CAT mock test 2026 - free, full IIM pattern, sectional locking

Practise the CAT 2026 paper in the exact IIM / TCS iON pattern - 66 questions split across VARC (24), DILR (20) and QA (22), 40 minutes of sectional locking per area, 2 hours total, +3 for a correct MCQ and -1 for a wrong one, no negative on TITA, percentile-based scoring. Free, unlimited attempts, no paywall.

What this mock includes

The full-length CAT mock on mbamocks is built to mirror the live IIM paper one-to-one: same section split, same question mix, same marking, same total time, same on-screen behaviour (review marks, section switcher you cannot rewind through, server-side timer, in-paper calculator, scratchpad area). If you have already taken a TCS iON CAT mock, the structure here will feel identical - and the question quality is calibrated against the last several live cycles, with VARC passages pulled from current-affairs and humanities long-reads, DILR sets built around the new shorter-and-trickier template the IIMs have favoured since 2020, and QA leaning on arithmetic plus algebra plus number-properties in roughly the proportion the IIMs have used recently.

The 66-question, 120-minute structure works out to roughly 109 seconds per question on average, but that average is misleading - VARC's 24 questions are dominated by 4 long RC passages of 4 questions each plus a handful of standalone para-summary and para-jumble items, so the real budget is closer to 7 to 9 minutes per RC passage and roughly a minute on each verbal-ability question. DILR's 20 questions sit inside 5 sets, which means you have about 8 minutes per set to read, decode and solve - and the set choice you make in the first 3 to 4 minutes after entering the section determines whether your score on that section will sit at 30 or at 55. QA's 22 questions give you a little more breathing room at about 110 seconds each, but the IIM's preferred mix of arithmetic and number-properties means most questions take longer to read than to solve.

The sectional lock - the single biggest CAT-specific rule

CAT is the only major MBA-entrance exam with a strict sectional lock. The paper runs in a fixed order - VARC, then DILR, then QA - and once a section ends, you cannot return to it. There is no global timer you can spend flexibly, no review-the-paper-at-the-end window, and no way to bank unused VARC time as extra QA time. The mock enforces this exactly. When the 40-minute VARC timer expires, the platform auto-submits VARC and moves you to DILR; the back-arrow disappears; review-marks you placed in VARC are frozen, unviewable, uneditable. The same happens at the 80-minute mark from VARC into DILR, and at 120 minutes when the QA section ends and the whole paper is submitted.

The strategic consequence is that the per-section attempt count - not the overall - is what your percentile rides on. A 99 percentile candidate in 2025 attempted roughly 17 to 20 of VARC, 14 to 16 of DILR and 18 to 20 of QA, all at 90 percent-plus accuracy, ending with a raw scaled score in the low-to-mid-80s. A candidate attempting 22 of VARC at 75 percent accuracy would actually score lower despite attempting more, because the +3 / -1 structure punishes accuracy drops aggressively: 17 right and 5 wrong scores 46 marks, while 14 right and 0 wrong scores 42 - the gap is one or two well-judged skips away. The sectional lock means you have to internalise this arithmetic inside each section, in real time, because there is no later opportunity to fix a hasty VARC.

Two practice modes

The mock supports two distinct modes, picked at the start of the attempt. The mode you should default to depends on whether you are still building the quant / verbal base or have already covered the syllabus once and are now training the percentile-deciding behaviours - set selection in DILR, RC pace in VARC, and skip discipline under the +3 / -1 marking.

• Instant Feedback mode: after every question, the platform tells you whether you got it right, shows the correct answer, and gives a short worked solution. The timer keeps running and the section structure is preserved, but you cannot bank a mis-applied method for 22 QA questions before finding out. Best for the build phase - your first 4 to 6 full-length mocks, or anytime you have just finished a fresh topic and want to confirm your method on real exam-style questions before it ossifies.
• Exam-like mode: no feedback during the attempt. You see the live TCS iON layout - section switcher in the top bar, question palette on the right, the 40-minute timer ticking in red as it approaches the lock, an on-screen calculator you can open with a click, a scratchpad for rough work. Scoring, sectional breakdown and percentile estimate arrive only when you submit. Best for the polish phase - every mock in the final 10 weeks before the late-November CAT date should be in Exam-like mode.

A workable cadence is to use Instant Feedback for the first 4 attempts in your prep cycle, then switch to Exam-like mode for the rest. The failure modes are different at the two stages: early on you fail by not knowing the method, later you fail by knowing the method and still mis-managing the 40-minute section budget or chasing a hard DILR set that should have been skipped.

Three difficulty tiers

On top of the standard IIM-tiered full paper, the mock library is bucketed into three difficulty tiers that you can choose between based on where you currently are in prep. Each tier preserves the 66-question, 120-minute, sectional-locked structure - what changes is the proportion of routine vs. hard items and the surface area of the syllabus covered.

