How much does the FE exam cost?

The NCEES exam fee is $225, paid to NCEES when you register through your MyNCEES account. That figure is the same for all FE disciplines and it is the only fee that applies to every candidate in every state.

What else do you pay besides the $225?

Your state licensing board charges its own fees, and the amount and the timing both vary by jurisdiction — some boards require approval before you may register for the exam; others do not involve you until you apply for licensure after passing. There is no honest single total, which is why we do not print one. Check your own board's fee schedule; it is the only source that is correct for you.

When can you take the FE exam?

The FE is administered year-round at Pearson VUE test centers, so there is no national exam date to wait for. You book an appointment when a seat is available. Separately, NCEES divides the year into four testing windows (January-March, April-June, July-September, October-December) and allows one attempt per window, with no more than three attempts in any 12-month period. The windows govern how often you may take it, not when the exam is offered.

How long is the FE exam?

The appointment is 6 hours. The exam itself is 5 hours 20 minutes for 110 questions, which works out at roughly 2.9 minutes per question (our arithmetic, not an NCEES figure). The remaining appointment time covers the nondisclosure agreement, the tutorial and a scheduled 25-minute break.

Is the FE exam the same length for every discipline?

Yes. Every FE discipline we cover is 110 questions in 320 minutes within a 360-minute appointment, closed book with the same on-screen FE Reference Handbook. Only the content differs: the knowledge areas and how the 110 questions are allocated across them.

What does it cost to retake the FE exam?

The full $225 again, for each attempt. That is the arithmetic worth doing before you book the first one: two attempts cost $450, and NCEES's own published data puts repeat-taker pass rates at roughly half the first-time rates. The cheapest way to control what the FE costs you is to take it only once.

What the FE exam costs, and what the six hours contain

The NCEES fee is $225. That is the only number on this page that is the same for everybody, and it is not the total: your state board charges separately, and what it charges depends on where you are licensing. Here is what is actually fixed: the fee, the format, and the rules about when you may test.

Updated September 24, 2026 · by the FE → PE Prep team

$225

NCEES fee

110

Questions

5h 20m

Exam time

Appointment

Nobody can honestly publish a total, including us

Search for what the FE costs and you will find confident totals: $225, $350, $400 with review materials. The confident ones are guessing, because the FE has two payees and only one of them publishes a national price.

NCEES charges $225. You pay it in MyNCEES when you register, it is identical across all FE disciplines, and it is identical in every state.
Your state licensing board charges its own fees, on its own schedule. Some boards must approve you before you may register at all; others do not take a fee from you until you apply for licensure after passing. Both the amount and the timing are jurisdiction-specific.
So the sentence that is actually true is: the FE costs $225 plus whatever your board charges, and your board is the only correct source for the second half.
The number worth planning against is not the fee at all. It is $225 multiplied by the number of attempts you end up making.

The six-hour appointment is not six hours of exam

NCEES’s FE exam page gives the appointment as 6 hours, or 360 minutes. Four published components account for 355 of them, and only one of the four is scored.

The NCEES FE exam appointment, component by component
Part of the appointment	Time
Nondisclosure agreementYou agree not to disclose exam content. Declining it ends the exam, and you forfeit the appointment and exam fees.	2 min
TutorialHow to move through questions, flag items for review and search the on-screen reference handbook. Learn the interface beforehand so these minutes are a formality on the day.	8 min
Exam320 minutes for 110 questions. This is the only part of the appointment that is scored, and its length does not change if you skip the break.	5 h 20 min
Scheduled breakOptional, and offered only after you submit roughly the first half of the questions, which you cannot return to. Unused break time does not go back on the exam clock.	25 min

Components and durations are NCEES's. They sum to 355 minutes. The FE exam page gives the appointment as 6 hours, while the table in NCEES's Examinee Guide lists it as 5 hours 55 minutes, which matches the four components exactly.

The number that matters inside that block is 320 minutes for 110 questions: about 2.9 minutes each, which is our arithmetic rather than an NCEES figure. That is about half the time per question of a PE exam: PE Civil, PE Mechanical and PE Power allow 480 minutes for 80 questions, six minutes each, and every other PE format NCEES lists works out to the same six minutes. Nothing about FE preparation matters more than being able to recognize a question type quickly, because there is no time to derive from first principles and no credit for elegance.

