What A+ costs, and the pages that would not say

This page was supposed to contain a number. It does not, and the reason is worth more than the number would have been.

On 24 September 2026, working from a browser configured as a United States visitor — US locale, New York time zone, English-US language header, so that no regional pricing could be mistaken for the real thing — this site went looking for CompTIA's published price for an A+ exam voucher. It did not find one. Below is exactly what was opened and exactly what came back, so that you can check the claim rather than take it.

The search, in order

1. The certification pages

The A+ landing page and the Core 1 (V15) and Core 2 (V15) pages carry a full Exam details block each: version, series code, launch date, question count, duration, passing score, languages, recommended experience, retirement estimate. Every one of those facts is on this site. None of those pages carries a price.

2. The Buy Now panel

Each exam page has a Buy Now tab. Opened directly, it renders three bundle cards — practice plus exam with a retake, learn plus exam with a retake, and a complete bundle — each describing what is included. No card showed a price, and none of the Buy Now buttons carried a link that could be followed to one.

3. The store

CompTIA's older store.comptia.org product URL for the A+ core series voucher returned a redirect to the certifications index rather than a product. The newer shop.comptia.org addresses returned a not-found page. Neither produced a figure.

4. CompTIA's own article about the cost

CompTIA publishes a blog article headed How Much Does the CompTIA A+ Certification Cost?, dated 18 December 2024. It is a reasonable article. It explains that you need two vouchers for two exams, that a voucher is a code used at a Pearson VUE testing centre, that failing means buying another voucher, and that classroom training "can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars". Then it says this:

If a voucher is all you need, see the cost in the table below.

There is no table below. There is no dollar figure anywhere in the article. Read 24 September 2026.

5. Pearson VUE

Pearson VUE delivers CompTIA's exams, and CompTIA's own article names it. Its CompTIA page covers scheduling, online proctoring, test-centre location and exam policies, and it carries a link headed "Buying an exam voucher or training materials" — which points back at CompTIA. No price.

What the article does tell you

It would be unfair to leave the impression that CompTIA's cost article is useless. It is not; it simply answers a different question than its headline. Four things in it are worth having, and all four are cost facts of a kind.

It confirms that A+ requires two vouchers for two exams, which is the single most common budgeting error people make. It confirms that a voucher is a code redeemed at a Pearson VUE testing centre rather than a payment made at the door. It states that failing means purchasing another voucher, with no softening. And it puts a range on the one cost CompTIA does not control, saying classroom training costs "can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars" depending on the provider.

It also lists, under Downloads, the two free things this site keeps recommending: the A+ practice questions and the A+ exam objectives. An article about cost that ends by pointing at the free material is doing something right, even if the table is missing.

Why not just use a third-party figure

Because every site that prints one is either a training company selling vouchers or a publisher copying a training company. The figure may be right. It may have been right in 2023. It may be right in one country and wrong in yours. There is no way to tell from the page, and a dated citation to a page that cannot itself be checked is a citation in appearance only.

This site's rule is that an exam fact comes from the certifying body's own page with the day it was read. Applied honestly, that rule sometimes produces an empty space. This is one of them, and it stays empty until CompTIA fills it.

The money figures CompTIA does publish

Two, and both matter after the exam rather than before it.

The continuing-education fee is not annual. CompTIA's page opens by saying so: it is paid only if you are renewing by uploading continuing-education units, and it must be paid by the certification's expiration date. Renew by passing a higher CompTIA exam or by completing CertMaster CE instead and no fee is due at all. The renewal rules in full.

The regional trap

There is a second reason this page refuses to print a borrowed number, and it has nothing to do with CompTIA. Prices on the web are local. A figure read from a machine in one country is routinely not the figure served to a machine in another, and the page rarely says which one you are looking at.

That is why the search described above was run from a browser configured as a United States visitor: US locale, New York time zone, an English-US language header. Had a price appeared, it would have been printed as a United States price and labelled as one, never converted into anything else. A converted price is an invented price with a plausible face on it, and exchange rates move faster than anyone updates a page.

How to find out what it costs you

1. Go to CompTIA's own site and start the purchase for the exam you want, in your own country. Do not take a price from anywhere else.
2. Check whether you are buying one voucher or two — A+ is two exams, and a price that looks low may be for one half.
3. Check whether the thing in your cart is a bare voucher or a bundle with training and a retake attached, because the bundles are the loudly advertised products.
4. Budget for the renewal separately: $75 every three years if you renew by uploading CEUs, or nothing if you renew by passing a higher CompTIA exam.

And before you buy anything at all, read the CompTIA A+ page for what the two exams contain, or how to study for it for the free material that covers most of the ground.