Free TCF Prep Resources, Actually Tested: 7 Picks and What Each Is For (2026)
There is no shortage of "ultimate free TCF resource" lists online. The problem is that most of them are copied from each other: links that moved years ago, sections that were retired, sites with no TCF content at all. Nobody opened them.
This page follows one rule instead: on 27 July 2026, every resource below was actually opened to confirm it is still online, how far the free tier goes, and whether a genuine TCF section exists. Anything that would not load, or that did not match its reputation, was cut; the cuts are listed near the end. What follows are the seven that survived, ordered by how much they are worth to a TCF Canada candidate. We checked again on 5 October 2026, this time opening the FEI site in a real browser after it blocked us in July: the official material now has its own section, and RFI's set count is updated.
The headline finding: free resources are enough to build listening and reading, and almost useless for writing and speaking, because the one thing free material can never include is a person marking your work. More on that under "when paid material is worth it".
At a glance: which resource fits which week
The weeks refer to our 8-week TCF Canada study plan. If you haven't set a schedule yet, read that first and come back to pick tools.
| Resource | How far the free tier goes | Weeks |
|---|---|---|
| FEI sample items, sample papers and candidate manual | All free, opened straight from the official site | Read in week 1, recheck in week 7 |
| Le français facile avec RFI | Whole site free, including 13 TCF listening sets | 1–2 and 5–6 |
| TV5Monde Apprendre | Whole site free, including a TCF simulator and a 90-minute full test | 1–2 baseline, 7 mock |
| Three YouTube channels | Videos free; courses and memberships are not | 1–6, daily input |
| Français Authentique | 7-day course and media library free; academy paid | 1–4, commute listening |
| Anki + shared decks | Desktop app and sync free; decks are user-uploaded | 1–8, every day |
| Duolingo | French course free; paid tiers exist | Before week 1 |
| Podcast Français Facile | Lessons and exercises all free | 3–4, grammar repair |
Start with the official material: FEI sample items, sample papers and manual
What it is. The website of France Éducation international (FEI), which runs the TCF. Opened in a real browser on 5 October 2026, it offers four free things:
- The sample items page: 14 items you can answer in the browser, 7 listening, 3 language structure and 4 reading. The language-structure part is not one of the four TCF Canada papers.
- One writing sample paper and one speaking sample paper (PDF, for the TCF TP / Canada / Québec), linked at the bottom of the sample items page. The writing paper gives each task's minimum and maximum word count.
- The candidate manual (Manuel du candidat, September 2026, 68 pages, in French): every paper, timings, word limits, how papers are marked and the score grid.
Which weeks. Week 1, to read the word limits and timings so you know what you are training for; week 7, after your mock, to check you broke none of the rules.
How to use it. The rules worth memorising: writing tasks 1, 2 and 3 take 60 to 120, 120 to 150 and 120 to 180 words; one word is any group of signs between two spaces; missing a word count, going off topic, skipping a task, copying sentences from the prompt or documents and reciting a memorised text can all be marked "A1 non atteint"; each writing and speaking task gets a level that is then turned into a note out of 20. A point-by-point summary is on our prep site's official materials and rules page.
Limits. There is very little of it: one sample paper per skill, and FEI does not publish past papers the way IELTS does, so question banks sold as "real exam questions" are not FEI publications. The only two practice sites the FEI page itself recommends are the two ranked first and second below, RFI and TV5Monde.
1. Le français facile avec RFI: the only big site with free TCF listening sets
What it is. Radio France Internationale's French-learning site, now branded "Le français facile avec RFI" (francaisfacile.rfi.fr). Note the change: the savoirs.rfi.fr address quoted in older guides is no longer the entry point: on the day of checking it 301-redirects to the new domain, so update your bookmark. Everything is free and nothing required an account to listen or answer.
