About

Who we are, how our YKI material is made, and how we keep it current

Last reviewed 28 October 2026

YKIReady helps people living in Finland find out whether they are ready for the National Certificate of Language Proficiency (YKI) before they pay the official registration fee and take the real exam. Everything on this site — the timed mock sections, the diagnostic, the guides and archive — is maintained by us for adults; archive prompts are candidate recollections, not tasks we can verify against official papers, for adults learning Finnish as a second language.

The organisation behind this site

YKIReady is published by Actually Finland, a sole proprietorship registered in Finland (Business ID 3203290-4) and based in Tampere. The same team runs actuallyfinland.com, where we answer practical questions about studying, working and settling in Finland. We have been publishing on the subject of moving to Finland since 2023, and YKIReady grew out of the single question we were asked most often: am I good enough at Finnish yet?

Our own experience is that of immigrants who studied Finnish as adults and worked through the same integration and citizenship requirements our readers face. That is the perspective the material is written from. Where a question needs expertise we do not have — a legal decision on residence or citizenship, for example — we do not answer it ourselves. We point to the authority that decides it.

Who writes the material

The guides, FAQ answers and Finnish-language pages are written by the YKIReady editorial team and signed as such: we are a small team rather than a stable of named columnists, and we would rather say so plainly than invent bylines. Practice tasks are drafted by the same team, reviewed against the official YKI task structure, and checked with AI-assisted language and level validation before they reach the site. The publisher monitors quality personally from time to time, and reader reports are acted on directly.

You can reach the person who edited any page. If something is wrong, unclear or out of date, write to info@ykiready.fi or use the contact form, and tell us which page you mean.

How practice material is created

• YKI-style practice. Mocks cover reading, writing, listening and speaking with section timers. Pause/resume is available for practice; official exam procedures, recordings and timings may differ. Listening uses generated Finnish speech.
• Original tasks. We write our own passages, prompts and questions. We do not reproduce copyrighted exam papers. Where a task is based on a theme that has been publicly reported from an earlier sitting, we say so on the page and label it as our own practice version of that theme.
• Level targets. Original practice targets basic (CEFR A1–A2), intermediate (B1–B2) and advanced (C1–C2). AI-assisted checks are not external certification of difficulty. The separate recollection archive is mostly intermediate, with limited advanced material and no basic-level collection.
• Practice assessment. Reading and listening exercises are scored against YKIReady's own keys. Writing and speaking feedback uses automated practice rubrics, with self-assessment or limited feedback where automated assessment is unavailable. Transcription can miss words; these are not official examiner grades.
• Honest labelling of results. A result page always states which parts were measured against a key, which were self-assessed, and which could not be graded automatically. We do not present an estimate as a grade.

Sources we rely on

Factual claims about the exam itself — fees, dates, registration, levels, certificates — come from the bodies that set them, and we link to them so you can check the current version yourself:

• yki.opintopolku.fi — the official YKI service of the Finnish National Agency for Education (Opetushallitus): exam dates, fees, test centres and registration.
• migri.fi — the Finnish Immigration Service, for what the language requirement actually means for citizenship and residence applications.
• Yle Selkosuomeksi — the public broadcaster's news in easy Finnish, which we link to as listening practice with attribution, never republished in full.

How often this site is updated

• External resources: the news in easy Finnish feed depends on Yle's available updates; availability and freshness are not guaranteed.
• Practice material: AI-assisted content updates are supported, but we do not promise new tasks every week or that every attempt contains unseen questions.
• Exam information: our exam dates page is a planning aid. Confirm availability, fees and registration directly in the official service.
• Monitored and reviewed on an ongoing basis: every guide and FAQ content is monitored by the publisher from time to time. We do not claim a fixed review schedule or independent expert approval.

Corrections

We make mistakes and we would rather fix them fast than defend them. Report an error and we will check it against the official source, correct the page, and update the “last reviewed” date on it. If a correction changes the meaning of something material — a fee, a date, a requirement — we note the change on the page itself rather than editing it silently.

Independence and what we do not claim

YKIReady is an independent preparation service. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Opetushallitus, the Finnish Immigration Service, or any official test centre. We cannot register you for the exam, we cannot influence your official result, and no score on this site is a certificate. We never promise that using YKIReady will make you pass the YKI test or obtain citizenship — the decisions belong to the official examiners and authorities.

How we make money, and advertising

The 30-minute Readiness Check is free with an account; the six-minute diagnostic, public sample questions, guides, FAQ and news are also free. We charge one-off fees, not subscriptions, for the online archive, mock packs, Pass Plan and separate offline PDF; prices are listed on the pricing page. Some free pages also carry advertising from Google AdSense when consent and Google's approval allow it. Advertising never appears inside a timed test, the free diagnostic, practice drills, the game or any payment or account page, and advertisers have no influence over what we write or how answers are scored. Non-essential cookies, including advertising cookies, are set only if you allow them — see our cookie policy and privacy policy.

Accessibility and languages

The site is written in English with a growing set of Finnish-language pages, because our readers are usually learning Finnish rather than already fluent in it. Practice tasks themselves are in Finnish, as the exam is. Everything works on a phone, keyboard navigation and reduced-motion preferences are supported, and if a page is hard to use with your assistive technology please tell us — we treat that as a bug.