Best free resources for ABO prep in 2026 — compiled list

For ABO - American Board of Ophthalmology specifically, I found the PracticeTestGeeks explanations were detailed enough that I didn't need to buy a separate study guide. The combination of doing the practice questions + reading every explanation (for both right and wrong answers) covered most of the content I needed.

Great list. I'd add: LinkedIn Learning has some vision & ophthalmology-related courses that overlap with cert content, and if you have a library card many libraries give free access to it. Also check if your local library has access to O'Reilly or similar — tons of technical content there.

The official candidate guide is something a lot of people skip but it literally tells you the topic weighting and domain breakdown. It's the roadmap for your study plan. Never skip it.

Totally agree on PracticeTestGeeks being the best starting point. What made it click for me was actually reading the explanations for the wrong answers, not just confirming I got something right. I'd go through a set, then for every question I missed I'd write out in my own words why each wrong choice was wrong. It's slower but it actually sticks. They also have an abo practice test pdf if you want something you can annotate on paper, which I didn't expect to like but ended up using a ton.

The trap I fell into early was treating practice tests like a checklist instead of a learning tool. You can pass a question by luck and move on, or you can sit with it for two minutes and actually understand the concept. Once I switched to the second approach my scores stopped plateauing. Honestly if you're short on time, fewer questions reviewed deeply beats more questions skimmed.