CPA Exam Pass Rates by Section, and What They Actually Tell You
TCP passes four candidates in five and FAR passes two. That gap is not a difficulty ranking, and choosing a Discipline on it can cost you a section.
The AICPA publishes CPA Exam pass rates every quarter, and they are the most misread statistic in the qualification. TCP passes about four candidates in five. FAR passes about two in five. It is very tempting to read that as a difficulty ranking and choose your Discipline accordingly.
That reading is wrong, and acting on it can cost you a section.
Here are the current numbers, what actually drives the differences between them, and the one thing the pass rate genuinely does tell you.
The current numbers
Cumulative rates for the first half of 2026, with the two prior full years for context.
| Section | Type | 2026 to date | 2025 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TCP | Discipline | 79.53% | 77.65% | 73.91% |
| ISC | Discipline | 67.45% | 67.79% | 58.00% |
| REG | Core | 66.78% | 63.12% | 62.61% |
| AUD | Core | 48.65% | 48.21% | 45.79% |
| BAR | Discipline | 43.64% | 41.94% | 38.08% |
| FAR | Core | 42.95% | 42.12% | 39.59% |
Two patterns are worth noticing before anything else.
Every section has improved for two consecutive years. Not one has gone backwards since 2024. That is the signature of a candidate population adapting to a changed exam rather than of an exam getting easier, which matters because the AICPA scales scores specifically so that difficulty stays constant.
The spread is enormous. Thirty-seven percentage points separate TCP from FAR. No plausible account of exam difficulty explains a gap that large. Something else is going on.
Why the spread is not a difficulty ranking
The AICPA is unusually direct about this. Its own guidance states that the exam "is not harder or easier to pass at different times" and that "an increase in pass rates simply means that candidates are better prepared." Scores are scaled so that a 75 in one testing window represents the same standard of competence as a 75 in another.
If difficulty is held constant by design, then a difference in pass rates is a difference in who is sitting, not in what they are sitting. Three factors do most of the work.
Self-selection into the Disciplines
This is the big one, and it explains almost the whole TCP number.
Nobody is assigned a Discipline. Candidates choose, and they overwhelmingly choose the one matching their existing work. The people sitting TCP are disproportionately tax professionals who spend their working lives on the material and who have usually just passed REG, which overlaps heavily with it. A cohort of specialists sitting their own specialism, immediately after a related section, will post a high pass rate whatever the paper looks like.
The same logic runs through ISC, whose candidates tend to come from IT audit and controls backgrounds.
The practical implication is uncomfortable but simple. The 79% TCP pass rate is not available to you unless you are the kind of candidate who produced it. Choosing TCP because the number looks friendly, with no tax background and no intention of doing tax work, puts you in a population you do not resemble.
When in the sequence a section is taken
FAR is the section most candidates take first, and first sections are attempted by people who have never sat a CPA exam before, do not yet know how the questions are asked, and have not yet learned how to manage four hours. Some of FAR's low rate is a first-attempt effect that has nothing to do with financial accounting.
AUD, which many candidates take last, benefits from the opposite.
Breadth and skill level
Some of the gap is genuinely about the paper. FAR spans US GAAP, governmental accounting and not-for-profit reporting, and its Blueprint puts only 5 to 15% of the exam at the Remembering and Understanding level, with everything else at Application or Analysis. It is the section where knowing the material is furthest from being enough.
REG, by contrast, allocates 25 to 35% to Remembering and Understanding. There is more that can be secured by learning it properly.
How the exam is actually scored
Understanding the score explains why "pass rate" and "difficulty" are not the same thing.
| Feature | How it works |
|---|---|
| Scale | 0 to 99. A score of 75 or above passes. |
| What 75 means | Not 75% correct. The AICPA is explicit that the reported score "does not represent a percentage correct, nor can you interpret it as such." |
| Composition | A weighted combination of scaled MCQ and TBS scores. |
| Weighting | 50% MCQ and 50% TBS for every section except ISC, which is 60% MCQ and 40% TBS. |
| Difficulty adjustment | Scaled scores account for the relative difficulty of the questions you were given, so a harder form does not disadvantage you. |
The 50/50 weighting is the part most candidates underuse. Half of your score comes from the simulations, in every section other than ISC. In FAR that half is carried by only seven simulations against fifty multiple choice questions, so each simulation is worth several MCQs. A candidate who practises mostly multiple choice, because they are quicker and more satisfying, has optimised for half the paper.
What the pass rate is actually useful for
Not for ranking difficulty and not for choosing a Discipline. It is useful for exactly two things.
Budgeting for a retake. A 42.95% pass rate on FAR means the median outcome for a candidate sitting all four sections includes at least one failure. From the Gulf, a retake costs roughly SAR 2,800 in fees and three months of your credit window. Planning as if you will pass everything first time is planning for the better half of the distribution. See What the CPA Exam Costs from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.
Deciding where the study time goes. If you are dividing hours between four sections, the low-rate sections deserve more of them. That is a claim about your time allocation, which is a real decision, rather than about which paper is intrinsically harder, which is not.
So how should you choose a Discipline?
On overlap and usefulness, in that order.
- Overlap. BAR extends FAR. TCP extends REG. ISC stands alone. Sitting a Discipline close to the Core section it builds on is the single largest efficiency available, and it is worth far more than any difference in headline pass rates.
- Usefulness. Your Discipline is not printed on your licence and does not restrict your practice. A CPA who passed ISC and a CPA who passed BAR hold the identical qualification. So choose the one you will actually use at work, because that is the only lasting difference it makes.
The full comparison is in Which CPA Discipline Should You Choose: BAR, ISC or TCP?, and the scheduling constraint that should shape your order is in Sequencing the CPA Exam Around the Discipline Windows.
The one number that should change your behaviour
Not 79.53%. It is 50%: the share of your score that comes from task-based simulations.
Pass rates describe other people. The MCQ and TBS weighting describes your paper, and it is the only figure on this page you can act on directly. If your practice is not roughly half simulations, it does not match the exam you are sitting.
Where to practise this
Prepito covers all six CPA course options in English with practice questions, timed simulations, full explanations and mistake review, so the simulation component gets the same attention as the multiple choice component: FAR, AUD, REG, BAR, ISC and TCP.
CPA questions and written explanations are in English. Prepito’s interface is available in English and Arabic, and the AI tutor can respond in either language.
If FAR is your next section, and statistically it is the one most likely to need a second attempt, start with the CPA FAR study guide.
Sources: AICPA guidance on CPA Exam scoring and pass rates, AICPA CPA Exam Blueprints. Pass rates are published quarterly by the AICPA; 2026 figures here are cumulative for the first two quarters and will change as later quarters are released. This page is updated when new quarterly data is published.
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An entity reports revenues of $8,400,000, cost of goods sold of $5,100,000, selling expenses of $960,000, a loss on sale of equipment of $140,000, interest expense of $310,000, and a loss from discontinued operations of $700,000 before tax. What is income from continuing operations before tax?
