Purple Comet Math Meet is a free, online, team-based mathematics competition with genuinely wide international participation — a distinctive addition to a student's olympiad calendar precisely because of its team format and zero-cost accessibility.
What Makes Purple Comet Different
- It is entirely free to participate — no registration fee, which is unusual among well-regarded international maths competitions.
- It is run online, removing the need for a physical test center — teams take the exam together, typically at their own school or coaching center.
- It is genuinely team-based throughout, rewarding collaborative problem-solving rather than purely individual performance.
- Answers are integers, similar in spirit to IOQM or AIME, rather than multiple-choice.
Format Overview
Teams work through a substantial set of integer-answer problems within a set time window, with problems spanning algebra, geometry, number theory and combinatorics at a range of difficulties within the same paper — team members typically divide effort across different problems and combine results.
Why the Team Format Builds a Different Skill
Most competitive maths exams — IOQM, AMC, SOF IMO — are individual. Purple Comet's team format teaches a genuinely different, valuable skill: dividing a large problem set strategically across teammates, communicating partial progress, and combining individual strengths — closer to how real mathematical research or engineering problem-solving actually works.
Who Should Attempt Purple Comet
Students already comfortable with AMC or IOQM-level problem-solving, looking for a low-cost, low-friction way to add international team-competition experience to their portfolio, are well suited to Purple Comet — the free, online format makes it an easy addition alongside existing preparation rather than a competing priority.