Security+ practice exams that behave like the real one

How an exam is built

Each practice exam is a fixed form: the same 90 questions every time you sit it, so you can retake “Exam 4” next month and compare. No question appears in two exams of the same version. Within a form, the domain mix follows CompTIA’s published weights for that version, and a validator checks every form against these rules before the content ships:

Domain	SY0-801	SY0-701
1.0 General Security Concepts	16% · 14	12% · 11
2.0 Threats, Vulnerabilities, and Attacks (SY0-701: and Mitigations)	24% · 22	22% · 20
3.0 Security Architecture	19% · 17	18% · 16
4.0 Security Operations	27% · 24	28% · 25
5.0 Security Program Management and Oversight	14% · 13	20% · 18

Each cell is the domain’s weight and its number of questions in a 90-question exam. The SY0-701 course has 10 fixed exams. The SY0-801 course has 10. Your results are kept per version, and the exam page always shows the version you are studying.

The questions are written to match the real exam’s style rather than to be easy to mark: short workplace scenarios, BEST, MOST and FIRST qualifiers, and a share of “choose two” items. Every option has its own explanation, so the review afterwards tells you not just that you were wrong but why that option was tempting. All questions are original. None are taken from the real exam, and we don’t claim otherwise.

Under exam conditions, the app behaves like the testing software: a running clock, one question at a time, a flag for review, a list to jump between questions, and nothing revealed until you submit. There is also an adaptive custom exam, a new one each time, drawn across all five domains by the version’s weights, but the fixed forms are the ones to use for an honest reading.

Performance-based questions

CompTIA describes performance-based questions (PBQs) as items that test your ability to solve problems in a simulated environment: a firewall, a network diagram, a terminal, a log viewer. On Security+ they are simulations with limited functionality, they usually come at the start of the exam, they have a reset button, and you can skip one and come back to it. They take longer than a multiple-choice question, so most candidates flag them, finish the rest, and return with the remaining time.

The course includes 76 hands-on tasks for SY0-801 (70 for SY0-701) across six simulators: investigating an incident across the systems on a network diagram, triaging a scan report row by row, building or fixing firewall access-control lists, analysing log excerpts, placing devices on a network diagram and configuring wireless security. Each practice exam opens with a handful of them, so the first ten minutes feel the way the real first ten minutes do. Security+ PBQs explained covers how the simulations behave, with a worked example.

How the score estimate works

The real exam reports a scaled score from 100 to 900 and a pass mark of 750, in both versions. CompTIA does not publish how raw answers convert to that scale, so no practice test on the internet can tell you your real score; it can only estimate. The course is explicit about this: the report shows your raw score (questions right out of 90, with partial credit on PBQs), then an estimated scaled score based on a labelled assumption that about 80% raw corresponds to 750. You can change that assumption in settings if you have a reason to.

The per-domain breakdown is the more useful number. With 90 questions it is based on between 13 and 24 questions per domain in SY0-801 (between 11 and 25 in SY0-701), which is enough to see a clearly weak domain but not enough to split hairs, and the report says so. Each weak domain links to the objectives behind it and to the exercises that fix them.

Every practice exam also feeds the readiness estimate for its version on your dashboard. That estimate runs a simulation over your mastery of every objective, weighted by exam weight, and reports a range rather than a single number. Until it has enough evidence, it says “insufficient data” instead of guessing, and a full-length exam is the fastest way to give it that evidence.

What a practice score can’t tell you

• Your real score. See above: the conversion isn’t public, so the scaled estimate is a labelled guess.
• Whether you’ll pass. A practice exam is a sample. Two forms can differ by 50 estimated points for the same person on the same day. Look at the trend across several, not at one.
• What the real questions say. These are original questions written to the objectives. They test the same knowledge; they are not the exam.

When to take them

Take the first one early, after the lessons for a domain or two, even though you’ll score badly. It shows you the format, it calibrates how you rate your own confidence, and it gives the readiness estimate something to work with. Then take one every week or two in the final month, under real conditions: 90 minutes uninterrupted, no notes, no pausing. Review every question afterwards, including the ones you got right by guessing; the app asks for your confidence on each answer, so it knows which those were.

Take the exams of the version you will sit: the weights differ, and so do some topics. Not sure which one that is? The exam guide explains the choice; if in doubt, it’s SY0-801.

In between, the spaced-repetition reviews do the work of turning each miss into something you know. The exams measure; the reviews teach. The course’s Exam Day Plan schedules both around your exam date: see the study plan.