Yes, the Florida contractor exam is open book: every part is multiple choice, and you may bring the approved reference books for your licence, permanently tabbed and highlighted, but no notes. Open book does not make it easy. Business and Finance allows 6.5 hours for 120 scored questions, about 3 minutes 15 seconds each.
Listen to this article, about 11 minutes. A synthetic voice reads the article and announces each section title as it begins; tables are read row by row and the questions at the end are left out.
Recorded 5 October 2026 from the article as published that day. Press a chapter to jump there; the highlighted line is what is playing. A play button sits beside every section heading, and once you scroll past this player a bar at the bottom of the screen keeps the controls in reach. Tap or click any sentence to hear the reading start from there.
On this page: the time you get per scored question on every Florida exam from the DBPR booklet’s own chart, a calculator for how much of it your lookups eat, and the booklet’s exact rules on tabs, binders and calculators.
Think you already know this? Five questions, one minute.
Every answer is on this page. Answer from what you know now; the page fills in the rest.
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1. What does the DBPR booklet list for the Business and Finance exam?
The Examinations at a Glance chart in the DBPR construction Candidate Information Booklet lists 120 scored questions in 6.5 hours. The 125 figure adds the pilot questions prep providers commonly report. Read the section
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2. Because the exam is open book, what is it mostly testing?
Only approved references are allowed and the clock is fixed, so speed of retrieval decides most results. The candidate booklet bars notes entirely. Read the section
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3. What does the booklet say you must do before you sit a failed part again?
The booklet says you reapply directly with Professional Testing, and passed parts stand. The fee is commonly reported at about 215 dollars for one part. Read the section
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4. Can your approved reference books carry written notes?
The candidate booklet allows underlining in pen and highlighting and lists notes among the items not allowed in the room. Read the section
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5. A tab peels off your book cleanly without tearing the page. What does the booklet say?
The booklet says a tab that can be removed without damage to the page is considered removable and will not be accepted. Read the section
That sounds like a gift. In practice it is the reason a lot of well prepared people fail.
Open book does not lower the difficulty. It relocates it. The exam stops testing whether you know the answer and starts testing whether you can find it fast enough, and almost nobody prepares for the second thing.
How much time do you actually get per question?
This is the calculation that reframes the whole exam, and it is oddly hard to find stated plainly anywhere. Every figure below comes from the Examinations at a Glance chart in the DBPR Candidate Information Booklet for construction examinations, the edition effective July 2024, read on 5 October 2026. The last column is simple division of the allowed minutes by the scored questions.
| Exam | Who sits it | Scored questions | Hours | Time per scored question |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business and Finance | Every licence | 120 | 6.5 | 3 minutes 15 seconds |
| Contract Administration or Project Management, each | General contractor | 60 | 4.5 | 4 minutes 30 seconds |
| Contract Administration or Project Management, each | Building contractor | 50 | 4.5 | 5 minutes 24 seconds |
| Contract Administration or Project Management, each | Residential contractor | 45 | 4.5 | 6 minutes |
| Roofing trade knowledge | Roofing contractor | 80 | 5 | 3 minutes 45 seconds |
| Class A air conditioning trade knowledge | Class A air conditioning contractor | 130 | 7.5 | about 3 minutes 28 seconds |
| Garage door, structural steel or marine dock specialty | Those specialty licences | 50, 55 or 40 | 2.5, 2.75 or 2 | 3 minutes |
Three and a quarter minutes for a Business and Finance question. That has to cover reading the question, deciding which book it lives in, getting to the right page, reading enough to be sure, and answering. If locating the book takes you ninety seconds, you have already spent close to half your budget before you have read anything. And Business and Finance is not even the tightest paper on the chart: several of the smaller specialty exams allow exactly three minutes a question.
The real clock is a little tighter than the table. The booklet says an exam may contain a small number of ungraded pilot questions, that they are not identified, and that extra time is built in for them, but it never says how many. Prep providers commonly put the figure at 5 a part, which would mean 125 questions in front of you on Business and Finance and 65 on each general contractor trade part, and it is why two different question counts for the same exam both look authoritative. You cannot tell which questions are pilots, so the only thing to do with that fact is not panic when one looks unlike anything you have seen.
