JEE Main PYQ: Previous Year Question Papers 2016–2026

This page lists JEE Main previous year question papers for 11 years, 2016 to 2026, with 21 official PDFs (question papers and answer keys) and labelled mock papers for 7 years with no official question paper. JEE Main (Joint Entrance Examination Main) is conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) and covers Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. Pick a year below for the paper, answer key and a timed practice plan; confirm dates and pattern on jeemain.nta.nic.in.

Explore: Question papers by year · Syllabus & pattern · Pattern changes · FAQ

Year-wise question papers

Prefer to practise one chapter at a time? JEE Main chapter-wise PYQs lists all 855 questions from 11 official JEE Main papers by chapter, with the official answers.

About JEE Main

JEE Main is the national entrance test for B.E. and B.Tech admission to the NITs, IIITs and centrally funded technical institutes through JoSAA counselling. Several state colleges and private universities also use its scores. It is also the qualifying test for JEE Advanced: only the top two and a half lakh or so candidates in the B.E./B.Tech paper can sit for the IITs. More than ten lakh students register each year, many of them in both sessions.

The National Testing Agency (NTA) has run the exam since 2019. From 2013 to 2018, CBSE conducted it. The paper tests Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics from the Class 11 and 12 syllabus, and the separate B.Arch and B.Planning papers are outside the scope of this page.

Old papers matter more for JEE Main than for most exams because there are so many of them. Each session runs over several days with two shifts a day, so a single year can give you ten or more full papers. The question styles repeat across shifts and years, and NTA scores you on a percentile within your own shift, so what decides your rank is how fast and how cleanly you handle the standard questions. Past papers are the best way to train exactly that. The full syllabus and eligibility details are on the JEE Main syllabus and pattern page.

How the paper has changed since 2016

If you plan to solve papers from the last ten years, sit each one under the current rules. The older papers are still good for content, but the number of questions and the type of question have both changed.

The paper has stayed at 3 hours throughout. Marking for MCQs has always been +4 for a right answer and −1 for a wrong one. Numerical answer questions started without any negative marking in 2020, and since 2021 a wrong numerical answer also costs you 1 mark.

Two more changes affect how you use older papers. First, for 2024 NTA cut some topics from the syllabus, so a few questions in earlier papers are on chapters that are no longer tested. Check them against the current syllabus and skip those. Second, the 2016 to 2019 papers have no numerical section at all. They are still worth solving for chapter practice, but they will not train you for typing an answer with no options to check against.

What the papers show, subject by subject

Physics (25 questions, 100 marks)

JEE Main Physics is mostly one-concept or two-concept problems. If you solve a few years of papers chapter by chapter, you will see the same setups again and again: a charged particle in a magnetic field, a rolling body on an incline, a lens and mirror combination, a circuit with a capacitor. The numbers change and the setup barely does.

Modern physics, current electricity, electrostatics, magnetism, optics, rotational motion and thermodynamics carry steady weight across shifts. Units and dimensions, errors in measurement and semiconductors give quick marks almost every year, and students who skipped them in Class 11 tend to lose those marks for no good reason.

When you review a Physics section, separate the questions you could not start from the ones where you started correctly and made a slip. A missed factor of 2, a sign error in a potential calculation or a wrong unit conversion all need a different fix from not understanding the chapter. For numerical answer questions, also check whether you rounded the answer the way the question asked.

Chemistry (25 questions, 100 marks)

Chemistry is the section where well-prepared students pick up marks fastest. A large part of the inorganic and organic questions can be traced to NCERT, sometimes almost line for line. Coordination compounds, the p-block and d-block chapters, chemical bonding and periodic trends come up in most shifts, and they reward close reading of the NCERT tables and exceptions.

In organic chemistry, the papers keep returning to reaction mechanisms, named reactions, conversions, biomolecules and practical organic chemistry. In physical chemistry, expect short numericals on thermodynamics, equilibrium, electrochemistry, kinetics and solutions. Mole concept errors cost marks across all three branches.

Keep your Chemistry error log in three columns, physical, organic and inorganic, because the fix for each is different. Inorganic misses are almost always a fact you did not remember. Organic misses are usually a reaction you have seen but could not place. Physical misses are usually arithmetic or a formula you applied to the wrong situation.

Mathematics (25 questions, 100 marks)

Mathematics is the longest section for most students. The questions are not always harder than Physics, but they take more steps, and calculation-heavy questions on conics, definite integrals or probability can eat ten minutes if you are not careful.

Calculus has the largest share across most papers: limits, definite integrals, area under curves, differential equations and applications of derivatives. Coordinate geometry (straight lines, circles and conics), vectors and 3D geometry, matrices and determinants, sequences and series, binomial theorem, complex numbers and probability all appear regularly.

The habit to build from past papers here is selection. On your first pass, answer the questions you can finish in two or three minutes, and leave the long ones for later. When you review, note how many minutes each wrong question took. Many students find that a few questions they eventually got wrong cost them the time for three easy ones.

Notes on recent years

2025 removed the optional choice in Section B. Each subject now has 20 MCQs and 5 numerical questions, all compulsory, for 75 questions and 300 marks. The papers from the earlier choice years are still useful, but you have to sit them differently (see below). Our 2025 page has a clearly labelled mock modelled on the reported pattern, since NTA has not posted a public paper set for it.

