United States · Certification examWhat’s in an NCCPA PANCE practice exam?
Each exam has 120 questions in two sections of 60, with 60 minutes for each section. NCCPA’s PANCE at a Glance slides say the questions come from retired exam item banks. You take it online, and you can pause the clock inside a section and come back later, as long as you finish within 180 days of buying it. Each purchase is one attempt, and you can buy the same exam again as often as you like.
NCCPA doesn’t give refunds on practice exams. It also refreshes the questions from time to time, so a repeat can include some different items. Grayscale, color inversion and font size tools work on the practice exams, but on the real PANCE only if you’ve been approved for them as an accommodation.
What you get back, and what you don’t
When you finish, you get a performance profile that shows your relative strengths and weaknesses by content area, based on the PANCE blueprint. You can open it any time from the practice exam overview page.
You don’t get the answers or explanations, and you can’t go back over the questions once it’s scored. NCCPA bases each question’s benchmark on how PANCE takers did the last time it appeared on the real exam, and it says plainly that the practice exam doesn’t predict your actual result. NCCPA adds that with fewer items than the PANCE, the results for each content area are less reliable.
Free NCCPA sample questions and lab values
The Sample PANCE Questions PDF shows how a PANCE item is built: a short clinical case, five options from A to E, the medical content category it belongs to and a critique that explains why each option is right or wrong.
The NCCPA Laboratory Values sheet lists normal adult ranges for blood, cerebrospinal fluid, synovial fluid, urine and blood counts. The exam software has a lab values button, so knowing the layout saves time.
The Pearson VUE PANCE tutorial
Pearson VUE’s NCCPA page has a free exam tutorial. It lets you practice moving through the exam, answering and changing answers, marking questions for review and opening the table of laboratory values. You get 15 minutes for the same tutorial at the start of your real exam, but it’s easier to learn the screens at home.
Sources: NCCPA · Pearson VUE and 5 more. Checked October 2026.
- NCCPA: Practice Exams ↗
- NCCPA: FAQs ↗
- NCCPA: Sample PANCE Questions (PDF) ↗
- NCCPA: Laboratory Values (PDF) ↗
- Pearson VUE: NCCPA ↗
- NCCPA: What to Expect on Test Day (PDF) ↗
- NCCPA: PANCE at a Glance (PDF, 2025) ↗
Rules and fees can change, so check the official site before your test.