NCLEX pass rates: the official numbers, by candidate type

There is no single NCLEX pass rate. For U.S. licensure in 2025, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) reported national candidate-type rates from 27.6% to 86.7% — so the first thing to do is find the one that describes you.

2025 NCLEX pass rates — the latest complete year

Exams taken toward U.S. licensure between January 1 and December 31, 2025. Source: NCSBN, 2025 NCLEX Examination Statistics, Tables 1 and 12. This is the 2025 testing year, published in June 2026 — not a 2026 rate. Last verified September 21, 2026.

Jump to: RN by state · PN by state · your nursing school · what changed in 2025 · if you didn't pass

Which pass rate applies to you

Three things decide your row: which exam you're taking, whether this is your first attempt at it, and whether you completed your nursing program in the United States or somewhere else. "U.S.-educated" means the program, not your citizenship or where you live now. The NCLEX-RN is the registered-nurse licensure exam; the NCLEX-PN is the practical/vocational-nurse licensure exam. Canadian licensure results are reported separately and are not included here.

For first-time, U.S.-educated RN candidates, the matching rate is 86.7%, not 69.1%. "Repeat" includes later attempts, not just a second try; the report does not give an individual candidate's eventual chance of passing.

NCLEX-RN pass rates by candidate type

January 1 – December 31, 2025, U.S. licensure

Of the 328,443 NCLEX-RN testings for U.S. licensure in 2025, 192,916 were first-time U.S.-educated candidates. The other 135,527 were retakers, internationally educated candidates, or both. Weight those four groups by size and you get 69.1%. Do not read the all-candidate total as an unduplicated count of people: a person can retest during the year.

Source: NCSBN, 2025 NCLEX Examination Statistics, Table 1, printed p. 9.

So the headline figure isn't a harder version of your number. It answers a different question: how many sittings of the exam end in a pass, across everyone who takes it.

A word on what the gaps between the rows do and don't mean. The first-time and repeat rows are not a matched before-and-after study — a person can appear first as a first-time candidate and later as a repeat candidate. A repeat candidate is someone who did not pass before, so the two groups differ in ways the numbers can't separate. The same caution applies to the internationally educated rows. These tables do not isolate preparation, curriculum, language, time since training, or eligibility-route effects. Read the rows as descriptions of who passed, not as explanations of why.

By degree type

All first-time, U.S.-educated RN candidates, 2025:

The BSN–ADN gap is 1.5 percentage points across 189,807 candidates. That's a real difference, and it's far too small to pick a degree path on by itself. Diploma programs are now a small slice of the pipeline — 2,671 candidates nationwide.

"Special program codes" is NCSBN's own separate category. It contributes 438 candidates and 171 passes to the national total, so it stays in the table. The report does not define its full composition; do not relabel it as a degree type or use its aggregate rate to judge a particular school.

Source: NCSBN, 2025 NCLEX Examination Statistics, Table 8, printed pp. 19–21.

NCLEX-PN pass rates by candidate type

January 1 – December 31, 2025

The two internationally educated rows rest on 397 and 439 testings. With those denominators held fixed, changing ten outcomes would move the rates by about 2.5 and 2.3 percentage points, respectively. That is an illustration of small-cohort sensitivity, not a change observed in these data.

The all-candidate PN rate sits well above the all-candidate RN rate — 77.3% against 69.1% — but the candidate mixes are different too. Internationally educated candidates made up 93,014 of 328,443 RN sittings (28.3%) and 836 of 68,996 PN sittings (1.2%) in 2025. Those different populations prevent a clean exam-difficulty comparison.

One more thing the tables can't tell you: the RN and PN passing standards are set on different item pools for different scopes of practice, and NCSBN says plainly they are not directly comparable. The near-identical first-time rates, 86.7% and 86.6%, do not establish that the two exams are equally difficult.

