One of the first questions every candidate asks is deceptively simple: how many questions are actually on my contractor licensing exam? The answer matters more than most people think. It tells you how long you’ll be sitting, how many you can afford to miss, and—when you compare states—just how differently each licensing board defines “competent to build.”
There is no single national contractor exam. Every state (and often every trade and license tier within it) sets its own question count, time limit, passing score, and code edition. Below is a 2026 snapshot of real, board-published exam lengths, followed by what those numbers should tell you about how to study.
Contractor exam length by state and trade (2026)
Every figure below reflects the scored trade/technical portion published by the state licensing board or its testing vendor (PSI, Prov, Prometric, or a state provider). Counts change—always confirm on your current Candidate Information Bulletin before you test.
| State & license | Questions | Time | Pass |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oregon General Journeyman Electrician | 52 | 3 hr | 75% |
| Oregon Journeyman Plumber | 64 | 4 hr | 75% |
| South Carolina Business & Law (Commercial) | 50 | 125 min | 70% |
| Iowa Journeyman Plumber | 75 | 3 hr | 75% |
| Nevada B General Building | 80 | 3.5 hr | 70% |
| Iowa Journeyman Electrician | 80 | 3 hr | 70% |
| Utah Master Electrician (Rule & Laws) | 80 | 4 hr | 75% |
| Oklahoma Journeyman Electrician | 100 | 4 hr | 70% |
| New Mexico GB-98 General Building | 100 | 5+ hr | 75% |
| Nevada C-2 Electrical Contractor | 110 | 4.5 hr | 70% |
| Alabama HVAC (HAC) Contractor | 110 | 5 hr | 70% |
| Utah Journeyman Plumber (theory) | 120 | 4 hr | 70% |
| Iowa Master Plumber | 125 | 5 hr | 75% |
Three things these numbers reveal
1. “Open book” does not mean easy
Most of the exams above are open book—and that is exactly why they’re hard. Boards write open-book exams to be won or lost on speed of code lookup, not memory. On a 120-question, 4-hour plumbing theory exam you have about two minutes per question. If you’re flipping through an untabbed code book hunting for the vent-sizing table, you’ll run out of clock long before you run out of questions. The candidates who pass have practiced finding answers, not just knowing them.
2. Your passing margin is smaller than it looks
A 70% cut score on an 80-question exam means you can miss 24. That feels generous—until you realize 15–20 of those questions may be multi-step calculations (load calcs, fixture units, ampacity, offsets) where a single misread table row is an automatic miss. Treat the calculation topics as the exam within the exam.
3. The code edition is half the battle
Two states can both “use the IPC” and still test different answers because they’re on different editions with different state amendments. Oregon tests the UPC-based Oregon Plumbing Specialty Code; Oklahoma tests the IPC; Utah tests the IPC with Utah amendments. Studying the wrong edition is one of the most common—and most avoidable—reasons good tradespeople fail.
How to actually prepare
- Study the exact exam you’re taking. Not “the electrical exam”—your state’s journeyman/master/contractor exam, on the code edition your board currently adopts.
- Practice against the clock. Full-length, timed practice exams build the lookup speed that open-book exams actually measure.
- Tab your code book. Learn where the high-frequency tables live so you can turn to them in seconds.
- Drill the math separately. Load calculations, fixture units, conductor sizing, and pressure/head problems reward repetition more than anything else on the test.
Contractor Pathway builds state-specific exam prep for exactly this reason. Each course mirrors the real exam’s length, code edition, and subject weighting—so your practice looks like test day, and test day feels like practice. Find your state and trade, study the exam you’re actually going to sit, and walk in ready.