ITS Certification Cost 2026: Complete Pricing Breakdown

The Cost at a Glance

Information Technology Security (ITS) from ETA International is one of the more affordable security credentials to earn, largely because the issuer publishes a flat exam fee and does not require a mandatory training course. This guide breaks down every dollar a candidate is likely to encounter: the exam fee, optional remote proctoring, retakes, the Security+ rollover, preparation materials, and four years of maintenance.

One clarification before the numbers: this article covers the ETA Information Technology Security credential. It is separate from Certiport's Information Technology Specialist exams, which have their own pricing and structure. If you are still orienting yourself, the explainer What Is ITS Certification? covers the credential's purpose and scope.

The Exam Fee and What It Covers

The core cost is the USD 105 exam fee. For that price you sit a written knowledge examination of 100 questions with a two-hour time limit, and you need a 75% score to pass. There is no hands-on component, so you will not pay for lab equipment, practical-assessment fees, or travel to a performance-testing site.

A successful result earns a certification with a four-year term. The score threshold is worth understanding separately from cost; our breakdown of the ITS passing score explains how 75% on 100 questions translates in practice.

What the fee does not include

• Study materials of any kind
• Remote proctoring (USD 16 extra)
• Annual maintenance fees after certification
• Any later upgrade to Journeyman status

Remote Proctoring and Other Testing Add-Ons

ITS exams are arranged through an ETA Certification Administrator and can be delivered through Trapeza online testing or on paper and pencil at an administrator's site. Remotely proctored testing is also available through ExamRoom.AI once you have registered with ETA. For this two-hour exam, remote testing adds USD 16, bringing the total for a first remote attempt to USD 121.

Technical requirements that can create hidden costs

The proctoring fee is small, but the hardware requirements can matter if your setup is dated. You need a working webcam, a microphone, a recent computer, and at least 3 Mbps of internet. If any of those are missing, budget for the gap or choose an in-person administrator instead.

• Photo ID is required.
• Scratch paper and non-programmable or scientific calculators are permitted; used scratch paper must be surrendered.
• Phones are prohibited.
• You may not leave the room once testing starts.
• Initial scheduling for remote testing can take up to 72 hours, so do not plan a same-day booking.

Scheduling lead times and windows are covered in ITS Exam Dates 2026. Results display immediately in Trapeza, so you will know the outcome of your spend the moment you finish.

Failing the First Time: Retake Costs

ETA's retake policy is unusually forgiving for the price point. After an unsuccessful attempt, one eligible free retake is available. The conditions are straightforward:

1. You must wait 30 days after the first attempt.
2. The retake must be completed within one year of the first exam.
3. If you choose remote proctoring for the retake, the USD 16 proctoring fee still applies.

In the worst realistic case for a remote candidate who needs a second try, the exam-related spend is USD 105 plus USD 16 plus USD 16, or USD 137. A candidate who tests in person with an administrator and uses the free retake pays only the original USD 105 (subject to any site-specific charges an administrator may set).

Many candidates worry about the odds of needing that retake. No issuer-wide ITS pass rate has been verified, and the 75% figure is a score threshold rather than a pass rate. For a sober look at what is and is not known, see ITS Pass Rate 2026: What the Data Shows, and for the difficulty side of the equation, How Hard Is the ITS Exam?

The Security+ Rollover Route

If you already hold CompTIA Security+, ETA offers an alternative path to the ITS credential without sitting the ETA exam. A valid Security+ (ce) credential can be rolled over to ITS for USD 105, the same price as the exam, with proof of your current certificate. Lifetime Security+ certificates are excluded from this route.

When rollover makes sense

• You hold a current Security+ (ce) and want an ETA-issued credential without another exam.
• Your employer or contract values ETA credentials, such as in field-service or electronics-technician settings.
• You would rather spend your time on maintenance requirements than on re-studying.

When the exam may be cheaper in effort

Because the rollover costs the same as the exam fee, you gain no price advantage; you save only the preparation and testing time. And note a subtle point: the rollover is an alternative credential route, not proof that Security+ content matches the ETA ITS blueprint. The ETA exam draws on ETA's published 2024 competency objectives, so a Security+ holder who chooses the exam route should still study those objectives rather than assume overlap is complete.