Source: NCSBN, 2025 NCLEX Examination Statistics, Table 12, printed p. 44; RN/PN standard comparison, printed p. 7.

NCLEX-RN pass rates by state

These are first-time, U.S.-educated candidates only, for calendar year 2025. This table does not include repeat or internationally educated candidates.

The jurisdiction labels below are NCSBN's published categories, not a school-by-school breakdown. Read the candidate count before the percentage — several jurisdictions here have fewer than 30 candidates, where one person moves the rate by several points.

Source: NCSBN, 2025 NCLEX Examination Statistics, Table 8, printed pp. 19–21. Includes all 55 jurisdictions reported in that table; the rows add to the national totals exactly. The totals include Special Program Codes.

Among states with at least 1,000 candidates, 2025 ran from South Carolina at 91.6% down to Utah at 79.1%. Two of the four largest state candidate cohorts sat well below the national rate — Florida at 81.8% and New York at 82.3% — while California at 89.0% and Texas at 88.6% sat above it.

A state figure combines the candidates and program categories reported for that jurisdiction, including its mix of BSN, ADN, diploma and Special Program Code records. It does not, by itself, establish how good nursing education is in that state, and it certainly isn't a forecast for any one graduate.

NCLEX-PN pass rates by state

Same basis: first-time, U.S.-educated candidates, calendar year 2025.

Source: NCSBN, 2025 NCLEX Examination Statistics, Table 14, printed pp. 45–46. All 54 reported jurisdiction rows are included and add to the national totals exactly. Northern Mariana Islands has no row in this PN table; that absence is not a 0% rate. The Virgin Islands row is one pass out of five candidates — a reminder to check the count first.

Don't merge the RN and PN tables into a single ranking. They are different exams taken by different candidates for different licences.

How to find a nursing school's NCLEX pass rate

NCSBN doesn't publish public pass rates for individual nursing schools. It says so directly: NCSBN does not share public pass rates for specific programs, and each nursing regulatory body decides whether and how to publish results for the programs it approves. California provides one example below.

Three steps:

1. Go to the board of nursing for the state where the program is located — not where you live, and not where you plan to be licensed. Find your board →
2. Look for "NCLEX pass rates," "education programs," "program outcomes," or "approval reports." California's Board of Registered Nursing publishes program-level first-time NCLEX-RN rates and explains which candidates and reporting periods it includes.
3. Check four labels before you compare anything: the program name and credential level, the candidate type, the reporting period, and the number of candidates.

That third step is where comparisons can go wrong. Boards don't all use the same reporting window. California's program table covers July 1 through June 30, while NCSBN's national annual figures cover January 1 through December 31. A school page showing a July-to-June figure and the national calendar-year figure describe different stretches of time, and setting them side by side without saying so produces a comparison that looks precise and isn't.

If a program's own website shows a rate, check whether it matches what the board publishes. California's table counts all first-time testers during the reporting period, whether or not they graduated immediately before taking the exam. A graduating-class rate and a reporting-period rate need not describe the same group. California's reporting notes

What counts as a good pass rate for a nursing program

There's no universal number in the NCSBN tables that decides whether a nursing program is good. Use the benchmark the program is actually held to, along with comparable outcomes — not an invented national cutoff.

For a 2025 calendar-year comparison of first-time U.S.-educated candidates, the matching national benchmarks are 86.7% for RN and 86.6% for PN. A state-board approval requirement is a separate question: read the rule or board report that applies to the program rather than treating the national average as a regulatory threshold.

When you're actually comparing schools, four things matter more than one year's percentage:

• Several years, not one. In a hypothetical cohort of 40, changing four pass/fail outcomes changes the rate by 10 percentage points. One year does not show you why the results changed.
• The denominator. In a hypothetical comparison, 100% from 12 candidates is less stable than 91% from 300: one changed outcome moves the rates by about 8.3 and 0.3 percentage points, respectively.
• Board approval and accreditation status. Check the applicable board's approval information and the program's named accreditor; do not assume both statuses are established by its NCLEX rate.
• What happens before the exam. Completion and attrition rates matter. An NCLEX pass rate does not include students who never reach the exam. California also publishes program-reported accreditation, attrition and on-time completion information; check its separate definitions and reporting period before combining it with pass-rate data.

