Security+ retake cost: what a second attempt really costs you
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Short answer
A Security+ retake costs the full price of another exam voucher. CompTIA does not sell a discounted second attempt. If you fail, you buy the exam again at the same price you paid the first time.
You can sit the second attempt as soon as you are ready — there is no mandatory waiting period after a first failure. From the third attempt onward, you must wait at least fourteen calendar days between tries.
The retake rules, in plain terms
| Situation | What applies |
|---|---|
| You failed your first attempt | No waiting period. Buy a new voucher and reschedule whenever you want. |
| You failed your second attempt | Wait at least 14 calendar days before the third attempt. The same 14-day gap applies to every attempt after that. |
| You passed and want a higher score | You may not retake a passed exam for the same certification version without CompTIA’s permission. A pass is a pass; there is no score to improve for employers. |
| Your voucher is unused | Vouchers expire twelve months from purchase, and expiry dates cannot be extended. An expired voucher is money gone, so do not buy one “to commit yourself” far in advance. |
| Your exam version retires first | Retirement dates override voucher expiry: once an exam retires, vouchers for it stop working even if the printed date has not passed. SY0-701 retires (English) on 11 June 2027 — worth checking against your own date before you buy early. |
Check today’s price before you budget
Exam voucher pricing changes, varies by country, and periodically goes on sale. Any specific dollar figure on a blog is a snapshot. Buy from, and price-check against, the official CompTIA store — and be aware that third-party sites offering suspiciously cheap vouchers are a well-known source of invalid codes.
The cost that is not on the invoice
The voucher is the visible number. For most people it is not the expensive part:
- Delay to the job or the clearance action. If a position, a contract role or an onboarding date depends on the certification, the second attempt pushes everything back by weeks — not by the price of a voucher.
- The study time you spend twice. A retake is rarely “take it again next week.” It is another few weeks of evenings on material you already thought you knew.
- The confidence cost. People who fail once frequently over-correct and delay the second attempt far longer than their actual readiness warrants, which compounds the first two.
Three ways to avoid paying twice
1. Buy the bundle with a retake included, if you are unsure
CompTIA sells training bundles that include a second voucher. If you genuinely do not know whether you are ready, the bundle is cheaper than buying two vouchers separately. If you are ready, it is money spent on insurance you will not claim — so this is a decision to make honestly, not optimistically.
2. Check whether you qualify for a discount
CompTIA runs academic pricing, and there are established routes for military members and veterans — including credentialing assistance programs and GI Bill–related funding for some candidates. If any of these apply to you, they change the math more than any study product will.
3. Do not book the exam on a feeling
This is the one that actually prevents retakes. The most common reason people fail Security+ is not that the exam is unfair — it is that they scheduled it based on having finished a course rather than on evidence that they could answer questions they had not seen before.
Be aware, too, that nobody can tell you the odds in advance: CompTIA does not publish pass rates. We wrote about why every “Security+ pass rate” figure you have seen is invented and what you can measure instead.
Before you rebook
If you have just failed, do these three things before buying another voucher:
- Read your score report by domain. It tells you where you lost the exam. Most people re-study everything evenly, which is the slowest possible way to fix an uneven problem.
- Fix the weak domains specifically, and confirm with questions you have never seen. Re-reading notes you already agree with produces confidence, not competence.
- Rebook only when unseen questions stop surprising you. That is the readiness signal. A course completion certificate is not.
The one-line version
A retake costs a second full voucher plus weeks you probably cannot spare. Both are avoidable, and neither is avoided by studying harder — only by studying the specific things you cannot do yet.
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.