Gran Cursos Online

What it is

Gran Cursos Online, which the site now mostly calls Gran, is a Brazilian online prep platform for concursos públicos, the competitive exams that fill public service posts, and for the OAB bar exam that law graduates must pass to practice. It is a learner product: a candidate picks an exam or a career, then studies through video lessons, PDF material, question practice and mock exams. The footer names the operator as Gran Tecnologia e Educação S/A, based in Brasília, with a copyright line running from 2012. The exam pages say Gran has more than 25 thousand courses "para todas as carreiras de concursos públicos" (for every public service career), with a guarantee that courses are updated after an exam notice (the edital) is published, and they claim more than 62 thousand students approved in more than 10 years.

How the catalog is organized

Candidates can browse courses by exam (concurso), career, state, teacher and exam board (banca). The most searched exams on the home page include Transpetro, INSS, Receita Federal, PRF, Banco do Brasil, Dataprev, BACEN and state police and education departments. Career groups run from administrative, regulatory agency and diplomatic posts to tax and audit, banking and finance, the armed forces, legal careers, the legislature, police, health, IT and the courts. Every state has its own page, and the board pages cover the main organizers, among them Cebraspe, FCC, FGV, Cesgranrio, Vunesp and Consulplan. The Consulplan page, for example, describes how that board writes its Portuguese, mathematics and IT questions and recommends practicing with past papers.

Exam pages list the courses for a given notice. For a municipal exam, a course built after the notice is published (marked Pós-Edital) is sold per post; at the Prefeitura de Abaetetuba, for example, the teacher, nurse, psychologist and pedagogue courses were each listed at R$ 399.92 paid at once or 12 installments of R$ 33.33, after a 20% discount. Teacher pages show the scale of a single instructor's output: Carlinhos Costa, a career civil servant at the Distrito Federal education department, has 232 courses and 758 video lessons on the platform.

Beyond public service exams, the menu includes CFC courses for the accounting council exam, multiprofessional health residencies, an essay writing workshop (Oficina de Redação), mentoring and coaching under the GranExperts name, and Gran Dicas, in-person eve-of-exam review events in several cities.

The unlimited subscription

The main product is the Assinatura Ilimitada, which gives access to every course. The home page offers three versions: Ilimitada 11 PRO with extra bonuses, Ilimitada 1 Ano (one year), labeled Mais vendido (most sold) and priced from R$ 2.10 a day, and Ilimitada Vitalícia, a lifetime plan sold with the line "Nunca mais pague por material" (never pay for material again). Elsewhere the subscription is advertised from R$ 62.90 a month, and a teacher page shows it from 12 installments of R$ 62.90. The menu describes the subscription as "Acesso a todos os cursos. Teste grátis por 7 dias!" (access to every course, free test for 7 days), and the home page adds a 7-day guarantee: a subscriber can cancel within 7 days for any reason and receive a 100% refund.

What the subscription includes, according to the home page: unlimited viewing of the full material, more than 2 million questions to practice with, mock exams with video lessons in which teachers review the answers, the post-notice update guarantee, a question forum staffed by the team, more than 24 thousand audiobooks, a study manager and tools to track performance and build a personalized study plan. The site says more than 500 teachers are available. Free material sits alongside it: free questions, free lessons, free live classes and a weekly live law session on Mondays at 6 p.m.

OAB Até Passar

Law graduates have a separate subscription, the Assinatura OAB Até Passar (the name means until you pass), covering both phases of the bar exam with no time limit. Its page lists it at 12 installments of R$ 69.90, down from R$ 149.90, as a single investment for the first and second phases. The package includes theory and question-practice video lessons, PDFs, summary classes and checklists by subject, periodic mock exams with original questions modeled on the FGV board and answers explained by the teachers, a module for drafting legal pleadings and essay answers, mind maps, sequential study plans of 90, 60 and 30 days before the exam, and private group video rooms with teachers and monitors (OAB Exclusive), which the FAQ says run on Zoom. The FAQ says the package holds more than 30 courses, that certificates of completion are issued after a student finishes 70% of each course, and that the plan cannot be upgraded or downgraded because it is a single complete lifetime plan. It also lists an AI chat assistant among the study tools, and gives average ratings of 4.65 out of 5 for the OAB courses and 4.76 out of 5 for the OAB teachers.

Single OAB courses are sold too. First-phase subject courses for the 48th exam cost 12 installments of R$ 9.90 or R$ 118.80 at once, the full first-phase extensive course 12 installments of R$ 59.90, and second-phase specialization courses 12 installments of R$ 49.91. Free first-phase and second-phase courses are listed at R$ 0.00. The teachers named for OAB include Maria Christina Barreiros, a lawyer and author of books for the OAB and public exams, Nestor Távora, a former public defender with a master's in public law, and Lorena Ocampos, a judge at the TJDFT.

Degrees and results claims

Gran also sells higher education. The home page offers postgraduate courses organized by field, which it says help in the qualifications stage of public exams and in salary progression, at two postgraduate courses for 12 installments of R$ 109.90, and a limited-time offer of an undergraduate degree plus a bonus postgraduate course, career mentoring and 3 technology courses for R$ 99.90 a month.

The home page states, under the line "Temos os maiores índices de aprovação nos certames mais disputados do Brasil" (we have the highest approval rates in Brazil's most contested exams), a set of percentages it labels "dos aprovados dentro das vagas", of those approved within the vacancies: 66.67% for TRT 10, 58.33% for EBSERH, 49.40% for MPU, 45.97% for TSE Unificado and 45.83% for STM, plus 43.13% for CNU Bloco 7 in 2024. The OAB page says more than 120 thousand Gran students have passed the bar exam. These are the company's own figures. Testimonials sit beside them: Luana Farias, a bus fare collector who studied on her phone at the turnstile, passed the TJSP exam, and Daniel Santos writes that he sold water for 7 years to pay for his studies and failed 27 times before passing the PMBA exam.

Support and access

Students study in the browser or in apps for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and Linux, and the OAB FAQ adds Smart TV. Support runs through a help center, chat, WhatsApp, email and a phone line, Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Who it suits

Gran suits a Portuguese-speaking candidate preparing for Brazilian public service exams at any level, from a municipal teacher post to a federal court, and especially one who expects to sit several exams, since the unlimited subscription covers every course. Law graduates heading for the OAB get a dedicated package with mock exams, pleading practice and live rooms. The 7-day guarantee makes it cheap to try. The size is also the main caveat: with this many courses, plans and offers, a newcomer should pick a target exam first and use the exam page to find the right course.