BCBA® Exam Pass Rate

The BACB reports the pass rate separately for people sitting the exam for the first time and for people retaking it. In 2025, 51% of first-time candidates passed and 23% of retake candidates did.

The two are not halves of one number and should not be averaged. An overall rate would depend on how many candidates were in each group, and that is not a figure this page carries.

If you have not sat the exam before, the first-time figure describes people in your position. If you are preparing for a second or later attempt, the retake figure does. Neither is a forecast for one person.

As far as the published dates go, yes. The exam follows the BCBA Test Content Outline (6th ed.), and that outline describes exam content beginning in 2025. The figures are for 2025, so they relate to the outline in force now rather than to the one it replaced.

One caution: the outline says "beginning in 2025" without giving a day, so this page does not claim that every sitting that year used it.

A BCBA pass rate quoted for 2024 or earlier describes an exam built on the previous outline.

The BACB's figure comes without an explanation of why retake candidates pass less often, and we will not invent one. What can be said is who is in the group. Every retake candidate has already been measured against the passing standard at least once and did not meet it. The BACB requires a 30-day wait after each attempt and allows up to 8 attempts in the two-year authorization period, so the group includes people on a second attempt and people on a later one.

The practical reading is this: the retake figure gives no support to the idea that sitting the exam again is, by itself, enough. If you are retaking, the thing to change is what you study, and that starts with knowing which of the nine domains cost you the most.

The BCBA exam is criterion-referenced: you are measured against a fixed standard, not against other candidates. The standard is set with the modified Angoff method by a panel of BACB-certified subject matter experts. Nobody fails because a set share of candidates has to. The pass rate is the result of how many people met the standard in a given year, and it can move as the people sitting the exam change.

The BACB reports only pass or fail and does not publish the cut score, so no percentage on practice material, ours included, can be converted into a pass or a fail.

This is where the figure becomes concrete: in 2025, 49% of first-time candidates did not pass. Each retake means a 30-day wait, a $140 retake application fee to the BACB and another $125 to Pearson VUE: $265 and at least a month before you can sit again.

The clock matters as well. You have two years from the approval of your application to pass, with at most 8 attempts in that time. After 8 unsuccessful attempts you must wait for the period to end and apply again.

Treat it as a reason to find out where you stand before you book, not as your odds. The 6th-edition outline has nine domains and none of them carries the exam: the two largest are 14% each and the smallest is 5%. Two weak domains leave somewhere between 12% and 28% of the exam exposed, depending on which two they are.

The free 25-question diagnostic on this site samples all nine domains and reports your result by domain. It shows which domains need work. It does not predict your result, and we publish no pass rate for people who use this site, because we do not have one.

For the exam's format, fees and rules, see the BCBA exam page. For anything official, the BACB's handbook and its Annual Data Report are the authority.