Last updated July 28, 2026
The ISTQB Certified Tester Foundation Level v4.0 exam has 40 multiple-choice questions and you need 26 of 40 points — 65% — in 60 minutes to pass. Nothing about it is secret: ISTQB publishes the syllabus, the number of questions per chapter and the cognitive level of each question. This guide turns that public information into a preparation plan, and is honest about the two or three things that actually decide the result.
40 questions, multiple choice, one point each — 40 points in total.
26 of 40 points to pass — a 65% pass mark. There is no negative marking, so an unanswered question and a wrong answer cost exactly the same.
60 minutes, or 75 minutes if you sit the exam in a language that is not your native language and no exam is offered in your native language (the standard +25% allowance).
8 of the 40 questions are K3 — "apply", not "recall". You have to derive test cases or coverage, not recognise a definition.
No prerequisite certification, closed book, and the certificate does not expire.
Divide the time and you get 90 seconds per question. That is comfortable for a K1 recall question and tight for a boundary value analysis question with a scenario. Time is lost in chapter 4, so time is what chapter 4 preparation buys back.
The number of questions per chapter is fixed by ISTQB, not by your exam provider. That makes preparation plannable — and it makes an even split of study time a mistake:
Fundamentals of Testing — 8 questions. Why we test, the seven principles, the test process, roles, essential skills.
Testing Throughout the Software Development Lifecycle — 6 questions. Lifecycle models, shift-left, test levels and test types, maintenance testing.
Static Testing — 4 questions. Reviews, the review process, roles, review types.
Test Analysis and Design — 11 questions. The largest chapter and the home of most K3 questions: black-box, white-box and experience-based techniques, plus collaboration-based approaches.
Managing the Test Activities — 9 questions. Planning, risk-based testing, estimation, monitoring and control, configuration management, defect management.
Test Tools — 2 questions. Tool support and the risks of test automation.
Two chapters — 4 and 5 — carry 20 of the 40 points. Chapter 6 carries two. Candidates who spend a weekend memorising tool categories and skim chapter 4 fail with an excellent tool score.
Test design techniques under time pressure. Equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, decision tables, state transition testing, statement and branch coverage. These questions ask you to produce a number — how many test cases, which sequence, what coverage percentage — and there is no partial credit for understanding the idea.
Long scenarios in chapter 5. Risk level as the combination of likelihood and impact, entry and exit criteria, estimation techniques, what belongs in a defect report. The content is not hard; the questions are wordy, and misreading one is the most common avoidable loss on the paper.
Glossary precision. ISTQB separates error, defect and failure; verification and validation; test case and test procedure; test objective and test condition. Distractors are built out of exactly these confusions, so vague understanding reliably converts into wrong answers.
Absolute words. "Testing proves the absence of defects", "exhaustive testing is possible for small systems", "early testing removes the need for later testing" — the syllabus contradicts all three explicitly. An option that claims certainty is usually the distractor.
Four weeks at roughly six to eight hours a week is enough for a working tester, and the weeks below are weighted by exam points rather than by page count.
Read both chapters and build your own glossary as you go: one line per term, in your words. Do not move on until you can state the seven testing principles without looking and explain the difference between a test level and a test type. End the week with a chapter-1 and chapter-2 practice run and read every rationale, including for the options you got right.
These two are the cheapest points in the exam: mostly K1 and K2, small volume, stable wording. Learn the review process activities in order and the roles involved, and for chapter 6 learn what tool support genuinely gives you and what the syllabus lists as risks. Two evenings is realistic — spend the rest of the week starting chapter 4.
This is the week that decides the result. Do not read about the techniques — apply them. Take a trivial specification of your own (a login form, an age-based discount, a vending machine) and derive equivalence partitions, boundary values, a decision table and a state transition diagram for it. Then count test cases for 100% statement and 100% branch coverage on a five-line function. Aim for speed: the goal is being able to do boundary value analysis in under a minute.
Cover chapter 5 in the first half of the week, then switch entirely to full 40-question timed mocks — at least three, ideally spread over separate days. Stop learning new material 48 hours before the exam and use that time to re-read your own glossary and your list of mistakes.
ExamCaliber has 15 CTFL mock exams drawn from a pool of 629 original questions, each mock following the official 8 / 6 / 4 / 11 / 9 / 2 chapter split, and every answer option — right or wrong — carries a written rationale. Three rules make that useful rather than comforting:
Sit the first mock before you feel ready, timed. A 45% score in week one is information; a 90% score in week four on a mock you have already seen is not.
Read the rationale for the options you did not choose. Knowing why a distractor is wrong is what transfers to the next question; knowing that C was right transfers nothing.
Score by chapter, not overall. 70% overall can hide 40% in chapter 4, which is exactly the shape of a fail. Your result page breaks the score down by chapter for this reason.
Start with any of the CTFL mock exams, or read a full mock as a study sheet on its questions and answers page, where every question, option and rationale is on one page.
Answer every question. No negative marking means a guess is strictly better than a blank.
Do one pass at speed, flagging anything that needs arithmetic or a diagram, then return to the flagged questions with the time you saved.
Read the last line of the stem first — "which is the BEST", "how many", "which is NOT". Half of all misreads are a reversed question.
Check whether you qualify for the +25% time allowance when you book, not on the day. It is granted at booking, not at the desk.
Our questions are original: written against the published v4.0 syllabus, matching the official format, chapter weights and cognitive levels. They are not real exam questions, and anyone offering you those is offering something ISTQB does not release. That distinction matters for how you read your scores: a mock score is evidence about your grasp of the syllabus, not a prediction of a specific paper.
A practical readiness bar: 80% or better across three different mocks, taken timed, with no chapter below 65%. Scraping 65% once is not a readiness signal — it is the pass mark with nothing left over for a bad morning.