An earlier version of this page gave the trade parts as 4.75 hours and flagged a conflict with prep sites quoting 4.5. The booklet settles it: 4.5 hours for Contract Administration and for Project Management, whichever Division I licence you hold, with the smaller building and residential papers buying you more time per question. If the notice for your own test date says something different, that notice wins, and the DBPR construction examinations page is where the current booklet is posted.
What open book actually changes about studying
If the exam tested recall, the right preparation would be memorising content. Because it tests retrieval, the right preparation is different, and mostly it is about building a map. Whether it is worth paying a prep school to build that map for you is a separate question, and we have priced every major Florida prep package against self study to answer it.
- Know which book answers which kind of question. Before you can find a page you have to pick a book. Candidates lose more time at this step than anywhere else, and it is entirely fixable.
- Know the structure of each book, not its contents. Where the tables live, where the definitions live, how the index is organised and how it lies to you.
- Practise looking things up under time pressure. Reading a chapter is not practice. Being handed a question and racing to the page is.
- Learn the questions that cannot be looked up. Some Business and Finance maths has to be executed, not located. Knowing which is which is worth more than another pass through the material, and the maths the book will not do for you goes through exactly which calculations fall into that group.
The uncomfortable implication is that a candidate who has read everything once and cannot navigate quickly will do worse than one who has read less and knows exactly where things are.
Three minutes is a decision rule, not a target
The useful way to use that number is as a trigger. If you are past roughly three minutes on a Business and Finance question and you are not close, the expected value of continuing is poor. Mark it, move on, come back with whatever time remains. It also helps to know where the questions cluster: the content weights for the Florida Business and Finance exam put about 38 of its 120 scored questions on accounting, so the accounting reference is the one to know best.
Candidates who fail narrowly often lose on questions they never reached, not on questions they got wrong. Running out of time is a preparation failure that looks like a knowledge failure.
Lookup time budget
Pick your exam and time yourself on a few practice lookups. It shows how much of each question’s allowance is left for reading and answering. It is arithmetic on the booklet’s figures, not a prediction of your result.
Allowance per question is the booklet’s hours divided by its scored questions, before pilot questions. Worked in your browser, nothing is stored or sent.
What does running out of time actually cost you?
Enough to make an afternoon of timed practice look cheap. A retake is not a free second attempt. The booklet says that before you sit again you must reapply directly with Professional Testing, the contractor that registers candidates and scores the exams for the state. The amounts are commonly reported as a 135 dollar fee to reapply plus about 80 dollars for each part you sit, so roughly 215 dollars to retake one part and 295 to retake two together. The booklet does not print those figures, and what happens when you fail a part works through where they come from.
The other cost is the calendar. A retake has to be registered, scheduled and sat, and test dates are not always available in the week you want one. For a lot of candidates the real price of a narrow fail is measured in weeks of not being able to pull permits, and that is the number nobody puts on the invoice. Fees and scheduling rules are set by the department and change, so confirm both before you budget for them.
What you may and may not bring
Two constraints do most of the work here, and both catch people out.
First, only approved reference materials are allowed. The list is maintained by the Florida DBPR and it differs by licence category, so a bundle assembled for a different licence is not automatically right for yours. The certified specialty categories sit their own open book trade paper on the same terms, which is why the two exams behind Florida irrigation certification follow the same book rules as the three above. Our guide to which books you can bring covers how to check. Pool contractors are a good example, since the commercial, residential and servicing licences each carry their own trade exam and book list, set out in our comparison of the three Florida pool licence exams.
Second, and this is where genuinely wrong information circulates: permanent book tabs and highlighting or underlining are allowed, but written notes are not. That distinction is precise and it is enforced. Our page on what you may mark in your books covers exactly what that means in practice, because some pages currently ranking on this topic get it backwards.
