You may be asking yourself… What does it cost of PMP® exam? Would it be worth the money and time investment, and would it actually make a difference on my career?
Although the PMP® is not required in many project management roles, there are an increasing number of jobs that do require it.
The U.S. and Canadian government and their subsidiaries, for example, would not award contracts to parties without PMP® certified project managers.
Why?
Because they want the people coming in to have the proper education and training for managing projects.
The PMP® certification is highly regarded in industry. When you get certified, at a minimum, it’s a nice-to-have that shows you understand the framework for managing projects.
Getting the PMP® certification does take roughly 100 hours of studying and $1000 of investment.
Let’s break down the numbers into two categories, time and money:
Time
To qualify for the PMP® exam, you need 35 contact hours of formal project management education. You can obtain these hours from PMP® prep courses such as the ones from ExamsPM.
In addition to the contact hours, you need to spend time memorizing and understanding the concepts as well as doing as many practice questions as possible (I recommend 1000 questions at a minimum). This process can take anywhere from 50-100 hours.
Money
The cost of a PMI membership is $139 USD. I recommend getting the PMI membership your first year because you get a $150 USD savings on your exam fees, so the membership really pays for itself. In addition to that, you will also get a free e-copy of the PMBOK® guide.
The cost of the exam is $405 USD once you are a PMI member (the cost to write the exam as a non-member is $555).
The cost of an online course plus exam simulator ranges from $250-350 USD depending on the provider that you use (ExamsPM does offer courses at a very affordable rate).
You may also choose to buy a PMP® certification book, and the price of these books range from $50-100 on Amazon.
If you take an in-person training course, the price will range from $800-2000 USD, depending again on the provider.
When you add up all these costs, you should budget around $1000 USD to get PMP® certified. That is the true total cost of PMP® exam.
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