Customs broker exam FAQ

You can retake the Customs Broker License Examination as many times as you need; there is no limit on attempts. Because it is held only twice a year, in April and October, a retake means waiting for the next cycle and paying the examination fee again (currently $390). Note a separate deadline that matters after you pass: your passing grade must be used to apply for a license within three years, or it expires. Confirm the current fee and rules against cbp.gov.

The exam runs 4.5 hours for 80 questions, which sounds generous until you account for the open-book format. Many questions require two or three separate lookups in the roughly 6,500 pages of the HTSUS and 19 CFR, so the real time budget per question is tight. This is why pacing and lookup speed, not raw knowledge, decide most outcomes. Confirm the current duration against the CBP notice of examination before exam day.

The Customs Broker License Examination is open book, which surprises people who expect a memorization test. You bring the HTSUS and 19 CFR, roughly 6,500 pages combined, plus the CBP-supplied directives named in the notice of examination. The catch is the size of that corpus against a 4.5-hour clock: knowing the answer matters less than finding the citation fast. Candidates may typically tab and highlight their own copies, but confirm the exact permitted-materials and annotation rules against the current CBP notice before exam day.

The exam runs twice a year, on the fourth Wednesday of April and October. Registration and the $390 fee are handled through CBP's eCBP portal, and registration closes well before exam day, so you cannot decide to sit it at the last minute. Because the exact dates and windows are set per cycle, always confirm them against the current CBP notice of examination rather than a secondary source.

The passing threshold is 75 percent, or 60 of 80 questions correct. Because there is no additional penalty for a wrong answer, leaving a question blank is never better than guessing. After the exam, CBP publishes an answer key and an appeal window during which candidates can challenge specific questions; a successful challenge can change the accepted answer and occasionally moves a borderline score across the line. For a license, the passing grade must be earned within three years before you apply.

U.S. citizenship is required at both stages. To take the exam you must, on exam day, be a U.S. citizen at least 18 years old who is not an officer or employee of the U.S. Treasury Department. To hold the license, the requirements tighten: you must be a citizen at least 21 years old at the time you submit the application, of good moral character (verified through a background investigation), not an officer or employee of the U.S. Government, and you must have passed the exam within the prior three years. There is no experience or degree requirement.

The exam itself costs $390, charged each time you register, through the eCBP portal. That is the only fee required to sit the test. Later steps carry their own fees: a $300 individual license application fee when you apply after passing, a $100 triennial status report fee every three years for license holders, and an annual permit user fee (currently $185.38) for a broker operating under a permit. All of these are set by regulation and updated periodically, so confirm the live figures against cbp.gov before paying.

The exam is open book, so the references you bring are central. The permitted materials are the HTSUS, Title 19 CFR, and the specific CBP-supplied directives listed in the current notice of examination. Candidates generally may tab and highlight their own printed copies, which is a major advantage worth preparing carefully, but electronic devices and unauthorized materials are not allowed. Because the permitted-materials list and any annotation rules are set per exam, always verify them against the current CBP notice before exam day so your setup is compliant.

The pass rate generally sits in the range of about 15 to 25 percent, but it swings sharply between sittings because each exam is newly written and can be harder or easier, and because CBP's post-exam appeal process can change accepted answers after the fact. CBP does not publish a stable long-run average, so treat any single quoted percentage as one sitting rather than a fixed figure. The low rate reflects the open-book, time-limited format: most failures come from running out of time on citation lookups, not from not knowing the material.