A licensure pass rate measures one outcome for the people who finished and sat the exam. It's worth knowing. It isn't the whole picture of a program.

How NCLEX pass rates have moved since 2019

Figures for 2019 through 2023 are NCSBN's own annual values as published in Figures 3 and 15 of the 2025 report, where they are rounded to whole percentages. The 2024 and 2025 figures come from the detailed tables in the 2024 and 2025 reports and are rounded to one decimal place. All of them are annual; none mixes in quarterly data. These rates use candidates tested as the denominator, not an unweighted average of school or state rates.

Next Generation NCLEX launched on April 1, 2023, adding case studies and item types built around clinical judgment. Rates did rise sharply in 2023 and again in 2024, then fell in 2025. That sequence is worth knowing, but the timing alone doesn't establish that the redesign caused any of it. The 2023 annual figure also combines testing before and after the April launch. NCSBN introduction, printed p. 6

What changed in 2025, and what didn't

The passing standard didn't move

The NCLEX-RN passing standard was 0.00 logits in 2024 and 0.00 logits in 2025. The current standard remains 0.00 logits through March 31, 2029. The NCLEX-PN standard has been −0.18 logits since March 25, 2020 and remains in force through March 31, 2029. Historical standards: 2025 report, printed pp. 6–7

March 31, 2026 was the end of an earlier published validity period. The current end date is March 31, 2029; the passing standard did not rise between the two testing years compared here.

New test plans for both exams did take effect on April 1, 2026, based on NCSBN's 2024 practice analyses. They run through March 31, 2029. They didn't change the passing standard, and none of the 2025 results on this page were produced under them. Current test plans

Every RN group's rate fell except one

Changes are percentage points, calculated from passed/tested counts before rounding. That is why 36.4% to 30.5% is shown as a 5.8-point decline rather than subtracting the two already-rounded display values. Sources: Tables 1 in the 2024 and 2025 reports.

How much did candidate mix contribute?

The all-candidate rate is lower than the first-time U.S.-educated rate because it includes three other groups with lower pass rates. But explaining that gap is not the same as explaining the change from 2024 to 2025.

Run it on NCSBN's own numbers. Hold each group's 2024 pass rate fixed and swap in 2025's mix of candidates: the all-candidate rate falls by 0.02 of a percentage point. Hold the 2024 mix fixed and swap in 2025's pass rates: it falls 4.38 points. Those are two different hypothetical comparisons, not two terms that can simply be added.

Here are all the inputs:

For each of the four groups, its weight is tested ÷ all tested, and its rate is passed ÷ tested. The overall rate is the sum of weight × rate. Calculate with those fractions before rounding.

Using 2024 as the reference year gives this exact accounting identity:

The interaction accounts for weights and rates changing together. The overall rates, shown to four decimal places, fall from 73.2722% to 69.0975%. Changing the reference or calculation order reallocates the interaction; this is a descriptive breakdown, not a causal model.

Source inputs: NCSBN, Table 1 in the 2024 and 2025 reports. Calculations: Castleport Test Prep.

The candidate-mix term is small because the four group-share changes largely offset one another when 2024 rates are held fixed. Retaking U.S.-educated candidates grew from 10.1% to 12.9% of all sittings, while first-time internationally educated candidates shrank from 18.6% to 16.1%. The share who were first-time U.S.-educated barely moved: 58.8% to 58.7%.

Three of the four groups had lower observed pass rates against an unchanged passing standard. That does not rule out changes in who tested within each broad group.

