How Hard Is the CompTIA Network+ Exam?

An honest look at CompTIA Network+ (N10-009) difficulty — the subnetting, ports and PBQ hurdles that cause failures, and who finds the exam hardest.

Liam Anderson6 August 2026 · 7 min read

Ask AIChatGPT Claude Gemini Copilot Perplexity Grok

Illustrated mountain route with difficult sections marked by subnetting, port number, wireless and cabling icons, representing the hardest parts of the Network+ exam.

Ask people who hold several CompTIA certifications which exam surprised them, and Network+ comes up more often than you might expect. It carries an "early-career" label, yet it asks for something the exams around it largely do not: real fluency in one deep, unforgiving subject. Short answer: Network+ is a hard exam for its level — most candidates find it noticeably tougher than A+ — because networking theory cannot be skimmed. Subnetting, port numbers and troubleshooting scenarios must be worked, not recognised. It remains entirely beatable, but only for candidates who practise rather than just read.

This article stays on the difficulty question alone: what the current N10-009 exam throws at you, the specific topics that decide pass or fail, and how hard it will feel given your background. If you want a study plan rather than a difficulty reading, that lives in our separate guide to preparing for Network+.

The shape of the challenge: N10-009 at a glance

The current version of CompTIA Network+ is N10-009, launched in June 2024 (its predecessor N10-008 retired in December 2024, and no successor had been announced as of August 2026). You get a maximum of 90 questions in 90 minutes, mixing multiple-choice items with performance-based questions (PBQs) — interactive simulations where you might complete a configuration or diagnose a scenario rather than pick an answer.

The passing score is 720 on a scale of 100 to 900. Two things about that number are worth absorbing before you judge the exam's difficulty. First, it is a scaled score, not a percentage — 720 does not mean "72% correct", and nobody outside CompTIA can tell you exactly how many questions it equates to. Second, 720 is a higher bar than either A+ exam sets (675 and 700), which fits the exam's character: fewer topics than A+, but examined at greater depth and with less room for error.

One number you will not find anywhere is a pass rate. CompTIA publishes none, for Network+ or any other exam, so a claimed "Network+ pass rate" is a fabrication regardless of how confidently it is stated. Judge your own readiness against the objectives, not against phantom statistics. It is also worth knowing that the exam sits at the pricier end of difficulty: US retail was $399 as listed by CompTIA's authorized resellers in June 2026 (it varies by country), which raises the stakes of a casual attempt.

The four topics that decide pass or fail

Network+ difficulty is not evenly distributed. Most failed attempts trace back to a small set of areas that demand genuine working skill.

Subnetting and IP addressing

This is the exam's most notorious hurdle, and deservedly so. You will be expected to reason about network and host portions, subnet masks and CIDR notation, and to do it quickly — a subnetting question that takes you four minutes has already damaged your timing even if you get it right. Subnetting is the clearest example of Network+'s core demand: it is arithmetic and logic, not recall. Candidates who "sort of understand" subnetting from a video invariably discover, under the clock, that they cannot execute it. Those who have drilled it until conversions are mechanical describe the same questions as free marks. No other topic separates passers from failers as sharply.

Ports, protocols and what runs where

Network+ expects a large table of protocol behaviour and port numbers to be simply known — and then applied. The difficulty is less the memorisation itself than the way questions use it: a scenario describes symptoms, and identifying the misconfigured service depends on recognising which protocol and port are implicated. Flashcard knowledge gets you the first step; only contextual understanding gets you the answer.

The OSI model as a troubleshooting tool

The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model appears trivial on paper — seven layers, easily memorised in an afternoon. On the exam it is a diagnostic framework. Questions ask, in effect, "at which layer is this fault, and what do you check next?" Candidates who learned the layers as a mnemonic rather than as a map of how traffic actually moves find these questions slippery, because every option sounds plausible.

Wireless, cloud and modern infrastructure

N10-009 reflects how networks are actually run now: wireless standards and their trade-offs, cloud connectivity concepts, virtual networks and software-defined ideas sit alongside the traditional switching and routing content. This material trips up two groups — veterans whose experience predates cloud-centric networking, and beginners who assumed Network+ was mostly about cables and routers. Neither group can afford to treat it as an appendix.