• Easy: roughly 55% routine and 35% medium, with only a small minority of hard problems. The point of an Easy mock is not to inflate your score - it is to confirm that your fundamentals are sound before you take a full-difficulty paper. If you cannot clear an Easy mock at 50 marks comfortably, attempting an IIM-tier paper next week will only confirm gaps you already know about; spend a week on revision and try again.
• Medium: the closest match to a real CAT paper - the standard mock you should be taking once a week from August through November. Difficulty distribution mirrors the IIM template; topic coverage is balanced so a single Medium paper exercises most of the high-frequency areas in arithmetic, algebra, number-properties, modern math, set-based DILR, table-and-graph DILR, and both fiction and non-fiction RC passages.
• Hard: compressed to 45-55% hard problems, with denser multi-concept QA, harder set selection in DILR (you will get sets that look promising and turn out impossible 4 minutes in), and RC passages that lean philosophical or argumentative. Designed for the final 4 weeks before the real paper, and for candidates already targeting 99.5+ percentile. Hard mocks are about widening the margin, not measuring it - expect lower raw scores than on a Medium paper.

Why our CAT mock matches the real exam

A mock's usefulness collapses if any of the four loadbearing variables - syllabus alignment, question style, marking and timing - drift from the live exam. We hold all four close. The syllabus is the CAT-published 2026 outline, refreshed against the latest IIM notification - so VARC matches the current balance of fiction, non-fiction and argumentative passages with a parallel balance in length, DILR matches the post-2020 short-and-tricky set template rather than the old long-and-routine sets, and QA leans on the arithmetic / algebra / number-properties mix the IIMs have favoured in the last four cycles. Question style is calibrated against the last three years of papers: phrasing, option distractors (especially in VARC, where two options often look near-identical and the difference is one qualifying word), and TITA answer ranges all sit inside the bands the IIMs have actually used.

The user interface matches the live TCS iON platform on every visible element: the top bar with section names and remaining time, the question palette on the right that colour-codes answered / unanswered / marked-for- review, the in-paper four-function calculator, the scratchpad pop-out, the confirmation modal when you click "End Section" before the lock expires. That last one matters more than it sounds - on real exam day, candidates regularly waste 30 seconds reading the modal because they have never seen it in practice. In the mock, you will see it on every section-end and stop flinching at it.

Marking and timing are the variables that often get fudged in third-party mocks. Several platforms still skip the TITA-no-negative rule, or apply +4 / -1 instead of +3 / -1, or fail to enforce the 40-minute hard lock and quietly let you carry unused time into the next section. We do not - +3 / -1 on every MCQ, +3 / 0 on every TITA, exactly 40 minutes per section, an unbreakable lock at every boundary. That matches the live CAT rule and is the only configuration worth training against for the 2026 cycle.

After you finish: score and analysis

The result page is the part of a mock that decides whether the next attempt actually improves on this one. Ours is built so a single look tells you what to fix next, not just what the score was.

• Per-section scaled score: your raw mark in VARC, DILR and QA separately, alongside the total and the count of correct, wrong and unattempted in each section. The section-wise split is what matters for diagnosis - a 60 with a balanced 22 / 17 / 21 split is a very different gap analysis from a 60 built on 32 / 8 / 20.
• Per-section percentile estimate: an indicative percentile band for each section based on how the same paper has been scored across our user base. This is a directional indicator, not the official IIM percentile - real CAT normalisation runs across slots on exam day, which a mock cannot reproduce. Treat it as a check on whether you are inside the call band for a top IIM or a strong new IIM; confirm exact sectional percentile cut-offs on the cut-offs page.
• Mistake clustering: the wrong-answer review groups your incorrect attempts by topic and sub-topic, so you can see at a glance whether a low QA score came from arithmetic, number-properties or modern math, and whether a low VARC came from inference questions, tone questions or para-summary. Two or three wrong in one sub-topic is a revision target; one wrong across ten sub-topics is usually a pacing or skip-discipline target.
• Time-spent heat-map: a per-question time chart showing where your minutes went. The most common pattern in a low DILR score is not too many wrong attempts - it is one set that swallowed 18 minutes and left 5 minutes for the remaining four sets. The heat-map makes that visible and, more importantly, makes the "exit after 4 minutes if you have not cracked the structure" rule into a habit you can see yourself violating.

Where to go next

A mock score is most useful in context. The pages below cover the rest of the CAT 2026 picture - what the paper officially tests, who is eligible, what percentiles open which IIMs, and how the application window runs. Pair a weekly mock with one of these reads and the prep cycle is roughly self-managing.

• MBA exam pattern - the full section-by-section breakdown of CAT plus XAT, NMAT, SNAP, CMAT and MAT, with attempt strategy and the maths behind the +3 / -1 skip rule.
• Percentile cut-offs - the call bands for the older IIMs (A / B / C), the newer IIMs, XLRI, FMS / SPJIMR / MDI / IIFT and the top private B-schools, plus how sectional cut-offs gate the overall percentile.
• MBA eligibility - the 50% / 45% bachelor-degree rule, final-year status, reservation policy, and the difference between sitting the exam and being a competitive profile for the IIMs.
• CAT application - the indicative 2026 application window, documents required, fee structure, photo / signature specs that cause the most rejections, and the common mistakes that cost a candidate their preferred test city.