UK Exam-Prep Apps: 9 SIA Licence Quiz Apps Launched Since 2025 Share 9 Ratings. The Search Terms Belong to One App Built by a Training Company

Open the UK's top-paid chart and the first three apps aren't games. They're the Driving Theory Test 4 in 1 Kit at £5.99, the Official DVSA Theory Test Kit at £5.49, and CITB's construction health-and-safety test at £7.29. Ten of the top 100 paid apps are exam prep. If you're looking for a niche where people pay upfront, that looks like a gift. A quiz app is also one of the easiest things to build with AI tools: a question bank, a timer, a results screen.

Plenty of people have noticed. We searched the UK App Store for prep apps for the SIA licence, which every security guard and door supervisor in the UK needs, and found 11 dedicated apps. Nine of them launched in 2025 or 2026. Those nine have 9 UK ratings between them. Every top search term for the niche is held by one app, and it isn't really a quiz app.

What this niche is, and what it isn't

"UK exam prep" here means apps for the tests people in Britain must pass to work or settle: the SIA licence (security), the CSCS card test run by CITB (construction sites), the driving theory test, Driver CPC (professional drivers), and Life in the UK (settlement and citizenship). The motivation is unusually strong. Without the pass, there's no job, no licence or no visa.

It isn't general education or flashcards. Anki and Duolingo compete on habit and content breadth. Exam-prep apps compete on one thing: how closely they mirror one specific official test. That's why official bodies like CITB and the DVSA's publisher TSO sell their own apps and sit at the top of the paid chart.

Demand check: real autocomplete, flat interest

One caution about the SIA row. App Store autocomplete includes the names of apps people search for, and several suggestions ("badgeready: sia licence prep", "sia mock test: door supervisor") are literally the titles of the new clone apps. The demand is real, since GuardPass has 11,978 UK ratings, but it's thinner than the list of suggestions makes it look.

Weekly UK Google Trends, April 26 to October 4, 2026. Both terms come from one request, so they share a 0–100 scale: "cscs test" (brown) runs at roughly twice "sia licence" (grey).

Neither curve is growing. People take these tests at a steady rate, which is good for a business but bad for a newcomer. No new wave of searchers is coming that the current leaders haven't already captured.

The rising related queries for "sia licence" are worth a look: "sia top up training" (+1,300%), "first aid course" (+400%), "what is sia licence" (+60%). People are searching for courses, renewals and first-aid add-ons. That's what training companies sell. Question banks aren't on the list.

Competitive landscape: one owner per test, plus a wave of clones

GuardPass is what a new SIA quiz app is really up against. Get Licensed, the company behind it, runs SIA training courses. Its app handles course bookings and e-learning, has a job board with shift work, does BS7858 vetting, and includes mock exams for Door Supervisor, Security Guard, CCTV and Close Protection. The mock exams are one feature among many. The app has a reason to exist even after you pass, and that's where its 11,978 ratings come from.

Gold-rush check: the numbers

Across the "sia licence" and "sia door supervisor" searches there are 11 apps built only for SIA exam prep. Nine launched in 2025–2026. Those nine have 9 UK ratings in total, and four of them have none. The two older ones date from 2020, cost £9.99 each, and have 1 rating between them.

CSCS shows the same pattern on a larger scale. We counted 29 dedicated CSCS/CITB prep apps across one search, and 14 of them launched in 2025–2026. One of those 14, CSCS Mock Test 2026, has 371 ratings. The other 13 share 109, and 70 of those belong to a single app.

You'll also see the same developer names over and over. At least five developers appear in both the SIA and the CSCS results with nearly identical apps, and some also publish Plumbing, Dental Nurse or Life in the UK versions. That's a template factory: one quiz engine, a new question bank, a new title. It's exactly what an AI-assisted solo developer would build first, and the review counts show how that usually ends.

Chart vs search: the leader isn't even in the chart

GuardPass isn't in the UK Education top-free 100, and no SIA app of any kind is in the UK Education top-paid list. In this niche, chart rank tells you nothing. The whole game is search, and the results look like this:

The only terms GuardPass doesn't hold are the two with no autocomplete demand behind them. Ranking #1 for "sia top up" would mean winning an empty room.

CSCS has the same structure. CITB's own Op/Spec app is #1 for "cscs test", "cscs mock test", "citb" and "cscs revision", and #2 for "cscs" and "cscs card". The 2026 breakout got in anyway, but not through those head terms. It's #26 for "cscs test" and #30 for "cscs".

The gap one app found, and why it's now closed

CSCS Mock Test 2026 is the only 2025–2026 launch in either niche that broke through, and it got there with search terms CITB doesn't target as hard:

The bigger difference is the product. Most clones are a generic quiz. This one claims 3,000+ questions, asks for your exact exam (Operative, Specialist by trade, or MAP), mirrors the real 50-question, 45-minute format with case studies, and lets you study in English, Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian or Lithuanian, the languages a lot of UK site workers speak. It's free to download and sells weekly, monthly and lifetime upgrades. Its App Store listing is in English only, so the languages work inside the app, not as extra search reach.

The lesson isn't "add languages". The 13 apps that got almost nothing were generic. The one that got 371 ratings went deeper than the incumbent on a specific audience. That spot in CSCS is now taken. In SIA, nobody has found an equivalent, and the data here doesn't show one. GuardPass is English-only too, but we found no search evidence that SIA candidates look for prep in other languages.

Verdict

SIA licence prep: don't build. The demand is real, but one free app owns the search terms, and that app also offers jobs, courses and vetting. Nine 2025–2026 launches have tested the generic-quiz approach, and together they've earned 9 ratings.

CSCS prep: don't build another generic quiz. Build only if you can go deeper than CSCS Mock Test 2026 on an audience it doesn't serve, and show search demand for that audience before you write any code. One indie has already shown the playbook works, which also means that particular spot is taken.

UK exam prep in general: the paid chart shows people are willing to pay, not that the niche is open. Before you choose a test, check who holds #1 for "test name + mock test". If it's the official body or a company that also sells the course, the paid-chart numbers belong to them.

Before you build a UK exam-prep app

• Run check_search_rank on the current #1 app for "test", "test mock test" and "test revision". If one app holds all three, move on
• Count the 2025–2026 launches in a search_apps result and add up their ratings. If a dozen new apps share fewer than 100, the shortcut you're planning has already been tried
• Check that the official question format (number of questions, time limit, case studies, versions by role or trade) is public and stable. Mirroring it exactly is the minimum, not an advantage
• Look for an audience the leader doesn't serve, such as a language, a trade-specific test variant or a renewal test, and confirm it with App Store autocomplete, not just Google Trends
• Price against what's already working: £5.99–£7.29 one-off at the top of the paid chart, or free with a lifetime unlock like the CSCS breakout

Data pulled from the live UK App Store (charts, search, search rank, autocomplete) and Google Trends via Pumf.it on October 7, 2026. Rating counts are UK ratings from the App Store. The SIA count (11 apps) combines the "sia licence" and "sia door supervisor" searches. The CSCS count (29 apps) comes from one "CSCS test" search and excludes the official My CSCS card app and unrelated results. Both are representative samples, not a full census. Google Trends values come from one request covering both terms (shared 0–100 scale) over a rolling window. Languages for CSCS Mock Test 2026 are taken from its App Store description. This is a read of public App Store data to help someone decide whether to build in this niche, not a critique of any app or developer named above.