2024 was the first year on the trimmed NTA syllabus. Topics such as mathematical reasoning and communication systems were dropped, so you can skip any older question on them. The exam ran in two sessions, January and April, and difficulty varied noticeably from shift to shift, which is normal for JEE Main.

2021 to 2023 used the format with 10 numericals per subject, of which you answered 5. When you sit one of these papers now, answer all 20 MCQs and only the first 5 numericals in each subject, and finish in 3 hours. That matches the current load. 2021 was unusual in running four sessions because of COVID, which means it has more shift papers than any other year.

2020 introduced numerical answer questions, with no negative marking on them that year. The second session was moved to September because of the pandemic.

2016 to 2019 were 90-question MCQ papers. 2019 was the first year under NTA and the first fully computer-based one. These papers are good for chapter-wise practice and for building speed, but they do not cover numerical answer questions, so do not use them as your only full-length tests.

For any year where an answer is disputed, check NTA’s final answer key on jeemain.nta.nic.in before you trust a coaching solution. Keys released on the day of the exam are sometimes wrong on one or two questions.

Using old papers in your preparation

With a year or more to go

Use JEE Main questions as chapter exercises while you study. After you finish a chapter, solve every past JEE Main question from that chapter, across all the years you can get. You will see quickly which parts of the chapter the examiners like and which parts never come up. That makes your notes shorter and your revision faster.

Try one full paper a month from the middle of Class 12, mainly to get used to working for three hours on a screen.

With about six months to go

Finish the syllabus first. Then sit one full paper every weekend under exam conditions, and spend the next day going through every wrong and skipped question. Start with the 2019 and 2020 papers and move towards the recent years, so you see the current format more often as the exam gets closer.

Your weekday study should come from that review list. If a full paper shows that you lost 12 marks in definite integrals, spend the week on definite integrals, not on a chapter you already find easy.

In the last three months

Sit two or three full papers a week, at the same time of day as your shift. Use the 2024 and 2025 shift papers in the final month, since they are closest to what you will face. If you are writing both sessions, sit a few papers in the weeks between them, and go back to the error log from your first session.

Do not start a new question bank in the last few weeks. Re-read your error log, revise the NCERT Chemistry tables, and keep your formula sheets short.

Mistakes students make with past papers

The most common mistake is solving one well-known paper and treating the score as a prediction. JEE Main has many shifts, and their difficulty varies. A score on one shift paper tells you little about where you stand. Solve papers from several years and several shifts before you draw any conclusion.

The second is skipping the review. If you sit a paper, look at the total and move on, you have used half of its value. The review is where you find out which chapters actually cost you marks.

Many students also spend too long on Mathematics in the first hour, trying to prove to themselves they can do the hard questions. The marks in JEE Main are equal for every question. A two-minute Chemistry question is worth exactly as much as a ten-minute integral.

Finally, older papers taken without adjustment can mislead you. A 2017 paper has no numerical section, and a 2022 paper lets you skip five numericals. Set up each paper so it matches the current 75-question load, or your timing practice will not carry over to the real exam.

FAQ

Where can I get JEE Main previous year question papers?

NTA publishes answer keys, notices and results on jeemain.nta.nic.in, and during the answer key challenge each candidate can view their own question paper and responses. Our year pages host the official paper where one is publicly available. For recent shifts where NTA has not posted a public paper set, the page shows a clearly labelled mock modelled on the reported pattern.

How many years of JEE Main papers should I solve?

Aim for every shift from 2019 onwards, which gives you dozens of full papers in the computer-based format. Use the 2016 to 2018 papers for chapter-wise practice. If you are short on time, do 2021 to 2025 first, because they match the current numerical section.

What is the JEE Main exam pattern now?

From 2025, the B.E./B.Tech paper has 75 compulsory questions in 3 hours: 25 each in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. Each subject has 20 MCQs and 5 numerical answer questions. A correct answer gets 4 marks and a wrong one loses 1, for both types, giving a total of 300. Check the current information bulletin before your exam.

How do I solve the 2021 to 2024 papers that had a choice of numericals?

Answer all 20 MCQs and only 5 of the 10 numerical questions in each subject, and finish in 3 hours. That matches the current load of 75 questions. You can solve the leftover numericals afterwards as extra practice.

Are JEE Main papers from 2016 to 2019 still useful?

Yes, for chapter practice. They have 90 MCQs and no numerical section, and a few questions are on topics dropped from the 2024 syllabus. Skip those, use the rest topic-wise, and do your full timed papers mostly from 2020 onwards.

Does the difficulty of my shift affect my score?

NTA converts raw marks into a percentile within each shift, so a tougher shift does not by itself put you at a disadvantage. What matters is how you do compared to others in your shift. This is why practising across many shift papers is more useful than chasing one hard paper.

Should I solve JEE Main papers by topic or as full papers?

Both, at different stages. Topic-wise questions work best while you are still studying a chapter. Full papers matter in the last few months, because the challenge on the day is choosing which questions to leave in Mathematics and keeping your accuracy across three hours.

Do JEE Main papers help with JEE Advanced preparation?

Partly. They build speed and cover the same syllabus, but JEE Advanced questions are longer, often combine several concepts and use multiple-correct and matching formats. Once JEE Main is done, switch to official JEE Advanced papers for the weeks before that exam.

Where to get the official papers

NTA publishes JEE Main notices, answer keys and results on jeemain.nta.nic.in. Use the final answer key there when an answer is in doubt. We link to official sources and add notes on each paper, but the current information bulletin is the final word on dates, pattern and eligibility.