2026 Salesforce Certification Benchmark Report: Exam Costs, Question Counts & Track Breakdown
What it costs, in money and hours, to complete each Salesforce certification track in 2026 — compiled from the published exam details for 91 certifications across 10 role tracks, and free to reuse.
Salesforce credentials only. Trailblaze Prep also covers 4 non-Salesforce certifications; counting them here would put the wrong number in a figure people are invited to cite, so they are excluded from every total on this page and from the dataset.
- Certifications covered
- 91
- Salesforce credentials
- Role tracks
- 10
- all of them
- Combined exam fees
- $26,000
- across 91 with a published fee
- Combined exam time
- 101h 55m
- across 61 with a published duration
Cost and time by role track
Sitting every exam in a track, at first-attempt prices before local taxes. Where Salesforce does not publish a figure the certification is excluded from that column rather than estimated, so each total says how many certifications it is based on.
| Role track | Certs | Total fees | Total exam time | Total questions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accredited Professional | 23 | $3,450of 23 | 11h 0mof 8 | 438of 8 |
| Architect | 17 | $12,900of 17 | 17h 0mof 9 | 540of 9 |
| Consultant | 16 | $3,200of 16 | 22h 15mof 13 | 780of 13 |
| Developer | 11 | $2,200of 11 | 16h 15mof 9 | 540of 9 |
| Administrator | 8 | $1,600of 8 | 12h 15mof 7 | 420of 7 |
| Tableau | 6 | $1,275of 6 | 9h 40mof 6 | 329of 6 |
| Associate | 4 | $300of 4 | 3h 30mof 3 | 120of 3 |
| Marketing | 3 | $600of 3 | 4h 45mof 3 | 180of 3 |
| Designer | 2 | $400of 2 | 3h 30mof 2 | 120of 2 |
| Sales | 1 | $75of 1 | 1h 45mof 1 | 60of 1 |
What a typical exam in each track costs and runs
Totals answer “what would all of it cost”. This answers the question people actually have. Median rather than mean throughout, because the $4,500 Technical Architect Review Board drags an Architect mean into fiction. 25 of the 91 credentials have a retired or closed exam, so the active count is the one to plan against.
| Role track | Active | Retired | Fee min / median / max | Minutes min / median / max | Questions min / median / max |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accredited Professional | 8 | 15 | $150 / $150 / $150 | 60 / 90 / 90 | 33 / 60 / 60 |
| Architect | 14 | 3 | $200 / $400 / $4,500 | 105 / 120 / 120 | 60 / 60 / 60 |
| Consultant | 13 | 3 | $200 / $200 / $200 | 90 / 105 / 105 | 60 / 60 / 60 |
| Developer | 9 | 2 | $200 / $200 / $200 | 90 / 105 / 120 | 60 / 60 / 60 |
| Administrator | 7 | 1 | $200 / $200 / $200 | 105 / 105 / 105 | 60 / 60 / 60 |
| Tableau | 6 | — | $75 / $200 / $400 | 70 / 105 / 105 | 40 / 57.5 / 60 |
| Associate | 3 | 1 | $75 / $75 / $75 | 70 / 70 / 70 | 40 / 40 / 40 |
| Marketing | 3 | — | $200 / $200 / $200 | 90 / 90 / 105 | 60 / 60 / 60 |
| Designer | 2 | — | $200 / $200 / $200 | 105 / 105 / 105 | 60 / 60 / 60 |
| Sales | 1 | — | $75 / $75 / $75 | 105 / 105 / 105 | 60 / 60 / 60 |
How complete the published data is
Salesforce does not publish every figure for every credential. This is what is actually available, which is itself a finding: pass marks in particular are no longer on the certification pages at all.
- 91 of 91 have a published exam fee.
- 64 have a complete published format — question count, pass mark and duration.
- 67 have published section weightings.
- 86 have a verified official Salesforce page.
- Exam fees range from $75 to $4,500.
2026 rename and retirement tracker
Salesforce renamed 34 credentials, and 25 have a changed exam status. The former names are what most people still search for, so both are listed.
Download the dataset
Every figure above, as 91 rows. Empty cells mean Salesforce does not publish that figure — they are not zeroes.
Cite this report
The figures and the dataset are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, which asks only for attribution. Copy a ready-made line:
Method
Figures come from each credential's own Salesforce page, verified by fetching every URL rather than deriving it from a name. Two errors found during that check have been corrected — Tableau Architect's question count and Tableau Server Administrator's question count and duration. Pass marks are the weakest data here: Salesforce publishes them on none of the certification pages checked, so ours come from exam guides and should be treated as secondary. Work out your own score from section percentages with the exam score calculator, or browse all certifications with free practice questions.