We build certification decks differently.

Most exam-prep is recycled. The same outline, the same question banks, repackaged each version. We start over from the official blueprint every time, cite every claim, and ship within hours of a publisher's release.

Our approach to credentialing prep

The candidates who pass high-stakes credentialing exams aren't the ones who read the most — they're the ones who practiced retrieval under timed conditions, with questions that map to the actual blueprint, against material that was actually current.

Most certification prep gets none of those three things right. The outlines drift from the real blueprint. The questions are recycled from older versions. The material lags the publisher by months or quarters.

So we built Exam Relay to do all three — and to ship the prep before the existing market catches up.

How we build a deck

Every deck on this site goes through the same five-step pipeline. No step is skipped. The whole pipeline runs in days, not months — which is why our prep ships before the incumbents'.

Step 1
Pull the official blueprint

We start at the certifying body's published rating system, candidate handbook, or exam objectives — the document the exam is actually written from. Not third-party summaries. Not last version's outline.

Step 2
Author the card set with citations

Every card is written against a specific objective and cites its source. If a fact isn't in the official blueprint, it doesn't get a card. Domain weighting matches the published exam weights — high-yield domains get the most cards.

Step 3
Adversarial review (we call it "Karen")

Every card and every practice question goes through an adversarial reviewer whose only job is to flag hallucinations, miscited sources, ambiguous wording, and questions that don't map to a real published objective. Anything Karen flags gets re-authored or cut.

Step 4
Build practice exams to handbook weights

Practice exams aren't a random card draw. They're stratified by the official domain weights — so a 100-question exam allocates the same percentage to each domain that the real exam does. You're rehearsing the actual exam shape.

Step 5
Ship within hours, update for free

When the exam version changes, we don't wait. The deck ships the same week. Buyers get every update during the cert version's lifetime at no extra charge — including the full bundle upgrade when the candidate handbook drops.

Promise
Pass-or-refund (with proof)

Study the deck, sit the exam at a Prometric or PSI testing center within 90 days, don't pass — forward us the official GBCI result email and we refund your purchase price in full. Refund requires the GBCI fail-result email. We won't claim a pass rate we can't cite, so we put the policy in writing instead.

Why incumbent prep lags 6–18 months behind

Most certification prep companies treat a new exam version like a refresh: keep the old outline, swap in the new domain names, lightly edit the questions to remove obvious anachronisms, and reship. That works fast and looks reasonable from a distance — but it preserves every gap and bias of the old version, and it leaves candidates rehearsing for the wrong exam.

The honest path is slower. Read the new rating system end-to-end. Throw out the prior question bank. Re-derive the domain weights from the new handbook. Cite every new fact. Have an adversarial reviewer catch the carry-over errors. That's the path that takes most publishers 6–18 months — and that's the path we run as a tight pipeline, not a slow committee.

We are not the cheapest prep on the market. We are the fastest, the most cited, and we put a written pass-or-refund policy in front of every buyer.

Sister brand

TradesmanPass — same pipeline, for the trades

TradesmanPass.com is our sibling brand for the skilled trades. Same five-step build pipeline. Same adversarial review. Same ship-within-hours promise. Same pass-or-refund-with-proof policy. Different exams.

NEC Electrical

National Electrical Code journeyman + master prep, built to the latest NEC cycle.

NABCEP Solar

PV installer, solar associate, and OMAT certifications.

NATE HVAC

Core, service, and installation specialty exams for HVAC technicians.

EVITP

Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Training Program — the EV-charger installer credential.

EPA 608

Refrigerant handling certification — Type I, II, III, and Universal.

+ more

New trade certifications added every few weeks. Same pipeline, every time.

Visit TradesmanPass →

What we don't do

We don't license content from third-party question shops. Every card on this site was authored, cited, and adversarially reviewed by Exam Relay or TradesmanPass.

We don't put AI avatars on our covers, and we don't claim a pass rate we can't source. We tell you exactly what the deck is and isn't, and we put the conditional refund policy in writing.

We don't pretend to be a full curriculum. Our decks are spaced-retrieval flashcards plus practice exams, designed to be the retrieval layer on top of whatever reference material the certifying body publishes. We recommend more than one prep source for any high-stakes exam.

See the live decks

LEED v5 Green Associate is live. CompTIA SecAI+ ships next. Want to be told the moment a deck launches? Subscribe to Exam Watch — one short email every Friday.

See the LEED v5 deck Subscribe to Exam Watch TradesmanPass →

Questions? Email hello@examrelay.com — we answer every one. Find a card that's wrong? Tell us. We fix it the same day.