Cardiff Theory Test Centre: 44.87% pass rate
DVSA recorded 31,891 car theory tests here in April 2025 to March 2026 and 14,308 passes. The fee is £23 a sitting everywhere in Great Britain, so at this rate a pass takes £51.26 of test fees.
Cardiff is one of the busiest theory test centres in Great Britain, handling about 2,658 sittings in an average month. Across April 2025 to March 2026 it conducted 31,891 car theory tests and issued 14,308 passes, a pass rate of 44.87% against the national 44.84%. That is the 99th highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 4th of 17 in Wales.
The theory test fee is £23 at every centre in Great Britain, so what changes from place to place is not the price of one sitting but how many sittings a licence takes. Every theory pass here takes 2.23 sittings on average, so £51.26 of DVSA fees, within pennies of the £51.29 national figure. The 17,583 fails at Cardiff last year came to £404k in fees paid for tests that had to be taken again, out of £733k taken at this centre in total.
DVSA publishes the split by recorded gender. Women passed at 47.60% here against 42.72%, a difference of 4.88 points, where the national gap is 4.20 points. In fee terms the group with the lower rate spends about £5.52 more per pass at this centre.
Against 2024/25 the rate slipped by 0.46 points, from 45.33% to 44.87%. DVSA has published 19 years for this centre. Back in 2007/08 the rate was 65.98%, so today's fee bill per pass is £16.40 higher than the same £23 fee would have produced then, purely because the pass rate has fallen 21.1 points.
The nearest other theory centre is Newport (Gwent), about 11 miles away, where the rate was 41.20%. Bristol, 25 miles out, is the strongest of the five nearest at 48.89%, a difference worth £4.22 per pass on paper, and still not worth the journey. The questions, the clips and the pass mark are set nationally and do not vary by building, so a centre's rate describes the people who booked there rather than the difficulty of the test.
Across Wales as a whole, DVSA recorded 125,666 car theory tests at 17 centres over the same twelve months, a pass rate of 42.98% and £53.51 of fees per pass. Cardiff is above that regional figure by 1.89 points.
Cardiff at a glance
- Financial year
- 2025/26
- Tests conducted
- 31,891
- Passes
- 14,308
- Pass rate
- 44.87%
- Rank, Great Britainhighest pass rate first
- 99 of 165
- Rank in Wales
- 4 of 17
- Male pass rate17,865 tests
- 42.72%
- Female pass rate14,026 tests
- 47.60%
- Gender gapfemale minus male
- +4.88 pts
- Year on yearfrom 2024/25 (45.33%)
- -0.46 pts
- Years published
- 19
- Region
- Wales
- County or unitary
- Caerdydd - Cardiff
- Nearest other centre
- Newport (Gwent), 11 mi
- SnapshotDVSA table DRT112A
- 2026-09-05
The £23 fee, applied to Cardiff
The theory test fee does not vary by centre, so this table is the same £23 arithmetic everywhere, run against Cardiff's own published pass rate. It describes what theory testing costs the candidates who book here on average. It is not a prediction for one person, and it is not a reason to travel: the question bank and the pass mark are national.
| Measure | Cardiff | Wales | Great Britain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass rate | 44.87% | 42.98% | 44.84% |
| Sittings per pass | 2.23 | 2.33 | 2.23 |
| DVSA fees per pass | £51.26 | £53.51 | £51.29 |
| On top of one £23 sitting | £28.26 | £30.51 | £28.29 |
| Against the national average | -£0.03 | +£2.22 | £0.00 |
| Fees paid on tests that failed | £404,409 | £1.6m | £37.1m |
Sittings per pass is tests conducted divided by passes, so it counts everyone who sat at this centre, including repeat attempts. Fees per pass is that figure multiplied by the £23 DVSA fee. The fee is ours, from the fee page; the counts are DVSA's.
One retake buys nothing
A second sitting is another full £23. There is no retake discount. The official DVSA revision app is £4.99, so a retake costs about 5 times as much as the thing that would have prevented it.
Share of the learner bill
At Cardiff's rate the theory fee works out at 3.5% of the £1,470 minimum cost of learning to drive, alongside lessons at about £30 an hour on this site's Wales band. See the full budget.
The two-year clock
A theory pass lasts 2 years. Miss that window before the practical and the £23 is due again. Retakes also need 3 clear working days between attempts, so a fail costs time as well as money.
