How much does CompTIA A+ Core 2 cost?

The biggest saving available on Core 2 is not a discount code. It is passing the first time. A second sitting adds $253, which is more than a book, a video course and a year of practice material put together. Nothing else on this page moves the total that far.

After that, the order is: ask your employer, because IT departments fund A+ more often than any other certification on this site; check academic pricing through the CompTIA Academic Store if you are enrolled anywhere; check DoD COOL and GI Bill eligibility if you have served; and check your local workforce or community college programme, which sometimes hands out vouchers outright. A+ is the certification those programmes buy most.

Buy the voucher on its own rather than in a training bundle. The free A+ material is genuinely good enough to pass on, so a bundle is usually paying for something you can get for nothing. If you are buying both cores at once, compare a two-voucher bundle against two separate purchases on the day, because the answer changes.

One trap worth naming: vouchers expire, usually twelve months from purchase. Buying during a sale and then not being ready is a way to pay $253 for nothing. Buy when you have a date in mind, not when you have a discount in mind.

A Core 2 retake is another $253 at full price. There is no discount for the second attempt and no partial credit for the domains you passed, so a fail sends you back through the whole 90 minutes.

Your Core 1 pass is untouched by a Core 2 fail. The two exams are scored and banked separately, so you rebook only the one you missed, which is the one useful thing about the two-exam structure.

The timing rules are looser than the pricing. You can sit the second attempt immediately, with no waiting period, and CompTIA requires 14 days between tries from the third attempt onward. Booking straight away is usually the wrong instinct, because a fail on Core 2 is almost always domain shaped, and a domain gap does not close over a weekend.

Read the score report before you rebook. It breaks the result down by domain, and on Core 2 the answer is usually Operating Systems or Security, which are 28 percent each. Drill the named domain, get your mocks steady above the line, then spend the $253.

A+ is valid for three years, and the clock starts when the certification is awarded, meaning the day you pass the second core rather than the day you passed the first. Someone who sits Core 1 in January and Core 2 in June gets a cycle that ends three years from June.

Renewal takes 20 continuing education units plus CompTIA's continuing education fee across the cycle. That is the lowest CEU requirement in the CompTIA line, and the units come from things support people do anyway: relevant training, vendor courses, documented work experience, and other certifications.

The cheapest renewal is passing a higher CompTIA certification. Network+ or Security+ renews A+ from the date you pass it, so anyone working up the ladder never pays an A+ renewal at all.

The alternative is re-passing the current version of the exams, which for A+ means both cores again at $253 each. Over three years the CEU route wins comfortably, and it is worth planning from the week you pass rather than the month before you expire.

Preparation for A+ Core 2 can genuinely cost nothing. The realistic range people spend is $0 to $300, and the top of that range buys convenience rather than a better chance of passing.

Our questions, explanations, and cheat sheets are free, and the explanation is never paywalled. That is the part of a paid practice set you are actually buying, so it is the part we do not charge for.