Preparation Spending: What You Actually Need

ETA publishes its competency requirements for free as an eight-page document, and the issuer states that exam questions derive from those competencies. This is the single most important study resource, and it costs nothing. Everything else is optional.

Free and low-cost anchors

• ETA's published ITS competency requirements (2024): the authoritative blueprint, organized into ten major areas from Network Hardware Security Fundamentals through Social Engineering.
• Your own working experience: ETA recommends prior computer-systems and networking experience, which is the cheapest preparation of all if you already have it.

The optional paid product

eITprep lists a CompTIA Security+ Study Guide for ETA ITS at USD 59.95 for six months of access. The product description includes two custom practice exams, 100 electronic flashcards, a searchable glossary, and 45 course contact hours. Keep these numbers in their lane: the 100 flashcards and the 45 contact hours are features of the course, not facts about the exam, which has 100 questions and a two-hour limit. The course does not itself confer certification, and its public description does not identify a Security+ exam edition, so map anything you learn from it back to ETA's published competencies.

Where to put your preparation effort

Since the cost of an extra attempt is mostly time, a lean plan front-loads the areas where scenario reasoning is hardest. A candidate with a networking background might schedule hardware and software security early and give extra weeks to the less familiar areas:

The full list of content areas is explained in ITS Exam Domains 2026: Complete Guide to All 10 Content Areas, and a condensed reference is available in the ITS cheat sheet. ETA does not publish percentage weights for the ten areas, so no area should be dismissed as minor on the basis of assumed weighting.

Keeping the Credential: Four-Year Maintenance Costs

The exam fee is not the end of the cost story. ITS follows ETA's general, non-hands-on Maintenance program, which carries both a fee and a documentation requirement. Candidates choose between two ways to satisfy the requirement:

1. Continuing education: submit the Certification Maintenance Form with 10 relevant continuing-education hours each year, totaling 40 hours across the four-year cycle.
2. Employer verification: submit a supervisor-completed Employer Verification Form instead of logging hours.

Either way, the fee is USD 25 annually, or USD 100 over the four-year cycle. Annual submission includes ETA membership, so that membership is not a separate line item. This is a useful detail when comparing ITS against credentials that charge a separate membership fee on top of renewal.

Continuing-education hours can be free or paid depending on how you earn them, so your true maintenance cost depends on your employer. Workers whose employer will verify their activity may avoid hour-tracking altogether. Over a full four-year term, then, the all-in ETA spend for a candidate who tests in person is USD 105 plus USD 100, or USD 205, before any optional prep.

The Journeyman Upgrade Fee

ITS can be earned as a stand-alone credential, but some technicians later move to the Journeyman level. That upgrade requires the Associate CET (CETa) and at least two years of combined training and experience, and the upgrade fee is USD 55. If you are not pursuing Journeyman status, ignore this line; if you are, factor it into a longer career budget rather than your initial ITS cost.

Three Sample Budgets

To make the numbers concrete, here are three illustrative candidate profiles. All figures use only the published prices above.

These totals are illustrative; any administrator-specific site charges are not included. They show that the cost of this credential is dominated by choices you control, chiefly whether you test remotely and whether you buy preparation.

Whether those totals pay off is a separate question, addressed in Is the ITS Certification Worth It? and the ITS salary guide. A note of caution applies here: ETA's official ITS fact sheet labels its wage figures as 2016 and its employment projections as 2022-2032, so they should not be treated as current salary evidence or as a certification-specific pay premium. For role types, see ITS Jobs.

Why You May See Different Prices Online

If you search around, you may find a page indexed under ETA Press that lists an ITS exam price of USD 100 and an upgrade price of USD 50. Those figures do not match the current ETA prices of USD 105 for the exam and USD 55 for the upgrade. The ETA Press page's full content and issuer affiliation could not be verified, so treat the issuer's own credential page and Certification Booklet as the authority and confirm the fee at registration. Prices on third-party prep sites likewise reflect their own products, not ETA's examination fee.

Frequently Asked Questions

Ready to test your readiness before you spend the exam fee? Work through the practice questions on the main ITS Exam Prep site to find your weak competency areas first, so your USD 105 goes toward a pass rather than a diagnostic.