One more signal, from how the exams ended

Under its most common stopping rule, the NCLEX ends after the minimum number of items when the computer is 95% certain which side of the standard the ability estimate falls on. Maximum-length and run-out-of-time rules also apply. More candidates reaching the maximum is consistent with more estimates remaining close to the standard, but the summary table does not establish the cause or tell you whether an individual passed.

Sources: Table 3 in the 2024 and 2025 reports; NCLEX pass/fail rules.

What this doesn't tell you

None of it identifies a cause. The passing standard was unchanged, and changes in the four published group shares contribute little in this calculation. But those broad groups can contain different candidates from one year to the next. These tables cannot separate preparation, program characteristics, time since training or other within-group differences. Anyone offering a single confident cause is going past the evidence.

Reading quarterly and current-year figures

A quarterly change is not automatically a change in exam difficulty. In 2025 the all-candidate RN rate ran 71.6%, 73.7%, 68.7%, then 57.6%. First-time U.S.-educated candidates were 67.5% of second-quarter sittings and only 36.3% of fourth-quarter sittings. Their own pass rate also fell, so both composition and within-group results matter.

All NCLEX-RN testings for U.S. licensure

First-time, U.S.-educated NCLEX-RN candidates

Q1 is January–March, Q2 April–June, Q3 July–September and Q4 October–December. Rates and shares are computed from the displayed counts. Source: 2025 report, Table 1, printed p. 9.

Look at the first-time U.S.-educated series instead: 88.4%, 89.1%, 84.0%, 81.2%. It rose from the first to the second quarter, then fell. That is a decline from the start to the end of the year, not a steady fall in every quarter.

In-year figures get revised. NCSBN notes that its live dashboard and its published figures can differ because of data reconciliation — candidates added or removed after the fact. A quarterly number quoted in April may not match the annual report a year later. NCSBN's reconciliation note

Before comparing two percentages, match their testing dates and candidate groups. An "as of" date alone does not prove that a figure covers every exam taken through that day. The finalized 2025 first-time U.S.-educated RN figure is 86.7%.

Where to check 2026 figures. Use NCSBN's official pass-rate dashboard for current-year statistics. Select the exam, year and candidate type, and record the testing period shown. A partial-year rate is not directly interchangeable with the complete 2025 annual figures on this page.

Open the NCSBN pass-rate dashboard →

Pass rate versus the passing standard

These are two different things.

A pass rate is backward-looking: the share of a defined group that passed during a reporting period.

The passing standard is the ability threshold the exam measures you against. It's expressed in logits, a unit from the statistical model behind computerized adaptive testing. It is not a percentage of questions and does not convert into a fixed percentage-correct requirement. NCSBN's scoring rules do not establish an "about 75% correct" threshold.

Three consequences worth holding onto:

No fixed share of candidates passes. The NCLEX is criterion-referenced. NCSBN states there is no preassigned percentage that passes or fails. You are measured against the standard, not against the other people testing that week. An 86.7% pass rate does not mean 13.3% of seats are reserved for failures. NCSBN, Setting the Passing Standard, printed p. 6

Exam length does not tell you whether you passed. The 2026 NCLEX-RN Test Plan says it outright: the length of your exam is not an indication of your result. Both exams run 85 to 150 items inside a five-hour appointment that includes all breaks, and candidates pass and fail at both ends of that range. The 2026 NCLEX-PN Test Plan gives the same limits. If you've seen "75 to 265 questions" and "up to six hours," those are not the current specifications.

A pass rate is not your personal probability. It describes people who already tested. Your result is based on your performance against the passing standard under the NCLEX decision rules, not your cohort's historical percentage. Treat 86.7% as context for the exam, not as a forecast for you.

If you didn't pass

More than half of repeat U.S.-educated RN testings ended in a pass in 2025 — 22,404 of 42,513, or 52.7%. On the PN exam it was 41.7%. These repeat rows do not isolate second attempts or measure the chance of eventually passing after several attempts.

