How many questions are on the CFA Level I exam?
CFA Level I is 180 multiple-choice questions in two 135-minute sessions. Official format, scoring, and what that means for how you practise.
Reviewed by the CFAQuiz curriculum team5 min readUpdated
The CFA Level I exam has 180 multiple-choice questions, split into two sessions of 90 questions. Each session lasts 135 minutes. Every question has three options, A, B and C, and there is no penalty for a wrong answer.
| Total questions | 180 |
|---|---|
| Sessions | 2 |
| Questions per session | 90 |
| Time per session | 135 minutes |
| Average time per question | 90 seconds |
| Answer options | 3 (A, B, C) |
| Penalty for a wrong answer | None |
That is the whole official format, and it is published by CFA Institute rather than inferred from past papers.
How many questions are in each session?
90 questions per session, in two sessions of 135 minutes each.
The two sessions are sat on the same day with a break between them. Each is its own locked block: you cannot return to session 1 after the break, and you cannot start session 2 early to bank time.
How long do you get per question?
90 seconds, if you spend your 135 minutes evenly across 90 questions.
It is enough for a clean item and not enough for a messy one. The candidates who run out of time are rarely the ones who cannot do the maths. They are the ones who spend three minutes on a question they were never going to finish, and then rush the last fifteen.
A usable rule: if you have not started an answer at 60 seconds, mark it, guess, and move on. You can return inside the same session. You cannot return to time you have already spent.
How many questions per topic?
CFA Institute publishes a weight range for each topic, not a fixed question count.
The ranges are revised between cycles, so a page that tells you "exactly 27 Ethics questions" is inventing a number. Ethics is the heaviest. Financial Statement Analysis, Equity and Fixed Income sit just below it. Derivatives is the lightest. That ordering is stable enough to plan around; the exact counts inside a range are not. The current ranges, and the source, are on the topic pages.
Is there a penalty for guessing?
No. A wrong answer and a blank answer score exactly the same.
With three options a guess is already a one-in-three chance, and a blank is a guaranteed zero. There is never a reason to leave a question unanswered. Finish the paper.
How many practice questions should you do?
Most serious candidates land between 1,000 and 1,500 before exam day.
180 is how many you will sit. It is not how many you should have answered before you sit them. Coverage of every subtopic, plus two revisits of everything you got wrong, is what produces that range. The arithmetic, and why a raw count is the wrong target, is in how many practice questions you actually need.
You can see the item style for yourself: ten free questions per topic, three options, full explanations, no account.
Common questions
How long is the CFA Level I exam in total?+−
Four and a half hours of exam time, as two 135-minute sessions, plus an optional break between them.
How many questions do you need to pass CFA Level I?+−
CFA Institute does not publish a pass mark. It is set per sitting by the Board of Governors, so no fixed number of correct answers guarantees a pass.
Are there four answer options on CFA Level I?+−
No. Level I uses three options, A, B and C. Four-option questions belong to other exams and to out-of-date practice material.
Can you go back to a previous question?+−
Yes, within the same session. Once a session is submitted or its time expires you cannot return to it.