Most advice about Cambridge past papers is guesswork. Ours isn't. Between January 2026 and May 2026, 801 students completed 8,617 timed multiple-choice attempts on QuickMark, answering 330,726 questions across 20 subjects. This page summarises what that anonymised data tells us about how hard each paper really is, the kind of thing you can't get from a mark scheme alone.
Every row below is an aggregate across all students who attempted that subject (minimum 30 attempts). The gap between the average and the median matters: where the median sits above the mean, it means most students score well and a smaller group of low scores drags the average down.
| Subject | Attempts | Avg score | Median | Avg time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IGCSE Physics | 2,302 | 80.4% | 85% | 24.2 min |
| IGCSE Chemistry | 2,134 | 85% | 90% | 22.9 min |
| IGCSE Biology | 1,868 | 87.4% | 90% | 16 min |
| IGCSE Economics | 1,236 | 84.4% | 90% | 16.1 min |
| IGCSE French | 137 | 75.3% | 82.5% | 35 min |
| IGCSE Accounting | 125 | 75.8% | 82.9% | 32.4 min |
| IGCSE Combined Science | 125 | 83.9% | 85% | 24.2 min |
| A Level Physics | 119 | 69.8% | 75% | 37.2 min |
| O Level Chemistry | 93 | 86.5% | 90% | 27 min |
| O Level Biology | 90 | 87.9% | 95% | 13.8 min |
| A Level Economics | 84 | 71.7% | 73.3% | 24.1 min |
| A Level Biology | 81 | 69.8% | 77.5% | 24.6 min |
| O Level Physics | 76 | 85.3% | 92.5% | 22.2 min |
| IGCSE Coordinated Sciences | 64 | 70.4% | 75% | 24.2 min |
| A Level Chemistry | 48 | 65.5% | 72.5% | 22.5 min |
Biology is the gentlest of the big IGCSE sciences, and the fastest. IGCSE Biology (0610) averages 87.4% and students finish in around 16 minutes, while IGCSE Physics (0625) is the toughest of the four at 80.4% and takes the longest at about 24.2 minutes. If you study all three sciences, that's a real clue about where your revision hours should go.
The jump from IGCSE to A Level is brutal, and measurable.The same subjects that sit in the mid-80s at IGCSE collapse at A Level: A Level Chemistry (9701) averages just 65.5% and A Level Physics (9702) 69.8%, versus 85.0% and 80.4% for their IGCSE versions. If you're stepping up, don't assume your IGCSE comfort carries over.
Most students cluster near the top, so the hard papers are where marks are won and lost. Because so many attempts land in the 80-100% band, the handful of genuinely difficult papers are disproportionately important. We break those down per subject below.
Detailed difficulty rankings and score distributions for the four highest-volume subjects:
All figures are aggregated and anonymised, no individual student is identifiable. Per-paper figures only include papers with at least 30 recorded attempts so a handful of scores can't skew the picture. “Average score” is the mean percentage across attempts; “time” is the mean of recorded timed sessions. The data is a point-in-time snapshot and we refresh it periodically. It reflects students who chose to practise on QuickMark, so it's a guide to relative difficulty, not an official grade boundary.