Before another attempt:

• Use your Candidate Performance Report to guide what you study next. After an unsuccessful exam, the report describes performance by content area and clinical judgment. Candidates who do not answer the minimum 85 items receive an abbreviated report instead. What the report contains
• NCSBN's retake policy requires at least 45 test-free days between attempts and permits up to eight attempts per year for candidates applying through participating nursing regulatory bodies.
• Your nursing regulatory body may impose a longer wait or tighter attempt limits. Confirm its requirements as well as the NCSBN baseline. Official retake policy

Start by contacting the nursing regulatory body where you are seeking licensure. Then re-register with Pearson and wait for a new Authorization to Test before scheduling. The board determines eligibility; Pearson sends the ATT email. 2026 Candidate Bulletin, registration steps, printed p. 4

NCLEX results and retake policy → · Contact your board of nursing →

Sources

The exam statistics come from NCSBN's publications. We opened the sources and checked the cited tables and sections directly, including the relevant PDF table images. The worked comparisons are our calculations, not additional NCSBN findings.

1. NCSBN, 2025 NCLEX Examination Statistics (Research Brief Vol. 96, June 2026) — Table 1, printed p. 9 (RN groups and quarters); Table 3, p. 10 (RN exam length); Table 8, pp. 19–21 (RN jurisdictions and degree types); Table 12, p. 44 (PN groups); Table 14, pp. 45–46 (PN jurisdictions); Figures 3 and 15, pp. 34 and 51 (annual trends); introduction, pp. 6–8 (NGN, standards and scoring). PDF
2. NCSBN, 2024 NCLEX Examination Statistics (Research Brief Vol. 94, July 2025) — Table 1, printed p. 9; Table 3, p. 10; Table 12, p. 44. PDF
3. NCSBN, NCLEX Pass Rates — official dashboard and data-reconciliation note. Page
4. NCLEX.com, Passing Standard — current RN and PN standards and validity periods. Page
5. NCSBN, 2026 NCLEX-RN Test Plan and 2026 NCLEX-PN Test Plan — effective April 1, 2026 through March 31, 2029; §III, printed pp. 15–17. RN PDF · PN PDF · Test-plan dates
6. NCLEX.com, Computerized Adaptive Testing — ability estimates and the three pass/fail rules. Page
7. NCLEX.com, Results and Candidate Performance Report — retake process, limits and report exception. Results · CPR
8. NCSBN/Pearson, 2026 NCLEX Examination Candidate Bulletin, April 2026 — registration steps, printed p. 4; ATT, p. 8; retake policy, p. 20. PDF
9. NCSBN Help Center, How do I find the NCLEX pass rates for a nursing school?, updated January 22, 2026. Article
10. California Board of Registered Nursing — program-level NCLEX rates and their reporting-period definitions; separate program-reported completion, attrition and accreditation data. Pass rates · Program outcomes

The year-over-year comparison, the mix-versus-rate calculation, and the quarterly composition figures in this article are our own arithmetic on the NCSBN candidate counts listed above. The inputs are all in the tables on this page, so you can check the work. The small-cohort examples are hypothetical sensitivity calculations, not observed school outcomes.

Last verified: September 21, 2026. The cited annual-report tables, current passing standards, test-plan dates, retake process and linked school-reporting definitions were checked on that date. The pass-rate tables reflect NCSBN's finalized 2025 annual publication; they do not present a 2026 year-to-date rate.

Castleport Test Prep is an independent exam prep publisher. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. Exam and credential names identify the subjects discussed; trademarks belong to their respective owners. Pass rates are historical data about past candidates and are not a prediction of any individual's result, a guarantee of passing, or a determination of licensure eligibility. For the rules that apply to your licensure, check with your state board of nursing.

AI tools assisted with drafting and source checking. This is not a credentialed subject-matter review. Editorial standards

Castleport Test Prep Editorial Team