The question everybody answers and nobody sources
How long is the TACHS?
Riverside Assessments does not publish one. There is no official time limit for the TACHS — not for the paper, not for any of its four subtests — and no official question count either.
That is the whole answer, and it is checkable: it is the publisher’s own handbook. Every number you have read for this was written by somebody who did not have one either.
What the first page of Google says it is
These are the nine results that answer this question, measured on September 13, 2026. Every one of them states its figure flatly, as a fact.
| What the page is | Length it states | Questions |
|---|---|---|
| A university admissions page | 1 hr 55 min | — |
| A New York tutoring company | about 2 hr | — |
| A national education site | 2 hr 10 min | — |
| A test-prep marketplace | 2 hr 17 min | 200 |
| A national test-prep publisher | almost 2½ hr | about 200 |
| Another national publisher | about 2.5 hr | roughly 200 |
| A New York tutoring network | about 2½ hr | about 200 |
| Another test-prep site | about 3 hr | — |
| Another New York tutor | 3 hr 15 min | — |
between the shortest and the longest
repeat “about 200” with no source
describe the wrong exam entirely
cite the publisher
Two of them go further than a wrong number. One prints a per-section breakdown whose second section is “Language”, which is the HSPT’s name for a section and not a TACHS subtest at all. Another tells parents the TACHS has six sections, when the handbook names four. The sites are not named here, because the spread is the argument and a list of names would only make this a page about nine companies.
But it is timed — and that distinction matters
“Pacing yourself appropriately on timed tests can improve your chances of success… within the allotted time.”
Riverside Assessments — TACHS Student Handbook, “Tips on Taking the Test”
The handbook is not silent about the clock. It is silent about the number. Its own advice to your child is to pace themselves on a timed test and to answer as many questions as they can within the allotted time — so there is an allotted time, a real one, on the day. Riverside Assessments simply does not say what it is.
“No published time limit” and “no time limit” are different sentences and only one of them is true. Saying the second would be inventing a fact in the middle of an argument about invented facts.
What Riverside Assessments does publish
Enough to prepare properly, which is the useful half of this. All of it is in the handbook and the parent calendar.
- 4 subtests: Reading, Written Expression, Mathematics, Ability
- The sitting date: Friday, November 6, 2026
- Registration closes October 28, 2026, with no late registration
- Five answers in Ability, four in the other three subtests
- Letters run A–E on odd questions and J–N on even ones
- It is sat at home, under remote proctoring — not at a school
- How long the paper takes
- How long any subtest takes
- How many questions there are
- How a raw score becomes the number a school sees
- How many children sit it each year
- Any practice test: “No online practice test is available.”
So what should your child actually do?
Do not practice against an invented clock
A stopwatch set to somebody's guess trains a pace that may be wrong in either direction. Untimed practice with the explanation read afterwards is what the absence of a published limit actually argues for.
Never leave a blank
This one is the publisher's own: there is no penalty for a wrong answer on the TACHS, so a guess is strictly better than a blank. It follows directly from the unpublished clock — if time runs short, filling in beats stopping.
Rehearse the sitting, not the stopwatch
It is taken at home under remote proctoring, which the handbook says is not optional. The room, the machine and the software are as much of the day as the questions, and they can be tested in advance.
1,556 TACHS practice questions, free and untimed
No sign-up, no email and no card — including the Ability subtest, which is the figure-based half that generic prep sites do not draw at all. There is a full 160-question mock paper here too, and because Riverside Assessments publishes no length, that paper has no clock and says on its own page that its shape is ours rather than the exam’s.
Registration closes October 28, 2026, and there is no late registration.
We will email you once before that and once now with the date. Nothing else, and no account.
Related questions
Is the TACHS timed at all?
Yes. The handbook's own advice to your child is to pace themselves and answer as many questions as they can “within the allotted time”, so there is a real clock on the day. What is withheld is its length, which is a different thing from there not being one.
How many questions are on the TACHS?
Riverside Assessments does not publish a question count either. The figure of “about 200” is repeated by four independent sites with no source between them, which is the shape of a number that entered the market once and has been copied since. What is published is 19 sample questions in the Student Handbook, and the handbook's own checklist states that no online practice test is available.
How long should my child practice for the TACHS?
Short and often beats long and once. Ten questions after supper, most days, is worth more than a three-hour Saturday, and the useful part is the explanation rather than the score. Because no official length exists, practicing against an invented clock trains a pace that may be wrong; a full untimed paper near the end is the rehearsal worth doing.
Everything on this page is quoted from a document Riverside Assessments wrote. Each one is named here, with what it settles.