Which 9709 Pure 1 Past Papers Should You Do First? Every Paper Ranked by Difficulty

The hardest 9709 P1 past papers since 2020 are May/June 2023 Paper 12 and May/June 2021 Paper 11. On both, an A needed only 49 out of 75. The easiest by the same measure is May/June 2025 Paper 15, where an A needed 64. Below, every Pure 1 paper from 2020 to 2025 is ranked this way, with a practice order that uses the ranking.

Score 52/75 on May/June 2023 Paper 12 and you got an A. Score the same 52 on May/June 2025 Paper 15 and you got a C.

Same syllabus, same 75 marks, same number on your script. The grade is two letters apart. If you've been working through 9709 past papers in whatever order your download site lists them, you've probably been reading your scores wrong.

Most students treat every Pure 1 paper as interchangeable practice. It feels reasonable, and it's the way every past paper site presents them: a long list sorted by year. This article ranks all 41 Cambridge International AS & A Level Mathematics 9709 Pure Mathematics 1 papers that have published grade thresholds. It also shows which ones to do first, which to save for timed mocks, and how to judge a score fairly.

How we ranked every Cambridge 9709 Pure 1 past paper

We ranked each paper by its A grade threshold: the lowest mark out of 75 that earned an A on that paper. A lower threshold means candidates scored lower overall, which is the best available sign that the paper was harder. Where two papers share an A threshold, the one with the lower B threshold ranks as harder.

Cambridge sets grade thresholds after marking, once it has seen how candidates performed. So a paper where most people struggled gets a lower threshold. That's why the threshold works as a difficulty signal: it's Cambridge's own judgement of the paper, published in its grade threshold tables. The ranking starts in 2020 because that is when the revised Cambridge 9709 syllabus was first examined, so every paper here was written for the same syllabus structure.

Evidence behind the ranking:

• Thresholds come from ExamPilot's Cambridge 9709 grade thresholds page, compiled from Cambridge's published tables. Four older sessions (Feb/Mar 2020, Oct/Nov 2020, Feb/Mar 2021, Oct/Nov 2021) are no longer on Cambridge's index and come from named archive copies.
• Every figure was cross-checked on 25 September 2026 against the threshold shown on each individual paper page. All 41 matched.

One more thing to know: Pure 1 papers are graded A to E. There is no A* on a single paper. A* is awarded on your total across all the papers you sit.

The hardest 9709 P1 past papers (A threshold 52 or below)

The hardest 9709 Pure 1 papers since 2020 are the eleven with an A threshold of 52 or below. Five of them come from 2021, and Paper 11 appears six times. If you want to know what a genuinely hard Pure 1 paper feels like under exam conditions, these are the ones to sit.

The remaining six papers in this group are in the full table below.

Imagine a student, call her Amira, in Karachi, doing May/June 2023 Paper 12 as her first timed paper. She scores 47 and goes to bed convinced she's heading for a C. Checked against that paper's own thresholds, 47 was a solid B, two marks off an A, on the hardest Pure 1 paper of the last six years. Same score, completely different story. That's the reason to check every paper's threshold before you judge a result.

Want to know which Pure 1 topics are costing you marks on papers like these? See how ExamPilot maps your knowledge gaps topic by topic, so a hard paper tells you what to fix next.

The full ranking: every 9709 Pure 1 past paper from 2020 to 2025

This table ranks all 41 Cambridge 9709 Pure 1 papers that have grade thresholds, from hardest (1) to easiest (41), with the threshold for every grade from A to E, out of 75. Each paper name links to its page on ExamPilot. There you'll find the question paper, mark scheme, examiner report, and a question-by-question breakdown with examiner comments.

Not ranked: May/June 2020 Papers 11, 12 and 13. Cambridge published these papers, but the May/June 2020 series was cancelled, so no candidate sat them and no thresholds exist. They're still good questions. Use them as untimed topic practice, where the grade doesn't matter.

Not yet included: the June 2026 papers. Their June 2026 thresholds are published (A at 59, 61 and 61 for Papers 11, 12 and 13), and we'll add them to this ranking once the paper pages go live.

Is 9709 Paper 11, 12 or 13 harder?

On average, Paper 11 has been the hardest Pure 1 variant since 2020. Its mean A threshold is 53.5 across 11 papers, against 56.6 for Paper 12 (17 papers) and 57.9 for Paper 13 (11 papers). That's a gap of about four marks between Paper 11 and Paper 13.

