Security+ pass rate on the first attempt: the honest answer
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Short answer
Nobody knows, because CompTIA does not publish it. There is no official Security+ first-attempt pass rate. Every specific percentage you have seen — 70%, 82%, “around 85%” — was either made up, extrapolated from a self-selected forum poll, or copied from another site that made it up.
What is published: the passing score is 750 on a scale of 100 to 900, and the exam has a fixed time limit and a mix of multiple-choice and performance-based questions.
Why there is no number
Certification bodies almost never publish pass rates, and the reasons are structural rather than secretive:
- It would be a moving target. The population taking the exam changes constantly — bootcamp cohorts, career changers, military candidates, people retaking. A single rate would describe none of them.
- It invites gaming. A published rate becomes a marketing weapon for every training provider, which is exactly the incentive problem the certification body wants to avoid.
- The number would be misread as difficulty. A low pass rate would be read as “hard exam” when it usually means “under-prepared candidates.”
Where the fake numbers come from
| Source you have seen | What it actually is |
|---|---|
| “Industry average is around 80%” | Unsourced. Trace any of these back and the citation chain ends at another blog with no citation. |
| Reddit or Discord polls | Heavily self-selected. People who pass post; people who fail mostly do not. Treat these as anecdotes, which is still useful — just not as statistics. |
| “Our students have a 95% pass rate” | Sometimes true, usually unverifiable, and almost always measured on a filtered group — for example only students who finished the course and took the exam. |
A rule worth applying to any study product
If a provider claims a pass rate, ask three questions: measured over what sample size, over what period, and counting whom? A claim that cannot answer all three is advertising copy. We do not publish a pass rate for the same reason — we do not have verified data yet, and inventing one would make everything else we say worth less.
The question that actually helps you
“What is the pass rate?” is a proxy for the real question, which is “am I going to pass?” — and that one is answerable, because it depends on evidence about you rather than statistics about strangers.
Four readiness signals that mean something
- You score consistently above the line on questions you have never seen. Not questions you have already worked through — re-answering those measures memory, not readiness.
- Your weakest domain is not catastrophic. The exam is weighted by domain, so a single collapsed domain can sink an otherwise comfortable average. Check your worst one, not your mean.
- You can say why the wrong answers are wrong. Security+ leans heavily on distinguishing between similar controls and concepts. If you pick correct answers but cannot explain the distractors, you are pattern-matching, and unfamiliar phrasing will break it.
- Performance-based questions do not panic you. They are a small share of the exam but they arrive early and eat time, and time pressure is a common failure mode.
Two signals that mean nothing
- Finishing a course. Course completion measures attendance.
- Feeling ready. Confidence and competence correlate poorly right up until the moment they are tested — which is the whole problem.
Bottom line
There is no published Security+ pass rate, and anyone quoting one is guessing. The number you should care about is not how many strangers passed — it is whether unseen questions still surprise you. If they do, you are not ready yet, regardless of what any percentage says. If they do not, the population statistic was never going to tell you anything you did not already know.
If you are weighing up whether to book now or wait, the practical consideration is what a second attempt would cost you: Security+ retake cost, and how to avoid paying twice .
Security+ question bank — join the waitlist
We are writing an adaptive Security+ bank now, built from the official exam objectives. Leave an email and we will tell you when it opens. Nothing else.
Keep reading
- DoD 8140 approved certifications: why there is no single list anymoreDoD 8140 replaced the old 8570 baseline-certification chart with a work-role qualification matrix. Here is how to find the certifications that actually count for your role.
- How hard is Security+, really?Security+ is not technically deep — it is wide, and it assumes networking knowledge nobody tells you about. Here is what actually makes it hard, including the question format most people meet for the first time on exam day.
- How long does it take to study for Security+?Most people need six to twelve weeks for Security+, but the number of weeks is the wrong thing to plan around. Here is what actually determines the timeline, and the readiness signal that replaces counting.