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Not opinion, and not a difficulty ranking — no commission publishes one. This is what each exam asks, counted from 574 solved BPSC questions (69th CCE (2023)–71st CCE (2025)) and 999 UPSC prelims questions (2016–2025), every one tagged to a subject by our faculty.
Every BPSC question falls under a heading UPSC also examines — but that is a fact about headings, not content. BPSC asks Bihar Combined Competitive Examination (CCE)-specific questions inside those headings, and it weights the shared subjects very differently. Both are below.
Each figure is that subject's share of its own exam's questions, so the two columns are comparable even though the year windows differ. A positive gap means BPSC asks proportionally more than UPSC.
| Syllabus area | BPSC share | UPSC share | Gap | ≈ Qs per BPSC paper |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Science & Technology | 27.5% (158) | 13.6% (136) | +13.9 | 41 |
| History | 21.1% (121) | 11.9% (119) | +9.2 | 32 |
| Geography | 12.2% (70) | 10.5% (105) | +1.7 | 18 |
| Current Affairs | 10.8% (62) | 7.2% (72) | +3.6 | 16 |
| Polity & Governance | 10.3% (59) | 14.6% (146) | -4.3 | 15 |
| Economy | 10.3% (59) | 20.4% (204) | -10.1 | 15 |
| Environment & Ecology | 4.5% (26) | 17.3% (173) | -12.8 | 7 |
| Art & Culture | 3.3% (19) | 4.4% (44) | -1.1 | 5 |
The same table read the other way. Most comparisons only serve the candidate moving from UPSC downwards; this is the move a lot of people actually make.
UPSC prelims asks 100 questions where BPSC asks 150, and it spreads them differently. The subjects BPSC under-weights relative to UPSC are the ones you would be building close to from scratch: Environment & Ecology (17.3% of UPSC against 4.5% of BPSC), Economy (20.4% of UPSC against 10.3% of BPSC), Polity & Governance (14.6% of UPSC against 10.3% of BPSC).
What carries over best is Science & Technology and History — BPSC already works you harder there than UPSC does, so that depth is banked.
Both exams also differ in what a mark costs. See the marking schemes below — the penalties are not the same, so an attempt strategy tuned to one paper is not tuned to the other.
The gaps above are the actionable part: where BPSC rewards more work than UPSC did, and where you are already over-prepared.
Over-prepared is not the same as safe to skip — these subjects still appear. It means extra depth here buys fewer marks in BPSC than it did in UPSC.
Question counts here match the papers we hold and have solved.
| Exam | Paper | Questions | Marks | Per question |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BPSC | General Studies | 150 | 150 | 1 |
| UPSC | General Studies Paper-I | 100 | 200 | 2 |
| CSAT (Paper-II) · qualifying | 80 | 200 | 2.5 |
The OMR carries a fifth option, (E) "Not Attempted", which must be marked on every question a candidate skips. Marking (E) scores zero. Leaving a question entirely unbubbled is penalised 1/3 of a mark, the same as a wrong answer.
Marking scheme checked against Drishti IAS — BPSC exam pattern, Drishti IAS — BPSC Option E and negative marking, UPSC CSE marking scheme. Commissions do change these — MPPSC re-marked its 2026 paper — so confirm against your exam's own notification before settling an attempt strategy.
Method: BPSC figures are counted from the 4 prelims papers we have solved (69th CCE (2023)–71st CCE (2025)), 574 questions, each tagged to a subject by UnlockIAS faculty. UPSC figures are counted from 999 UPSC CSE prelims General Studies questions from 2016–2025, tagged the same way; that set covers text questions and excludes image-based items, so subjects that lean on maps and diagrams are slightly under-counted. Both columns are shares of their own paper set. Shares are rounded to one decimal place and may not total exactly 100. BPSC's subject tags do not separate Bihar Combined Competitive Examination (CCE)-specific questions into their own heading, so this comparison shows differences in emphasis rather than a percentage of the paper that has no UPSC counterpart.