Start with the two resources the AMC writes itself, finish them before buying anything else, and accept that the list below is shorter than the one you will be sold. Resource collecting is the most comfortable form of AMC procrastination, and nothing stops you buying a third question bank before you have finished the 210 free questions the AMC already gave you.
How this list was built
- What is included. Resources written or published by the AMC, plus the small number of third-party books that AMC candidates consistently use for the knowledge the AMC's own material assumes. Checked against the AMC's own pages on 14 August 2026.
- What is excluded. Coaching courses, and any resource whose main selling point is a claimed pass rate for its own cohort. Those numbers describe a self-selected group who paid, and they are not comparable to the AMC's published figures.
- Pricing. Quoted only where the AMC publishes the figure itself. Book and question-bank prices move, and a number in an article goes stale faster than the article.
- Our own limitation. StudyRise does not sell AMC questions and is not a question bank. It schedules and tracks the practice you do elsewhere. If what you need is more questions, nothing on this page is us.
Start with the AMC's own two
| Resource | What it is | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| AMC MCQ preparation app | 210 questions written by AMC contributors, built with eMedici, updated yearly | Free and already yours. Finish it first |
| AMC Handbook of Multiple Choice Questions | Roughly 600 questions drawn from the AMC's own examination banks, including one complete 150-question paper | The closest thing to the real exam, if you can find a copy |
The preparation app is free and included with your MCQ authorisation. You have already paid for it inside the AUD 2,920 MCQ authorisation fee. Its 210 questions are written by AMC contributors to align with the exam and give immediate feedback, and they are updated yearly. Work through the whole thing before you spend another dollar. Candidates who skip it are usually the ones who later report being surprised by the question style.
The Handbook is the one book worth chasing. Its questions come from the AMC's own examination banks, which no commercial bank can claim, and the complete 150-question multidisciplinary paper inside it is the cleanest mock you will find anywhere. Save that paper. Do not work through it early as revision: sit it once, under timed conditions, in the final six weeks, and use the result to direct your last block of study.
Getting hold of it is now the difficulty, and you should know that before you go looking. The AMC's own online store is gone: store.amc.org.au does not resolve at all, and the Handbook appears on neither the AMC's publications page nor its resource list for international medical graduates. That leaves academic and second-hand booksellers, and your hospital or university library, which is the first place to try before you pay a reseller. Searching the title also turns up a wall of uploaded PDFs on document-sharing sites; those are pirated, frequently out of date, and you have no way to tell which edition you are reading. Check the edition of whatever copy you find, and read its questions for the reasoning they train.
The AMC's other publications, and when they earn their place
The AMC publishes more than the Handbook. You will not need all of these, and which one earns its place depends on where your questions keep failing.
| Resource | Use it for | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Australian Medicine in Context | 105 medical conditions and 56 professional practice topics in the Australian context; the AMC's replacement for the 2003 Anthology | A free download. Start here |
| Good Medical Practice: Professionalism, Ethics and Law | The ethics and legal material the blueprint includes, in a 5th edition published in early 2026 | Worth buying if ethics is a weak area |
| Handbook of Clinical Assessment | Written for the clinical examination stage | Leave it until the MCQ is behind you |
One title is missing from that table on purpose. The Anthology of Medical Conditions is the book AMC candidates have passed between them for years, and it dates from 2003. The AMC's publications page now describes Australian Medicine in Context as the publication that replaces it, and the replacement's own page opens by building on the legacy of the 2003 Anthology. The AMC's resource list still carries the Anthology's description, so you will meet it; if a copy is already on your shelf, use it for structure and let the replacement settle anything that turns on current management.
The clinical Handbook row matters more than it looks, too. Candidates buy it early, out of enthusiasm, and it sits unread through the four to six months of MCQ preparation that come first. Our guide to choosing between the clinical examination and WBA explains why the second stage deserves its own preparation window.
Third-party books: one reference, used as a reference
John Murtagh's General Practice sits on the AMC's resource list for international medical graduates, a list the AMC describes as guidance only. That list names the 8th edition; the publisher now sells a 9th. How you use it matters more than which edition you own. It is a reference for Australian general practice, and it is enormous. Do not read it cover to cover. Look up what a practice question just exposed, read those few pages properly, then go back to questions.
That instruction applies to any textbook in this exam. The AMC MCQ rewards Australian clinical decision-making across a broad blueprint, and a broad blueprint is covered by question-led study with targeted reading. Sequential reading with occasional questions leaves the holes where you cannot see them. We set the phase structure out in our AMC study plan.
Commercial question banks: buy one, and only after the free ones
There are several commercial AMC question banks. They differ in size, interface and how well their explanations are written, and none of them has access to the AMC's real question bank.
Our position is a plain one. Buy one, not three. A second bank costs money and produces mostly overlap; the first one produces the errors you learn from, and reviewing those errors is what moves your score. A candidate with one bank and a disciplined error log beats a candidate with three banks and none.
Judge a bank by its explanations. A bank of 2,000 questions with two-line explanations teaches less than 800 questions that tell you why the other four options were wrong. Where a trial is offered, spend it reading the explanations for questions you got wrong, which is the only part of the product that does any teaching.
Two things to check before you pay, because both are common: whether the bank reflects the current adaptive format and pass standard, and when it was last updated. An AMC bank that has not been revised since before the 2026 pass-standard change is selling you old assumptions about the exam.
The order to use them in
- Finish the AMC preparation app. It is free, it is 210 questions, and it is already yours.
- Track down a copy of the AMC Handbook. Work its questions during your coverage phase, and put the 150-question paper aside.
- Add one commercial question bank when the Handbook's questions stop surprising you.
- Use Murtagh and Australian Medicine in Context as lookup, driven by the errors your questions produce.
- Sit the Handbook's 150-question paper timed, in the final six weeks, and let it choose your last block of revision.
If you are staring at a shelf of resources and no schedule, the shelf is not your problem. The last published AMC figures put MCQ sittings at 51% passed, and no candidate on the wrong side of that failed for want of a fourth question bank.
Sources checked
The preparation app's question count, cost and authorship were read on 14 August 2026 from the AMC's MCQ preparation app page. The publication facts were read the same day from the AMC's publications page, its Australian Medicine in Context page and its resource list for international medical graduates; neither the AMC Handbook of Multiple Choice Questions nor the Handbook of Clinical Assessment appears on any of them, and store.amc.org.au failed to resolve when we checked it. Exam format and the pass standard come from the AMC's MCQ examination page. Pass rates are the AMC's last published figures, sourced in our AMC pass rate guide. Every verdict on this page is StudyRise editorial judgement; the AMC does not rank or approve third-party resources.