Question 1

Who is Lemma for?

Accepted Answer

Students preparing for AMC 8, AMC 10/12, AIME, EGMO, national olympiads and the IMO, and anyone who simply wants to get better at hard problems. Level 1 assumes solid school arithmetic and nothing more, so you don't need competition experience to start.

Question 2

Are there full-length, timed mock exams?

Accepted Answer

Yes. 642 of them, and they are the real format: 25 questions, 75 minutes, and the actual scoring rule of six points for a correct answer, one and a half for a blank and nothing for a wrong one. The clock does not pause, you can flag and skip freely, and the paper submits itself when time runs out. The report afterwards is the point: it splits your marks across the opening, middle and closing questions, prices every wrong answer against the blank it could have been, names the questions that ate your time without paying for it, and compares your accuracy in the first half of the paper against the second. Two of the papers are hand-written with hand-written alternate solutions; the rest are generated on a fixed difficulty ramp, and paper 137 is the same paper every time you open it, so a retake compares like with like.

Question 3

Is this only useful for the AMC 10?

Accepted Answer

It used to lean that way, and that was a fair criticism. The three topics that separate an AMC 12 from an AMC 10 (complex numbers, logarithms and trigonometry) now have their own generators pitched at the exam rather than at the introduction: roots of unity and cyclotomic products, systems of logarithmic equations, product-to-sum telescoping, and the symmetric algebra that questions 21 to 25 actually ask for. Every mock paper weights its closing five questions towards exactly that material.

Question 4

What do I actually get for free?

Accepted Answer

Levels 0 and 1 in full — Algebra I through to structure-spotting. That's real lessons and real practice, not a demo, plus the placement quiz, your dashboard, XP and your training record. No card is required and the free tier doesn't expire. If it turns out Lemma isn't for you, you'll know that before paying anything, and when you do reach the paid levels, the first three days of any plan are free as well.

Question 5

Is there a free trial?

Accepted Answer

Three days on any paid plan. We call it the Three-Day Lemma, because a lemma is the small result you prove before the theorem, and three days is the small proof. It is the whole plan for those days, not a cut-down version: every level it unlocks, every drill generator, every solution and every marking rubric. Paddle takes your card at the start so that day four isn't an interruption, but nothing is charged until the three days are up, and cancelling inside them from your Profile page costs you nothing at all. This is separate from the free tier: Levels 0 and 1 stay free forever whether you ever start a trial or not.

Question 6

What language is Lemma in?

Accepted Answer

Lemma is in English. The lessons, problems and the site itself are all English, and that's deliberate for the mathematics: olympiad papers and almost all serious olympiad literature are written in English, so reading maths in English is part of the preparation. Ukrainian and Russian interfaces are built and waiting on the curriculum being translated properly, we'd rather ship nothing than ship half a translation.

Question 7

How is this different from Art of Problem Solving?

Accepted Answer

AoPS is excellent and much bigger than us. The differences are price and structure: a single AoPS course typically costs more than a year of Lemma, and it runs on a fixed schedule. Lemma is self-paced, tells you what to do next every single day, and generates unlimited fresh practice instead of a fixed problem set you can accidentally memorise.

Question 8

What does 'mastered' mean here?

Accepted Answer

Something specific, not a participation badge. A concept counts as mastered only when you have solved five problems on it correctly at the hardest of six difficulty levels. Because problems are generated fresh each time, you cannot get there by grinding easy repeats or remembering an answer. You get there by actually being able to do it.

Question 9

How much time does this take?

Accepted Answer

There's over 200 hours of material, but it's built for short sessions. Twenty focused minutes a day will move you up the ladder steadily. We deliberately don't run a streak counter: it rewards showing up rather than working, and one missed evening wipes out something you'd grown attached to. Instead your record shows the last 28 days shaded by how much you actually did on each, so a real session and a two-minute tap-in never look the same, and missing a Tuesday costs you a Tuesday.

Question 10

Who am I paying, and is it secure?

Accepted Answer

Paddle, our authorised reseller, handles the payment and appears on your statement. They issue the invoice and take care of VAT in your country. Card details go to Paddle's own checkout and never reach Lemma's servers. We never see or store them.

Question 11

Is tax included in the price?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Every price on this site includes tax, so the figure you read is the figure you are charged. The Regional plan is $7.39 a month in Germany, where VAT is 19%, and $7.39 in the United States: Paddle works out the tax for your country and takes it out of that amount rather than adding it on top. Nothing appears at the checkout that was not on the page.

Question 12

How do I cancel?

Accepted Answer

One button on your Profile page, no email, no phone call, no retention script. You keep access until the end of the period you already paid for. We'd rather you left easily and came back later than felt trapped.

Question 13

What if I pay and don't like it?

Accepted Answer

All payments are final. We don't offer refunds. If a paid plan isn't for you, cancel it: that stops every future charge immediately, and you keep access until the period you already paid for ends. Consumers in the EU/UK keep their 14-day statutory withdrawal right where it legally applies; see our Refund Policy for the specifics.

Question 14

What do you do with my data?

Accepted Answer

As little as possible. Your name, email, age, training profile and progress. That's the lot. We don't sell it, we don't advertise to you, and we don't use tracking cookies. You can download everything we hold, or delete your account outright, from your Profile page at any time.

Question 15

Is there a minimum age?

Accepted Answer

Yes, 13. If you're under 16 we ask that you go through the privacy policy with a parent or guardian, and if you're under 18 you should have their agreement before starting a paid plan.

Question 16

Will this get me onto the IMO team?

Accepted Answer

Nobody can promise that, and you should be suspicious of anyone who does. What we can promise is a coherent path, honest feedback about what you've actually mastered, and enough depth to keep going for years. The training helps; the result is still yours to earn.

Lemma: train for the maths olympiad

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Who it's for

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