What an FAA A&P costs, line by line

The knowledge tests are delivered by PSI Services, LLC under the FAA’s Airman Certificate Testing Service contract, and PSI sets the price. The FAA does not set it and does not receive it. PSI puts no walk-up price for a single test on any public page: its booking site is an application you have to log into, with no fee page behind it. The $175 below is the price PSI publishes per voucher on its own FAA testing programmes page, plus applicable tax, read there on 19 August 2026, and two independent secondary sources list the same figure for one test. Confirm it at checkout.

The rules around the tests, the 24 month window, what a retest takes and what to bring on the day, are on the knowledge tests page. What is on each test is on its own page: FAA A&P General, FAA A&P Airframe, FAA A&P Powerplant.

The oral and practical is given by a Designated Mechanic Examiner (DME), and the examiner sets the fee. The FAA publishes no schedule and caps nothing. So the only honest number is the one your examiner gives you when you ask.

What we can say is what we read. Four published school and examiner schedules, read in August 2026, ran from about $500 to $700 a section, or roughly $1,200 to $1,600 for a full A&P with all 6 tests in one sitting. That is four data points, not a price list, and it is filed as soft in our own verify register for that reason.

SOFT Four published school and examiner schedules, read 19 August 2026. The FAA principle, that the examiner sets the fee, is confirmed; the dollar figures are not endorsed by the FAA.

What actually happens in the room, the 31 projects and how the oral questions are counted, is on the oral and practical page.

Before any test there is eligibility, and the two routes cost very different things. Graduating a Part 147 school costs whatever that school charges in tuition, which is commercial, uncapped and different at every school. Documenting your own experience costs no fee at all, only time: 30 months of work on both airframes and powerplants for a full A&P, or 18 for one rating, counted in calendar months the FAA will not let you compress.

Which route fits you is the subject of the school or experience page, and how the months are counted and proved is on the experience page.

If the fees are the first thing you have looked at, the order they come in is on how to get your FAA A&P mechanic certificate, which is the route these costs hang off.

Three things you will see quoted as fixed numbers are not published by anyone with the authority to fix them:

So a page that tells you “an A&P costs $X” has added a published fee to a guess. Add the lines above up for your own route instead. For most people on the experience route, the written tests are the only fixed cost until the examiner names theirs.

Every fact on this page was read from these on 19 August 2026. They are the authority and we are the summary. If we and one of them disagree, they are right.