Ask which test is harder and you will get a content answer: the ACT has more trigonometry, the SAT has trickier reading. Both are true and neither is what decides most students' scores.
The thing that decides it is pace.
The numbers
| Section | Questions | Time | Per question |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAT Reading & Writing | 2 × 27 | 32 min each | about 71 s |
| SAT Math | 2 × 22 | 35 min each | about 95 s |
| ACT English | 50 | 35 min | about 42 s |
| ACT Math | 45 | 50 min | about 67 s |
| ACT Reading | 36 | 40 min | about 67 s |
| ACT Science | 40 | 40 min | 60 s |
The SAT gives you about 40 percent more time per math question than the ACT does. On the verbal side the gap is wider still: 71 seconds for an SAT Reading and Writing question against 42 for an ACT English one.
The ACT partly earns that back by asking simpler individual questions. But if you are a student who knows the material and still runs out of time, those two columns explain more about your score than any content list will.
What each test does with the time
The SAT is adaptive. Each section has two modules, and your performance on the first decides whether the second is the harder or easier form. The harder form carries a higher score ceiling. So the first module is worth more attention than its question count suggests.
The ACT is a fixed form. Everyone gets the same questions in the same order, and every question is worth the same. That has a strategic consequence students routinely ignore: a brutal question and a trivial question pay identically, so time spent wrestling the brutal one is stolen from three easy ones later in the section.
Content differences worth knowing
- ACT Math is wider. It adds logarithms, matrices, sequences and complex numbers, and asks more trigonometry than the SAT does.
- The SAT allows a calculator throughout, with Desmos built into the testing app. The ACT allows one on Math only.
- The ACT has a Science section, now optional and outside the composite. It is a data-reading test rather than a science test.
- Neither penalises a wrong answer. On both tests a blank scores exactly what a wrong guess scores, so there is never a reason to leave one.
How to choose, in about two hours
Do not choose from a comparison table, including the one above. Sit one timed section of each under real conditions and pay attention to how it felt, not only what you scored.
- Ran out of time on the ACT but not the SAT? That is the clearest signal available.
- Found the adaptive second module unsettling? Some students dislike knowing the test is reacting to them. The ACT never changes.
- Comfortable reading charts at speed? ACT Science is 40 questions of exactly that, and almost nobody trains for it, which makes it unusually improvable.
- Shaky on logs, matrices or trig? The SAT does not ask. The ACT does.
Then commit to one. Splitting preparation across both is the most reliable way to end up mediocre at each, because pacing is a separate skill from content and it does not transfer.