Two cautions before you read too much into this.

• You don't choose your variant. Your variant depends on your school's administrative zone, a group of countries with similar clock times, and the variant a zone sits can change from one series to the next. So the table can't help you pick an easier paper. It helps you know what your practice scores mean.
• Paper 15 has only two papers. Variant 5 first appeared in May/June 2025, so two data points can't tell you whether it's easier in general.

By year, the average A threshold was lowest in 2021 (51.9) and highest in 2025 (61.2). The 2021 papers were sat during the pandemic. Cambridge ran exams where it was permitted and safe, moved some countries (such as the UK and Mexico) to school-assessed grades, and allowed exemptions from some components. Disrupted teaching may be part of why 2021 thresholds were low, but the numbers can't show how much. The high 2025 figures could mean easier papers, a stronger group of students, or both, and the thresholds alone can't separate the two.

Which 9709 P1 past papers should you do first? A practice order

Start with a middle-difficulty paper to get an honest baseline. Move to the hardest papers once your topics are secure, and save the most recent papers for timed mocks in the final weeks. That order gives you an accurate starting point, builds your stamina for hard papers, and keeps the papers closest to the current exam style fresh for last.

1. Baseline: one middle paper, timed. Pick a paper ranked between 15 and 25, such as Oct/Nov 2023 Paper 12 (A at 55). A middle paper gives you a fair first reading, not a flattering one or a crushing one.
2. Topic repair: go topical, not whole-paper. Your baseline shows which topics leak marks. Fix those with 9709 topical past papers before sitting more full papers. Doing full paper after full paper without fixing topics is the most common reason past paper marks stop improving.
3. Stress test: the hardest papers (ranks 1 to 11). Do these once your topics are mostly secure, a few weeks before the exam, not the night before. They build stamina for the day Cambridge sets a hard paper.
4. Final mocks: the most recent papers (2024 and 2025). These are closest to what you'll sit, so keep a few untouched until the last three weeks. Several of them (ranks 27 to 41) have high A thresholds, and they teach you accuracy: when an A needs 61 or more, one careless slip costs you the grade.
5. Every paper: mark it against its own threshold. Write down the grade, not just the mark, using the table above.

Here's a hypothetical example. Say Daniel is resitting Pure 1 in the next Oct/Nov series. For his first two practice papers he picks, without knowing it, two of the hardest (ranks 3 and 5). He scores 44 and 45 and starts to panic. Put through their thresholds, both scores are a B, well above the C he got last time. He switches to topical practice on his two weakest topics. When he reaches the 2025 papers in his final weeks, he knows his marks mean what he thinks they mean.

Want your Pure 1 practice to show you readiness, not just raw marks? Get early access. ExamPilot maps your practice topic by topic against the 9709 specification, so you know which papers to do next and why.

What a 9709 grade threshold can't tell you

A grade threshold shows how candidates performed on a paper. It isn't a pure measure of how hard the questions were. It reflects both the paper and the group of students who sat it, so read this ranking as "the papers candidates found hardest", not "the objectively hardest papers".

• Different variants, different candidates. Each variant is sat by schools in different administrative zones, so a low threshold can partly reflect who sat the paper.
• One paper, one session. A threshold describes one paper on one day. It says nothing about which topics were hard. For that, read the examiner comments on each paper page, or our analysis of 9709 Pure 1 examiner reports.
• Your target is the spread, not one number. Our grade thresholds page makes the same point: aim above the highest A threshold across sessions, with a margin. If your practice marks clear 64 consistently, the paper you draw on exam day stops mattering.

If you're still deciding how hard the course is overall, Is A Level Maths Hard? uses the same threshold data at the level of the whole course.

The best order for 9709 P1 past papers: start in the middle, finish recent

Not every Cambridge 9709 Pure 1 past paper is equal. The A threshold has ranged 15 marks, from 49 to 64 out of 75, so the same score can be an A on one paper and a C on another. Paper 11 has been the hardest variant on average, and 2021 the hardest year.

So use the ranking instead of the download order:

• Get a baseline on a middle paper.
• Fix weak topics with topical practice.
• Stress-test on the hardest papers.
• Keep the 2024 and 2025 papers for final timed mocks.
• Mark every attempt against its own threshold.

Your next step: pick one paper ranked 15 to 25 in the table above and sit it timed this week. Then write down the grade, not just the mark.