A multiple-choice test is three jobs. First you write the paper — forty questions, four believable options each, a key that does not accidentally spell a pattern. Then you make answer sheets and get them printed. Then, after the test, you mark a stack of them. Most tools help with one of the three. The other two still eat your evening.

ScanScore does all three in one place. This guide walks through the full loop: write the paper with the MCQ generator, turn it into an exam with a matching OMR sheet, and mark the class set with your phone — and what each step costs.

Step one: write the paper

The generator asks three short sets of questions, the way a head of department would brief a colleague:

01

Class and board

Pick from more than 180 boards and curricula — CBSE, ICSE, the state boards and international ones — and your class. Choose the language here too: over 50, from Hindi, Tamil and Bengali to Spanish and Arabic.

02

Subject and chapters

Tick the chapters the test covers. A paper can cover more than one subject, each with its own chapters, so a combined science test is one paper rather than three.

03

Format

How many questions (up to 100 in one go), how easy or hard, four or five options, and any notes in your own words — “keep it to NCERT”, “one question on each diagram”. Before you tap, the screen tells you what it will cost in credits.

ScanScore writes the questions with the answer key. Long papers are written in parallel batches and checked for repeated questions before you see them.

Step two: check it, and make it yours

AI-written questions are a strong first draft, not a finished paper, and the editor is built on that assumption. You can:

  • Edit any stem or option, with equations typed as they should print.
  • Regenerate a single weak question without touching the rest.
  • Reorder questions, delete them, or add your own.
  • Group questions under a passage or a data table, and add figures (Android app).
  • Pull questions from papers other teachers have shared to the question bank (Android app).
  • Bring in an existing printed paper from a PDF or photos, and check every question (Android app).
Why it matters that you stay in control: you are the one who has to defend the paper to a student who disputes question 23. Everything the generator writes is editable before it becomes an exam, and nothing reaches students until you say so.

Exam patterns and sections

For competitive-exam practice, start from a ready-made pattern instead of a blank paper: CBSE Class 10 and 12, NEET, JEE, SSC CGL and CHSL, Railways, state PSC, CSAT, SAT and AP, among others. A pattern sets up the sections, the number of questions in each, the marks and the negative marking. Every number is a starting point you can change, because boards change their patterns between sittings.

Each section keeps its own marks per question and its own penalty, so a paper with a Physics section at +4/−1 and a General Awareness section at +2/−0.5 is set up once and marked correctly forever. The negative marking guide covers the common schemes in detail.

Why the answer key is shuffled for you

Ask an AI model to “spread the right answers across A to D” and it will often hand back a perfectly rotating key — A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D. That is as guessable as putting every answer at A, and you only notice once the papers are photocopied. ScanScore reshuffles the options itself after the questions are written, moving the key with them, and leaves alone options like “all of the above” that only make sense in their position. The result is a key with no pattern for a student to spot.

Step three: turn the paper into a test

When the paper is ready, one tap makes it an exam: the key, the marks per question and the negative marking all come across, and ScanScore chooses the right OMR sheet for its length and option count. Then:

  1. Print the question paper as a PDF, or export it to Word with the equations intact if you want to adjust the layout. Markdown and plain text work too.
  2. Print the OMR sheets on plain A4, optionally with each student’s name and roll number already on their sheet.
  3. Want to stop copying? In the Android app, split the paper into Set A to D with shuffled questions and options.
One limit to know: a single OMR sheet holds 150 questions. ScanScore will still write, save, print and export a longer paper — a full 180-question NEET paper, say — but it cannot become one scannable exam. There is a button that shrinks the sections in proportion to fit.

Step four: hold the test and mark it

After the test, open the exam and hold your phone over each sheet. ScanScore reads the roll number and every bubble, applies your marking rules and shows the score in about four seconds, with no internet. Batch mode keeps the camera ready so a class of 40 is a few minutes of sliding papers. You get the class analytics straight away: which questions most students got wrong, the score spread, and — if you tagged sections by topic — which chapters need re-teaching.

If your students have devices, you can run MCQ tests online instead, on Pro: each student gets a single-use link, the browser is locked to full screen, and the results sit next to your scanned marks. Our guide to choosing paper or online tests helps decide per exam.

What it costs

Writing the paper uses AI credits, priced by how many questions you ask for — not by how the work is split behind the scenes:

Questions in one runCredits
1–151
16–352
36–604
61–1007
  • Free to try: sign in and you get 10 credits — ten short quizzes, five weekly tests, or one full 100-question mock.
  • Pro: ₹999 a year, one payment, adds 100 credits every month, plus cloud backup, the web dashboard and online tests.
  • If part of a run fails, you keep the questions that were written and the difference is refunded automatically.
  • Everything else is free and unlimited: typing questions yourself, making the exam, printing sheets, scanning and marking.

That last point is the one to hold on to. The AI saves you the writing; the scanning is free for life whether you ever use it or not.