Its real value sits in the last nav item, "TCF-DELF-DFP": thirteen full TCF listening-comprehension training sets (Entrainement à l'épreuve de compréhension orale, sessions 1 through 13, the latest added on 22 September 2026), described on the page as free practice, plus a few DELF B2 listening sets. On the front page, "Journal en français facile" (the slow news bulletin) runs Monday to Friday, roughly ten minutes an episode, and is published on the site with a transcript, with two bonus exercises added each week. Exercises are filed by level (A1 / A2 / B1 / B2 / C1-C2) and there are four level-placement tests.
Which weeks. Weeks 1–2 for base-building: the plan asks for 20–30 minutes of listening a day, and one bulletin plus its transcript is exactly one session. Then in weeks 5–6, when listening moves up to exam pace, work through the thirteen TCF sets under time.
How to use it. With the bulletins, the order matters: listen once cold, summarise the gist, then open the transcript to check, then shadow one passage. Reading the transcript first turns a listening exercise into a reading exercise. Save the thirteen TCF sets for weeks 5–6, and file every miss as either "didn't catch it" or "didn't understand it"; that split is the homework list for week 8. Method in the listening tips.
Limits. Three, stated plainly. The thirteen sets are listening only: no writing, no speaking. They are labelled for the general TCF rather than TCF Canada, so item counts and timings won't match your paper; treat them as material, not as a mock. And the instructions and questions on the page are all in French, which makes it heavy going below A2.
2. TV5Monde Apprendre: a free 600-question TCF simulator, one third of which you won't sit
What it is. Along with RFI above, one of the two practice sites the FEI site itself recommends. apprendre.tv5monde.com, a free site built on video and news clips, describing itself as offering "more than 2000 online exercises" across A1, A2, B1 and B2.
The reason it's here is its standalone TCF section (apprendre.tv5monde.com/tcf), which advertises "600 questions to practise with our free simulator, on computer, tablet or phone": 17 training series, each split into listening comprehension, language structure and reading comprehension. There is also a "test under real conditions": a 90-minute full sitting, stated on the page as free and repeatable as often as you like.
Which weeks. Weeks 1–2 to find your starting point, using the placement test and a single series. Week 7, as a warm-up before the two full-length run-throughs; it doesn't replace them.
How to use it. Pull out only the listening and reading blocks from the 17 series and run them against a clock. The "language structure" block is a decent grammar health check, but don't drill it as exam content. Cross-check what you've done against the TCF Canada question types breakdown and you'll see immediately which formats are actually on your paper.
Limits. This is the warning worth reading twice: the simulator is built for the general TCF, not TCF Canada. The general TCF's "structure de la langue" section does not exist on TCF Canada, so roughly a third of those 600 questions tests something you'll never be asked. There is also no writing or speaking practice at all, and writing (3 tasks) plus speaking (3 tasks) is precisely the half that's hardest to self-study. The 90-minute test isn't the TCF Canada shape either (35 minutes listening + 60 reading + 60 writing). The interface offers ten languages (French, English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese), but no Chinese.
3. Three YouTube channels: good for input, not for exam technique
What they are. Three channels opened and confirmed active on the day of checking:
- Easy French: street interviews in Paris and elsewhere in the francophone world. The channel states that all videos carry French and English subtitles, and it runs a slower "Super Easy" series for beginners. The latest upload on the day of checking was two days old, so it's genuinely current.
- innerFrench: the channel describes itself as teaching French "through topics that matter", and the format is long-form monologue (the popular ones run roughly 13 to 28 minutes). It's the step up from short clips to sitting with a single stretch of French.
- Learn French With Alexa: a long-running teacher channel with by far the largest back catalogue of the three. Use it to look things up rather than to binge; the channel page also carries her own paid courses and store.
Which weeks. Daily input across weeks 1–6. Lean on Easy French's "Super Easy" clips and Alexa's explainers in weeks 1–2; switch to innerFrench and full-speed Easy French street interviews when listening goes up to pace in weeks 5–6.