Rules are set by the DBPR and can change. Confirm the approved reference list that applies to your specific test date and licence category rather than relying on any page, including this one.
What does the booklet actually say about tabs, binders and calculators?
The rules on reference materials are short and specific, and they are worth reading in the original because several are stricter than the version that circulates. In the candidate booklet’s own terms:
- Only books on the approved reference list may be brought to the test centre, and they must remain as published.
- Underlining in pen and highlighting are allowed. Handwritten notes are not, and bound or loose leaf notes are on the list of items barred from the room.
- Original editions only, except references the list marks as PDF files, which must be printed and bound in a spiral notebook or a binder with three or more holes.
- No photocopies unless written authorization was granted before the exam by the publishers and the department’s testing bureau.
- Tabs must be permanently attached and carry only normal chapter or page headings. Sticky notes, pull off labels and removable tabs come off before you arrive.
- Calculators must be silent, hand held, battery operated, non printing and without an alphabetic keypad. Solar models are not recommended.
The tab rule is the one that catches people. The booklet says that if a tab can be removed without damage to the page, it counts as removable and will not be accepted, however permanent it looked in the shop. Rules like this belong to the department and they change, so check the booklet for your own test date rather than this summary, and the exam day checklist turns the rest of the day into a list you can tick.
Book check before test day
Built from the reference rules in the DBPR candidate booklet. Confirm against the booklet and the reference list for your own test date.
Ticks are saved on this device only.
What to do with this
- Get the correct approved reference list for your licence category and test date.
- Build a one page map of which book covers which topic area, and learn it cold.
- Tab and highlight within the rules. See what you may mark in your books.
- Do timed retrieval practice rather than reading practice.
- Set a personal cutoff per question and actually obey it on the day.
For the structure and pass rates of each part, see the format of each exam. If a part has already gone badly, what happens if you fail a part has the retake rules.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Florida contractor exam open book?
Yes. All Florida construction examinations are open book and consist of multiple choice questions. Candidates are strongly encouraged to bring the approved reference materials, and no other references are permitted at the examination site.
How much time do you get per question?
Business and Finance allows 6.5 hours for 120 scored questions, about 3 minutes 15 seconds each. Contract Administration and Project Management each allow 4.5 hours, for 60 scored questions on the general contractor papers, 50 for building and 45 for residential.
Does open book make the exam easier?
It changes what is being tested rather than lowering the difficulty. The exam measures how quickly you can locate an answer in the approved references, so candidates who have read widely but cannot navigate quickly often run out of time.
What are pilot questions?
Each exam may include a small number of pilot questions, commonly reported as 5, that are not graded and do not count for or against your score. You are not told which ones they are.
Can I bring my own notes?
No. Permanent book tabs and highlighting or underlining are allowed in books taken into the examination, but written notes are not permitted.
Are the approved books the same for every licence?
No. The approved reference list is maintained by the Florida DBPR and differs by licence category, so a book set assembled for a different licence may not be correct for yours.
Why do sources disagree on how many questions the exam has?
Because some quote the scored questions and some quote everything you are shown. Business and Finance is commonly listed as 120 scored questions and presented as 125, the difference being 5 ungraded pilot questions. The trade parts are 60 scored and 65 presented. Both figures are correct, and the one that governs your time budget is the larger one, because you still have to read and answer the pilot items.
How much does it cost to retake a part you failed?
Commonly reported at about 215 dollars to retake one part and 295 to retake two: a 135 dollar fee to reapply with Professional Testing plus about 80 dollars for each part you sit. Fees are set by the department and change without notice, so confirm the current amount before you register rather than budgeting from this page.
Finished the page? The same five questions from the top, to see what stuck.
Exam rules, approved reference lists and fees are set by the Florida DBPR and change without notice. This page was verified in August 2026 and last rechecked on 5 October 2026 against the DBPR construction candidate booklet effective July 2024. Always confirm against the current DBPR reference list for your test date. We are independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by or approved by the Florida DBPR.
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