How to renew your CompTIA certification, all four routes
By SunTzu, founder of CertOwl • Published • 3 min read
Quick answer
Every CompTIA certification in the CE program expires three years after you pass. You renew by passing a higher CompTIA exam (which renews everything below it), completing the CertMaster CE course, collecting continuing education units, or retaking the newest exam version. Security+ needs 50 CEUs plus a $50 annual fee.
Three years. That is exactly how long your CompTIA certification stays valid, counted from the day you passed, and the countdown starts whether you think about it or not. Renewal is genuinely easy if you start early and mildly painful if you remember it in month thirty-five. This is the whole system: the routes, the costs, and the one rule that saves people the most money.
How the clock works
Every current CompTIA certification (A+, Network+, Security+ and up) sits in the Continuing Education program. Pass the exam and a three year window opens. Renew inside the window and a fresh three years begins. Miss it and the certification goes inactive, and the only way back is retaking the current version of the exam at full price. So renewal is not bureaucratic decoration; it is the difference between a $50 fee and a $439 voucher.
Everything happens in your CompTIA account, where the CE dashboard shows your deadline and your progress toward it.
Route one: pass a higher exam
The cheapest renewal is often not renewing at all, but climbing. Passing any higher CompTIA exam automatically renews everything beneath it: pass Security+ and your A+ and Network+ reset with it, pass CySA+ or PenTest+ and your Security+ resets. If you were planning the next rung anyway, one exam does double duty, which is one more reason the certification path rewards people who keep moving instead of standing still.
Route two: CertMaster CE
CompTIA sells a self-paced online course, CertMaster CE, that satisfies the entire renewal in one purchase, no CEU counting involved. It is the convenience option: a fixed price, a few hours of refreshed material, done. For people who hold one certification and have no plans to climb, this is usually the simplest honest answer.
Route three: collect CEUs
Continuing education units are points for professional activity: completing training, earning other industry certifications, relevant work experience, publishing, teaching. Security+ needs 50 CEUs across the three years; the lower certifications need less (A+ asks 20, Network+ 30). Activities upload as documentation in the CE dashboard and CompTIA reviews them.
This route suits people whose job already generates evidence: if you completed a vendor course or earned another certification this year anyway, those hours were CEUs waiting to be claimed. Log them as they happen. Nobody enjoys reconstructing three years of training certificates in a deadline week.
Route four: retake the exam
You can simply sit the newest version of your exam again. Almost nobody chooses this on purpose, because it costs a full voucher and a study cycle, but it is the mandatory route once a certification has lapsed. Treat it as the penalty box, and as the reason the other three routes exist.
The fees nobody budgets for
CEU-based renewal comes with an annual continuing education fee: $50 a year for Security+, so $150 across the cycle, with lower certifications charged less. The fee catches people off guard because the exam price gets all the attention, a pattern we covered in the true cost of Security+. Two fee notes worth knowing: CertMaster CE includes its own pricing rather than the annual fee, and climbing to a higher exam sidesteps CEU fees for the renewed lower certifications entirely.
If you are deciding whether renewal is worth the recurring cost at all, that is really the question of whether the certification still earns its keep, and the answer usually tracks whether it is still on your resume doing work.
Test yourself: 3 quick questions
What is SCAP (Security Content Automation Protocol) for?
SCAP (Security Content Automation Protocol) is a standard that lets different security tools 'speak the same language' - a common format for vulnerabilities, configurations and scores. This enables automated compliance checking (e.g. checking whether systems are configured per CIS Benchmarks).
Why is monitoring without a response useless?
Monitoring that only collects data nobody looks at, or doesn't act on the alerts, is a cost with no benefit. An alarm with no clearly responsible person (on-call/escalation) is just noise. The value of monitoring is that it leads to action (response->remediation->validation), not in the collecting itself.
Which three attributes does CompTIA use to compare attackers?
Actors are compared by: internal vs external (are they inside the organization), resources/funding (how much money and tooling), and sophistication/capability (how technically advanced). This helps assess how serious a threat the actor is to you specifically.
Score: · Hundreds more with explanations, free in the app: Get CertOwl on the App Store
Frequently asked questions
What happens if my CompTIA certification expires?
It becomes inactive. There is no grace period fix: recovering it means passing the current version of the exam again at full price.
Does renewing a higher certification renew the lower ones?
Yes. Completing renewal for the highest certification you hold, or passing a new higher exam, automatically renews everything below it.
Where do I track my renewal progress?
In your CompTIA account's continuing education dashboard, which shows your deadline, uploaded CEUs and outstanding fees.
CertOwl keeps the knowledge fresh between exams: bite-size daily lessons, spaced repetition flashcards, and original practice questions written from the published exam objectives, with the A+ and Network+ tracks completely free. A few focused minutes a day, on your phone, even offline.
Get CertOwl on the App StoreFree download · A+ and Network+ completely free
+ daily lessons, flashcards and full exam simulations