How to use them. One rule: watch once with subtitles off, then again with them on to check. Leaving subtitles on the whole time trains reading, and there are no subtitles in the exam. Street interviews earn their place here because TCF listening is full of everyday conversation and real accents, not broadcast diction.
Limits. None of the three has a TCF section, and not one video is built around an exam format. Where a channel page also sells courses, the free videos are the top of a funnel. And there's a practical trap: the recommendation algorithm will walk you out of French within a couple of videos. Build a playlist and work through the playlist.
4. Français Authentique: for keeping your ears busy on the commute
What it is. francaisauthentique.com, a French-learning brand built around one complaint: non-native speakers freeze when they have to speak. On the day of checking, the free side was a 7-day starter course, a media library, a level test and a mobile app; the online academy and the full courses are paid.
Which weeks. Weeks 1–4. The material is audio and video explained entirely in French, which suits commuting, cooking and walking: the slots where nothing demanding would go in anyway.
How to use it. Treat it as passive volume, not as a study task. It does not substitute for the 20–30 minutes of focused listening the plan asks for; focused listening needs a transcript and a summary out loud. This is how you add hours around that.
Limits. On the day of checking, the homepage contained no mention of TCF or DELF anywhere; it has no relationship to exam formats. The free layer is a funnel into paid products, and the teaching leans toward method and mindset, so anyone who wants questions to answer will find it thin.
5. Anki plus shared decks: excellent tool, uneven decks
What it is. Anki is a spaced-repetition flashcard program; the site states that the AnkiWeb sync service is free, that cards support audio and images, and that decks of 100,000+ cards run fine. Searching AnkiWeb shared decks for "TCF" returned 15 decks on the day of checking.
Which weeks. All eight, 10–15 minutes a day, without exception. It's the one resource here that should never pause.
How to use it. Building your own deck beats downloading someone else's. Each day, take the 5–10 words that genuinely blocked you in an RFI bulletin or a TV5Monde exercise and enter them inside a sentence; isolated words stick far worse than the line they came from. Group them by the recurring exam themes the plan names: administration, daily life, work, education, environment.
Limits. Shared decks are user-uploaded and nothing is vetted. Among those 15 results on the day of checking: the largest held 7,391 notes but was last modified in 2019, while another carried 2,588 notes with a matching 2,588 audio files and had been updated in June this year, and most sat at a rating of 0, meaning nobody has rated them at all, with several holding as few as 5 to 25 notes. Check the note count and the modified date before you commit to one. Be especially careful with decks labelled as "task 2 templates": the risk in memorising whole model answers is spelled out in the speaking and writing templates guide.
6. Duolingo: useful before week 1, not during
What it is. Duolingo's French course, which pitches itself on the page as "learn French in just 5 minutes a day, for free", gamified and streak-driven, with Super and Max paid tiers alongside.
Which weeks. Honestly, the weeks before the plan starts: building a daily habit at A1 to A2, or keeping your hand in after the exam is behind you.
How to use it. If you're already inside the eight weeks, its value isn't learning, it's insurance: on the day you're too flattened to do anything real, it keeps the streak alive so "no French today" doesn't quietly become three days.
Limits. Bluntly: on the day of checking, the French course page carried no TCF section or mention anywhere; it isn't built for this exam. And the "five minutes a day" the page leads with is an order of magnitude below the 20–30 minutes of daily listening the plan requires. Making a gamified general-purpose language app your main prep tool is a common reason people finish eight weeks with the same score they started with.
7. Podcast Français Facile: a free grammar reference to look things up in
What it is. podcastfrancaisfacile.com, a free FLE site that loaded normally on the day of checking and was still publishing new material. It's organised by language point: dialogues, grammar, pronunciation, conjugation, spelling, vocabulary, dictations, question forms for conversation and colloquial French, plus beginner and intermediate course tracks.
Which weeks. Weeks 3–4. That's when you start writing, and accuracy problems surface all at once: tenses, agreement, prepositions. This is where you go to patch them.
