NCLEX-RN mock tests

National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses

Free practice tests

About NCLEX-RN

The NCLEX-RN is the licensure exam for entry-level registered nurses. Nursing regulatory bodies in the United States use it, and most Canadian nursing regulatory bodies use it as well. NCSBN develops the exam. It is given by computer at a test center. It is not a paper exam. This guide is the RN exam. The practical-nurse exam is a different test.

The exam is a computerized adaptive test. After each operational item the scoring updates an ability estimate, and the next item is chosen for that estimate and for the test plan. Every candidate gets a different mix. The length runs from 85 items to 150 items. The time limit is five hours, and that five hours includes the introductory screen, scheduled break screens, and any breaks the candidate takes. There is no separate timer on each item. The candidate may change an answer until it is confirmed. After that, the candidate cannot go back.

A minimum-length exam has 85 items: 52 items from the eight Client Needs areas, 18 items in three clinical-judgment case studies (six items each), and 15 unscored pretest items. The pretest items look like the scored ones, so a candidate cannot tell them apart. They are not used in the pass decision. The maximum is 150 items, and every exam still includes 15 pretest items. Each case study follows six steps: recognize cues, analyze cues, prioritize hypotheses, generate solutions, take action, and evaluate outcomes. About 10 percent of the exam is stand-alone clinical-judgment items, with the count depending on length. At 85 items the published split already adds to 85, so those stand-alone items sit inside that total.

The Client Needs shares, applied to the content-area items, are Management of Care 15 to 21 percent, Safety and Infection Prevention and Control 10 to 16 percent, Health Promotion and Maintenance 6 to 12 percent, Psychosocial Integrity 6 to 12 percent, Basic Care and Comfort 6 to 12 percent, Pharmacological and Parenteral Therapies 13 to 19 percent, Reduction of Risk Potential 9 to 15 percent, and Physiological Adaptation 11 to 17 percent. The 2026 test plan's illustration uses the midpoints 18, 13, 9, 9, 9, 16, 12, and 14 percent.

The result is pass or fail. There is no published percentage that equals a pass, and there is no candidate score report in the form of a scaled number on the result the regulatory body releases. The computer stops under one of three rules: it is 95 percent confident the ability is clearly above or clearly below the passing standard, after the minimum number of items; the exam reaches 150 items and the final ability estimate is compared with the standard; or time runs out. If time runs out before 85 items, the result is fail. If time runs out after at least 85 items, the final ability estimate on the completed items is compared with the standard. The length of the exam is not itself a pass or a fail.

Items may be stand-alone or in a case study, and they may include charts, tables, or graphics. Partial credit is used when an item has more than one key. NCSBN describes three methods. Plus/minus is used when the candidate may select any number of options: one point for each correct option selected, one point off for each incorrect option selected, and a floor of zero. The maximum is the number of correct options. Zero/one is used when the item tells the candidate to choose a set number: correct selections earn points and incorrect selections earn zero, with no deduction. Rationale scoring is used when two linked parts must both be right to earn the point. The 2026 test plan sends readers to the NCLEX frequently asked questions for those rules.

NCLEX-RN (test plan effective April 2026) exam pattern

5 hours