UPSC Prelims PYQ

The UPSC Civil Services Preliminary Examination (CSE) is the highly competitive first stage of the exam used to recruit officers for the IAS, IPS, IFS, and other central services AajExam hosts a continuously expanding archive of UPSC Prelims previous year question papers, fully reconstructed into timed mock tests with verified answer keys and detailed step-by-step solutions. This page lists every UPSC Prelims PYQ shift available on the platform — currently 22 papers spanning 2025 down to 2015 — and lets you attempt each one as a real, timer-based test. Why UPSC Prelims previous year papers matter: government competitive exam toppers consistently rate PYQ practice as the single most leveraged preparation strategy. UPSC Prelims repeats question patterns, formula applications, theme-based questions and difficulty distribution year after year, so a candidate who has solved 8-12 PYQ shifts has effectively practised the exam multiple times before the real day. PYQs reveal high-yield chapters — the topics that recur in nearly every shift — so you can prioritise revision around what actually appears, instead of studying the entire syllabus uniformly. How AajExam's PYQ archive helps you prepare for UPSC Prelims: every paper on this page is delivered as a real-exam-style timer-based mock test rather than a static PDF. You sit through the actual UPSC Prelims duration, the section ordering and the negative-marking scheme, and submit when time runs out — exactly like the real exam. After submission you instantly get a detailed analytics report showing section-wise accuracy, time spent per question, attempt rate, and an overall percentile. Every wrong question and every skipped question is reviewable with a complete explanation, including step-by-step working, formula references and concept notes you can save to your revision queue. Suggested PYQ strategy for UPSC Prelims aspirants: first, attempt the most recent year's paper without any prep — this gives you a baseline. Identify your two weakest sections from the analytics. Spend the next 7-10 days revising those two sections from your notes, then attempt 3-4 more PYQ shifts back-to-back over 2 days to lock in speed. From there, alternate one PYQ per day with topic-wise quiz practice from AajExam until you have solved every available shift. The week before the exam, re-attempt 4-5 of your weakest papers — your second attempts should be 15-20% faster with measurably better accuracy. Every paper on this page is free to attempt, mobile-friendly, and supports both English and Hindi explanations where applicable. New UPSC Prelims shifts are added to AajExam within days of the official answer key release.