Cardiff month by month, April 2025 to March 2026
Best month February 2026 at 49.2%, weakest May 2025 at 42.2%, busiest August 2025 with 3,200 sittings.
| Month | Tests | Passes | Rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 25 | 2,728 | 1,191 | 43.7% | £52.68 |
| May 25 | 2,810 | 1,186 | 42.2% | £54.49 |
| Jun 25 | 2,591 | 1,162 | 44.9% | £51.28 |
| Jul 25 | 2,822 | 1,285 | 45.5% | £50.51 |
| Aug 25 | 3,200 | 1,458 | 45.6% | £50.48 |
| Sep 25 | 2,428 | 1,074 | 44.2% | £52.00 |
| Oct 25 | 2,735 | 1,235 | 45.2% | £50.94 |
| Nov 25 | 2,447 | 1,060 | 43.3% | £53.10 |
| Dec 25 | 2,462 | 1,064 | 43.2% | £53.22 |
| Jan 26 | 2,013 | 911 | 45.3% | £50.82 |
| Feb 26 | 2,625 | 1,292 | 49.2% | £46.73 |
| Mar 26 | 3,030 | 1,390 | 45.9% | £50.14 |
What the pass rate alone has done to the bill
Today's £23 fee applied to each year's published pass rate at Cardiff. The fee is held constant on purpose, so the only thing moving the right-hand column is how often candidates passed.
| Year | Tests | Passes | Pass rate | Fees per pass at today's £23 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025/26 | 31,891 | 14,308 | 44.87% | £51.26 |
| 2024/25 | 29,281 | 13,273 | 45.33% | £50.74 |
| 2023/24 | 23,897 | 10,764 | 45.04% | £51.06 |
| 2022/23 | 23,185 | 10,509 | 45.33% | £50.74 |
| 2021/22 | 22,593 | 11,498 | 50.90% | £45.19 |
| 2020/21 | 8,449 | 4,744 | 56.15% | £40.96 |
| 2019/20 | 19,938 | 9,613 | 48.21% | £47.70 |
| 2018/19 | 19,117 | 9,200 | 48.12% | £47.79 |
| 2017/18 | 19,341 | 9,445 | 48.83% | £47.10 |
| 2016/17 | 22,118 | 10,844 | 49.03% | £46.91 |
| 2015/16 | 22,929 | 11,223 | 48.95% | £46.99 |
| 2014/15 | 20,816 | 10,762 | 51.70% | £44.49 |
| 2013/14 | 18,246 | 9,391 | 51.47% | £44.69 |
| 2012/13 | 14,563 | 8,581 | 58.92% | £39.03 |
| 2011/12 | 15,217 | 9,288 | 61.04% | £37.68 |
| 2010/11 | 15,229 | 9,805 | 64.38% | £35.72 |
| 2009/10 | 15,732 | 10,108 | 64.25% | £35.80 |
| 2008/09 | 15,736 | 10,316 | 65.56% | £35.08 |
| 2007/08 | 17,808 | 11,749 | 65.98% | £34.86 |
Theory test centres near Cardiff
The five closest centres by road-distance proxy. DVSA publishes no address for a theory test centre, so distances are measured town centre to town centre and are indicative. They are here for context, not as a shopping list: the fee and the test are identical at all of them.
| Centre | Distance | Tests | Pass rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Newport (Gwent) | 11 mi | 15,193 | 41.20% | £55.82 |
| Bridgend | 17 mi | 8,428 | 41.42% | £55.53 |
| Merthyr Tydfil | 20 mi | 13,427 | 41.10% | £55.96 |
| Williton | 23 mi | 650 | 46.46% | £49.50 |
| Bristol | 25 mi | 44,554 | 48.89% | £47.04 |
More centres on the Wales page, which covers 17 centres and 125,666 tests, or in the full directory.
Where these figures come from
Test volumes, passes, pass rates and gender splits on this page are published statistics from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, taken from the GOV.UK statistical data set Driving test and theory test data: cars:
- DRT112A, Car theory test pass rates by gender and month: test centres. Updated 2026-07-17, covering April 2007 to March 2026.
- DRT111A, Car theory tests conducted, passed and pass rates by financial quarter and financial year: Great Britain. Updated 2026-09-03, covering April 2007 to June 2026.
Centre-level figures cover the April 2025 to March 2026 financial year, the most recent full year DVSA publishes at centre level. Snapshot taken 2026-09-05. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
DVSA publishes no region or address for theory test centres. Each centre is named after its town, and the town's country, region, county and centre point come from OS Open Names. Source: Ordnance Survey Open Names, via postcodes.io, Open Government Licence v3.0.
Every pound on this page is theorytestcost.com's own arithmetic on the £23 DVSA fee and the cost figures published elsewhere on this site. DVSA publishes no prices and none of the money here comes from DVSA.
theorytestcost.com is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the DVSA, the DVA or GOV.UK. Pass rates are DVSA published statistics reproduced under the Open Government Licence, not our assessment of any centre. Great Britain only: theory tests in Northern Ireland are run separately by the DVA. DVSA cautions that centre figures below about 100 tests a year are not robust for comparison, and withholds a centre's figures entirely where publishing them could identify an individual.