading my review (see below), you are surprised I’m pairing it with this top 9 list, then I owe a quick explanation: the inclusion of The Princeton Review book speaks to the generally low quality of GRE prep books out there.

Nonetheless, I still somewhat like this book for its big-picture strategies. These strategies are mostly absent from the Official Guide (though we share similar strategies in the Magoosh GRE eBook and on the blog). The strategies are a little generic and could apply to most standardized tests rather than the GRE specifically. However, if you are feeling lost with test prep in general and could use some review of basic skills like interpreting questions and using process of elimination, this could be a helpful resource.

Since this book remains almost exactly the same from year to year, here’s the review of an older version: Princeton Review: Cracking the New GRE 2012 Book Review. Note: the “premium” version of this book has two extra practice tests.

GRE Books to Avoid

There are certain GRE books that seem very accessible, in the sense that they come from major publishers, but that should be avoided. There are books such as the Kaplan GRE Premier series that should be avoided. The GRE Prep and GRE Prep Plus books also have issues with their questions that are both too complex and too simple at the same time. Another to avoid is McGraw Hill’s New GRE with 8 Practice Tests. The questions are too problematic to be useful, so we recommending using one of the recommended books above.

This article belongs to a series of posts designed to help you start your GRE prep. To see the other posts, download the GRE Prep App for iPhone or Android.