Performance-based questions: the time trap

PBQs deserve their own mention because they distort the exam's arithmetic. With at most 90 minutes for up to 90 questions, your average budget is a minute per question — and a single PBQ can legitimately need five or more. The PBQs typically front-load the exam, so an unprepared candidate burns a quarter of their time on the first handful of screens and then rushes sixty multiple-choice questions in a growing panic.

The difficulty here is composure as much as knowledge. Candidates who go in with a rule — attempt each PBQ briefly, flag anything that resists, return after the multiple choice — consistently report the exam felt fair. Candidates without a plan report it felt brutal. Same exam, different clock management. Timed practice is the only way to build that instinct, which is why untimed-only study is one of the most reliable predictors of a failed first attempt: a full timed practice-test simulation before booking tells you whether your pacing survives pressure, not just whether your knowledge exists.

How hard will it feel for you?

"Is Network+ hard?" has no single answer, because the exam's difficulty is almost entirely a function of prior exposure. CompTIA itself recommends A+ level knowledge plus nine to twelve months in a junior network administration or support role — a recommendation, not a requirement, since Network+ enforces no prerequisites.

Three realistic profiles:

A helpdesk technician who escalates network tickets but never resolves them sits in the classic middle. The vocabulary is familiar; the depth is not. Expect subnetting and routing concepts to demand serious drilling, while device types and basic troubleshooting feel comfortable. For this profile Network+ is a firm, fair stretch.
A career changer coming straight off self-study, with no IT job behind them faces the hardest version of the exam. Everything must be built from scratch, and the applied scenario questions assume an operational intuition that reading alone develops slowly. Hard — not hopeless, but the preparation must be heavily practical.
A junior network admin who touches switches, VLANs and firewalls weekly will find much of the exam describes their job. Their risk is the syllabus corners their environment never uses — older standards, cellular technologies, cloud models their employer avoids — and overconfidence about them.

Whichever profile fits, the gap closes the same way: identify weak domains with practice questions, drill them specifically, and re-measure. The free sample questions format — question by question, with answers revealed as you go — suits the early "how bad is it?" diagnostic stage well; how many weeks the full journey takes by background is covered in how long to study for Network+.

Where Network+ sits between A+ and Security+

In one line: most multi-cert holders rank Network+ as harder than A+ — depth beats breadth for difficulty — and roughly comparable to Security+, with Network+ demanding more calculation and Security+ more conceptual abstraction. If sequencing is your real question, A+ vs Network+ covers whether to skip A+, and Security+ vs Network+ settles which of those two to take first; the difficulty of Security+ itself gets the same treatment as this article in how hard is the Security+ exam.

Frequently asked questions

Is there an official Network+ pass rate?

No. CompTIA does not release pass rates for any exam. Sites quoting a specific percentage are guessing. The absence of a published rate is itself a reason to benchmark with practice tests rather than rely on reputation.

How much maths does Network+ actually involve?

Less than its reputation suggests, but what there is matters: binary-to-decimal conversion and subnet calculations. There is no algebra or advanced mathematics — just arithmetic you must perform quickly and accurately without a calculator crutch.

What happens if I fail my first attempt?

You may retake immediately — CompTIA imposes no waiting period between a first and second attempt, though a 14-day wait applies from the third attempt onwards. Every attempt requires a full-price voucher unless you bought a retake bundle, so a premature booking is an expensive way to take a practice test.

Do I need A+ before Network+?

No prerequisite is enforced; A+ is recommended background only. Whether skipping it is wise for your situation is exactly the question our A+ vs Network+ sequencing guide exists to answer.

Booking with a clear head

Network+ is hard in a specific, predictable way: it examines a single discipline deeply enough that improvisation fails. That predictability is good news. Unlike exams where difficulty hides in obscure trivia, Network+ tells you in advance exactly where the crux moves are — subnetting speed, port fluency, OSI-based diagnosis, PBQ pacing — and every one of them yields to deliberate practice. When your timed practice scores clear the passing threshold consistently across all domains, and subnetting no longer costs you more than a minute a question, the exam that intimidates unprepared candidates becomes a demanding but honest test you can book with confidence. Whether the credential justifies the effort in the first place is a different question, answered in is Network+ worth it.

Exam facts in this guide were checked against official certification-provider pages on 30 August 2026. Fees, exam codes and policies change — confirm on the provider’s own site before you book.