CompTIA A+, bay by bay

CompTIA A+ is the certification most people mean when they say they are getting into IT support. It is also the one most often described second-hand. This page describes it first-hand: every exam fact below has a date beside it and came off comptia.org, and where CompTIA publishes nothing the page says so rather than borrowing a number from a training company.

A+ is two exams that have to match

You do not sit an A+ exam. You sit Core 1 and Core 2, and passing both earns the one certification. CompTIA's Core 1 page adds a condition people miss: both exams must be taken from the same version — V15 with V15, in CompTIA's words "no mixing allowed". The A+ page says you can take them in any order.

The current version is V15. Core 1 is exam series code 220-1201 and Core 2 is 220-1202, both launched on 25 March 2025. CompTIA states retirement as "usually three years after launch" and estimates 2028 — an estimate, on CompTIA's own page, not a date it has committed to.

What is on each exam, by weight

CompTIA publishes an objectives summary for each half with a percentage against every domain. Those percentages are the most useful planning tool the certification has, because they tell you where the marks are before you have spent an hour studying. The two charts below are drawn from those figures and from nothing else.

Core 1 is the hardware half. Hardware and network troubleshooting is 28% of it, hardware itself 25%, networking 23%, mobile devices 13% and virtualization and cloud computing 11%.

Core 2 is the software and procedure half, and it is more evenly split. Operating systems is 28%, security is also 28%, software troubleshooting 23% and operational procedures 21%. Note what the last one means: documentation, change management, safety and backups are more than a fifth of the second exam, and they are the part self-taught candidates most often skip.

Both exams run to a maximum of 90 questions in 90 minutes. CompTIA describes the question types as multiple choice, single and multiple response, drag-and-drop, and performance-based — the last of these being a simulated task rather than a question with options, which is why a course built only on multiple-choice drills leaves a gap.

The scores, and why they are not percentages

Core 1 passes at 675. Core 2 passes at 700. Both sit on a scale that runs to 900, and the two halves of the same certification genuinely do not use the same mark. Network+, the usual next step, passes at 720 on a scale CompTIA writes as 100-900.

A scaled score is not a percentage of questions answered correctly, and CompTIA does not publish a conversion between the two. Anyone who tells you that 675 out of 900 means seventy-five per cent of the questions is guessing — the scale accounts for the difficulty of the particular form you sat. Treat the number as a threshold, not as a grade. The passing score, in detail.

What it costs, and why there is no figure on this page

There is no A+ exam fee anywhere on this site, and that is a finding rather than an omission. On 24 September 2026 CompTIA's store product links for the A+ voucher redirected to a certification index; its shop URLs returned a not-found page; the Buy Now panel on the Core 1 page rendered product cards carrying no price and no link; and CompTIA's own article titled How Much Does the CompTIA A+ Certification Cost? says "If a voucher is all you need, see the cost in the table below" and then contains no table and no dollar figure. Pearson VUE, the company that actually delivers the exam, publishes no price either and points back at CompTIA.

Every third-party page that prints a number is printing a number CompTIA does not stand behind on a page you can check. This site would rather be less useful than wrong about the single fact a reader will act on. The full search, page by page.

The three-year clock

CompTIA's renewal page is blunt about the clock: your certification "expires three years from the date you earn it and must be renewed before that expiration date". There are two ways to stop that happening. You can complete a single qualifying activity — CompTIA's CertMaster CE course, a higher-level CompTIA certification, an approved non-CompTIA industry certification, or passing the latest release of your own exam. Or you can accumulate continuing-education units from training, work experience, conference attendance and published writing.

The CEU route carries the fee. CompTIA's fee table lists A+ at $75 for the three-year period, against $150 for Network+, Security+, Linux+ and most of the tier above. The fee is not annual: CompTIA states plainly that it is paid only when you renew by uploading CEUs, and must be paid by the expiration date. Tokens to pay it come in $25 and $50 denominations and do not expire.

One rule saves a lot of money later. If you hold more than one CompTIA certification you only have to meet the renewal requirements of the highest one, and renewing it renews the ones below automatically — so an A+ holder who later passes Network+ has renewed both. How A+ expires, and the cheapest way to stop it.

Studying for it without paying anyone

Start with the objectives. CompTIA gives away the full objectives document for each exam as a PDF from its own exam pages — Core 1 and Core 2 — and the page asks for an email address and nothing else. It is the only study document that is guaranteed to match the exam, because the people who wrote one wrote the other.

Then add video. Professor Messer publishes a complete free video course for each half of A+ V15 — 63 videos running 10 hours and 11 minutes for Core 1, and 74 videos running 13 hours and 41 minutes for Core 2 — and states on the page that all of the training videos are completely free to watch. Nothing on this site is paid for recommending them, and they are still the first thing to recommend. His printed course notes and practice exams are separate paid products; the videos are not.

1. Download both objectives PDFs and read the domain lists before buying anything.
2. Work through the free video course for Core 1 alongside the Core 1 objectives.
3. Get hands on hardware — an old desktop, a spare router, a virtual machine. Core 1 is 28% troubleshooting and no video teaches that.
4. Repeat for Core 2, paying attention to operational procedures, which is 21% of the exam and the least interesting to study.
5. Only then decide whether a paid practice exam is worth it to you.

The full study route, in order sets out how long each stage tends to take and where the free material genuinely runs out.

Where paying is worth it

Two things are worth money to some people and nothing to others. The first is structure — a course that decides the order for you, chases you through it and gives you graded practice. The second is simulated performance-based questions, which are the format free material covers least well.

On Udemy's CompTIA A+ topic page, read on 24 September 2026, the highest-listed courses are full Core 1 and Core 2 courses bundled with practice exams, sold individually rather than by subscription. Udemy runs near-permanent discounting, so the price you see is a promotion and not a list price — which is also why no figure for it appears here.

The other paid route worth naming is the Google IT Support Professional Certificate, which is a different thing entirely — a certificate of completion from a course provider, not a certification from a certifying body. That distinction matters enough to have its own page: Google IT Support certificate against A+.

The step after A+

CompTIA's own recommendation is the ladder. Network+ (V9, exam code N10-009, launched 20 June 2024) recommends candidates hold CompTIA A+ and have nine to twelve months of hands-on experience in a junior network administrator or network support technician role. It runs to a maximum of 90 questions in 90 minutes and passes at 720. After that, CompTIA recommends Network+ plus two years of security or systems administration experience before Security+ — which is where this site stops, because a security certification deserves a security specialist's attention rather than a footnote.

What this page will never tell you

It will not tell you the pass rate, because CompTIA does not publish one. It will not tell you what an A+ holder earns, because the source this site accepts for that is the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau's site refused our automated requests on 24 September 2026 with an access-denied notice about bots. And it will not tell you whether the certificate is worth it to you, which is a question about your situation rather than about the exam — though what the credential factually gets you lays out the parts that are checkable.

It will also never point you at a site selling real exam questions. CompTIA's candidate agreement treats brain-dump material as unauthorised access to examination materials, and the sanctions include losing the certification, losing every other CompTIA certification you hold, and a minimum six-month ban from the programme. Which practice questions are actually allowed.