SIE Pass Rate: 74% in FINRA's Only Disclosure (2026)

If you're looking for an official SIE exam pass rate, here is the straight answer: FINRA has disclosed one exactly once. At its 2019 annual conference FINRA reported an SIE pass rate of 74% as of 31 March 2019, across 29,181 exams taken, and revised it to roughly 72% by the end of that April. It has published nothing since — no pass-rate table appears on the SIE's official exam page, in FINRA's qualification-exam FAQ, or anywhere in its current materials.

So treat 74% for what it is: a single seven-year-old snapshot from the exam's first months, when the candidate pool looked different than it does now. Every confident "SIE pass rate" you see quoted today is either that one figure repeated without its date, or a prep provider's estimate from its own customers. Worth knowing; not worth planning around. What FINRA publishes continuously is exactly how the exam is scored — and that gives you a concrete, fixed target to train against.

How the SIE is scored

The passing score is 70. You'll see 80 questions in total: 75 scored questions plus 5 unscored pretest items that FINRA mixes in to trial future questions. The pretest load was cut from 10 items to 5 effective October 27, 2025 — so older prep materials that still describe 10 pretest items are describing the previous format, not the one you'll sit. You get 1 hour and 45 minutes — 105 minutes — of testing time.

Because the 5 pretest questions are indistinguishable from scored ones, treat every question as if it counts. You can't afford to write one off as "probably experimental."

Where the questions come from

The 75 scored questions are not spread evenly. Knowledge of Capital Markets accounts for 12 scored questions, while Understanding Products and Their Risks is the heavyweight at 33 scored questions — by far the largest section of the exam. The remaining sections cover trading, customer accounts and prohibited activities, and the regulatory framework. If your study time is limited, product knowledge — equities, debt, options, packaged products, and the risks attached to each — is where preparation pays off fastest.

Who takes the SIE — and why that matters for pass rates

The SIE is deliberately open: association with a firm is not required to take it, and there is no prerequisite exam. Students, career changers, and people testing the waters all sit for it alongside new hires at broker-dealers. That wide-open candidate pool is one reason any unofficial pass-rate estimate is so hard to interpret — it averages fully sponsored trainees against walk-in candidates studying on their own timeline, and none of them are obligated to report their result to anyone.

Two structural details matter more than any estimate. First, passing the SIE alone does not qualify you for registration with FINRA — it is the foundation, and representative-level exams build on it: the SIE is a co-requisite for exams such as the Series 7. Second, a passing SIE result stays valid for four years, which gives you a long runway to land a sponsoring firm and complete your top-off exam.

What an attempt costs

The exam fee is $100 in 2026, up from $80 in 2025. The fee is the cheapest part of the process compared with the study time you'll invest — which is exactly why the rational move is to over-prepare rather than pay twice.

How to improve your odds

With no official pass rate to benchmark against, aim at the numbers that are official: 70 to pass, 75 scored questions, 105 minutes on the clock.

• Weight product knowledge heavily. With 33 of the 75 scored questions on products and their risks, that single section can carry you past the passing line — or hold you under it.
• Rehearse the pace. The clock is tighter than most first-timers expect. Practice full-length, timed runs, not casual untimed review.
• Don't burn your attempt on a guess about readiness. Take a free SIE practice exam under timed conditions, and treat a consistent, comfortable margin above 70 as your green light to book.
• Plan the next step now. If your goal is a full securities career, the SIE is stage one — see how the numbers change at the top-off level in our Series 7 pass rate breakdown.

Bottom line: no official SIE pass rate exists, and any percentage you see quoted is an estimate someone assembled without FINRA's data. The exam's real published targets — a passing score of 70, 75 scored questions, 105 minutes — are knowable and trainable. Study against those, and the unpublished statistic takes care of itself.