There are no FE exam dates, but there are testing windows

This is the single most confused topic in FE logistics, and the confusion comes from two NCEES facts that sound contradictory and are not.

The FE is administered year-round at Pearson VUE test centers. You are booking an appointment against seat availability, not waiting for a national exam day. Pages advertising “FE exam dates” are describing the testing windows below, not a date you can book.
NCEES divides the year into four testing windows (January to March, April to June, July to September, October to December) and permits one attempt per window, and no more than three attempts in any rolling 12-month period.
Our reading, and NCEES does not phrase it this way: the windows are an attempt limiter, not a calendar. They tell you how often you may test, never when you may test.
The practical consequence: a failed attempt in mid-March means the next one can come in early April, because a new window has opened. A failed attempt in early April means waiting until July.

What to do with a failed attempt, including how to read the NCEES diagnostic report and what the repeat-taker pass rates actually are, is covered separately in the retake guide.

Every FE discipline costs the same and runs the same

The fee, the question count, the exam time, the appointment length and the reference handbook are identical whichever discipline you take. What changes is the content: the knowledge areas, and how the 110 questions are shared out between them.

That has a useful implication for choosing. Because the format is fixed, discipline choice is a question of which subjects you would rather be tested on, not of getting an easier exam. In NCEES Squared 2025 (FY2024-25), first-time pass rates across all seven disciplines span eight points, 61% to 69%, a narrower spread than most candidates expect.

Three companion pages go into that: which FE exam you should take, which compares all seven specifications side by side, how hard the FE exam is, discipline by discipline, and how long to study for it, budgeted against the published question weights.

Common questions

How much does the FE exam cost?: The NCEES exam fee is $225, paid to NCEES when you register through your MyNCEES account. That figure is the same for all FE disciplines and it is the only fee that applies to every candidate in every state.
What else do you pay besides the $225?: Your state licensing board charges its own fees, and the amount and the timing both vary by jurisdiction — some boards require approval before you may register for the exam; others do not involve you until you apply for licensure after passing. There is no honest single total, which is why we do not print one. Check your own board's fee schedule; it is the only source that is correct for you.
When can you take the FE exam?: The FE is administered year-round at Pearson VUE test centers, so there is no national exam date to wait for. You book an appointment when a seat is available. Separately, NCEES divides the year into four testing windows (January-March, April-June, July-September, October-December) and allows one attempt per window, with no more than three attempts in any 12-month period. The windows govern how often you may take it, not when the exam is offered.
How long is the FE exam?: The appointment is 6 hours. The exam itself is 5 hours 20 minutes for 110 questions, which works out at roughly 2.9 minutes per question (our arithmetic, not an NCEES figure). The remaining appointment time covers the nondisclosure agreement, the tutorial and a scheduled 25-minute break.
Is the FE exam the same length for every discipline?: Yes. Every FE discipline we cover is 110 questions in 320 minutes within a 360-minute appointment, closed book with the same on-screen FE Reference Handbook. Only the content differs: the knowledge areas and how the 110 questions are allocated across them.
What does it cost to retake the FE exam?: The full $225 again, for each attempt. That is the arithmetic worth doing before you book the first one: two attempts cost $450, and NCEES's own published data puts repeat-taker pass rates at roughly half the first-time rates. The cheapest way to control what the FE costs you is to take it only once.

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Tell us how long you have. We'll budget your hours across every knowledge area using the official NCEES question weights. The heaviest areas get the most time, which is the opposite of how most people study.

The cheapest FE is the one you take once

Free practice sets for every FE discipline we cover: exam-style questions, with the full worked solution and an explanation of what each wrong option was testing. No signup.

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The $225 fee, the 360-minute appointment and its components, the 110-question 320-minute format, the year-round Pearson VUE administration and the testing-window attempt limits are all NCEES's, from ncees.org and the official FE exam specifications. The per-question pace and the reading of the windows as an attempt limiter are ours, not NCEES figures. No total cost is quoted because state board fees vary by jurisdiction and we hold no primary source for them. Fees and policies change, so confirm current specifics at ncees.org and with your own licensing board before you register. Independent study resource; not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by NCEES.