How to use it. As a reference, not a curriculum. Finish a piece of writing, take the one grammar point you were unsure about, read that page, do its exercise, leave. The dictation section is a cheap bonus: dictation exposes exactly which sounds you mishear, and sounds you mishear are sounds you misspell. Pair it with the writing tips.
Limits. The interface is dated and navigation means digging. Content is organised by grammar point rather than by exam: there's no TCF section and no timed full papers. The site monetises through the author's own book, so expect purchase prompts.
What got cut: the innerFrench website
innerfrench.com, the website: repeated attempts on the July day of checking were stopped by the site's own protection screen and returned no content, so this article keeps only the YouTube channel we could confirm and says nothing about what the site itself offers.
When paid material is worth it
Use all seven properly and you'll run into two gaps free material cannot close, and each maps to a different way of spending money:
- Gap one: nobody marks your writing and speaking. This is structural, not an oversight: marking takes a human, so it will never be free. The plan puts it bluntly: three pieces someone corrected beat ten nobody read. So if you can only spend once, spend it on correction (a teacher, a tutor, or a serious exchange partner), not on a question bank. For everyday practice you can also use our AI writing feedback (free in beta, scored on the official word rules and criteria), but it is an AI estimate and does not replace a teacher.
- Gap two: no full timed mock in the TCF Canada shape. RFI is listening only; TV5Monde is built on the general TCF structure. For a genuine week-7 mock, once the official samples are used up, a paid bank becomes a reasonable purchase.
The name that comes up most often is PrepMyFuture. Pricing follows the centre rather than the country: on Alliance Française Vancouver's TCF Canada page, the online practice is $80 on its own and $70 when bought together with the exam (source: Alliance Française Vancouver's TCF Canada page, current as of 2026-07; other centres price it differently; see TCF Canada fees for the comparison). We have no commercial relationship with it; it's listed because it's the option that keeps appearing on centre pages.
The test is simple: if your listening and reading mocks already clear the line and writing or speaking is what's stuck, buy correction. If all four skills are still far off, exhaust the seven free resources above first; at that stage a question bank only buys you more chances to get things wrong.
FAQ
Can free resources alone get me to CLB 7?
For listening and reading, yes: RFI plus TV5Monde supply more than enough volume for the plan's input targets. For writing and speaking, it's hard, and not because the material is thin: free resources have no "someone corrects you" step. The practical answer is to cover input entirely for free and concentrate whatever budget you have on output correction. Whether you reach the line still depends on your starting point and your hours; nobody can promise you a result.
Are these free TCF exercises real past papers?
No, and there are two separate things to keep straight. TV5Monde's 600 questions and RFI's thirteen sets are practice material, not past papers. More importantly, both are built for the general TCF, which includes a language-structure section, while TCF Canada tests only listening, reading, writing and speaking. So the parts you can genuinely reuse are the listening and reading ones. For what each of the four papers actually contains, see the question types breakdown.
I only have half an hour a day. What first?
One RFI bulletin with its transcript (about ten minutes), ten minutes of Anki, ten minutes reading aloud. That combination has the best return per minute, and sustaining it for eight weeks already puts you ahead of most candidates. For reading speed, see the reading tips; for speaking, the speaking tips.
Everything is bookmarked, now what?
Book the seat. That isn't a throwaway line: TCF Canada slots in cities like Toronto and Vancouver routinely vanish the moment they're posted, and without a date, the best resource list in the world is just links in a folder. Fix the date first, then count eight weeks backwards from it. If you can't get one, start with what to do when you can't get a slot; if you'd rather not refresh the official site ten times a day, our seat monitoring service emails you the moment one opens, with a direct booking link. Free resources answer "what do I practise"; monitoring answers "when can I sit it". To be straight about it: monitoring gets you the news sooner so you can act faster, and landing the seat still depends on official releases and on you. For the day itself, see TCF Canada exam day.