Key takeaways
- CCI’s published 2025 pass rate for the RCES exam is 73% for first-time test takers.
- That places RCES fourth among CCI’s nine credentials, two points below RCIS at 75%, against a range that bottoms out at 56%.
- The invasive credentials — RCIS and RCES — pass at higher rates than the technician-level and vascular exams, largely because of who is eligible to sit them.
- CCI publishes first-time rates only. Any second-attempt or retake pass rate you see quoted is unsourced, and we will not estimate one.
- The 73% pass rate is unrelated to the passing standard itself, which is a scaled score of 650 out of 900.
The number
The RCES exam pass rate is 73% for first-time test takers, per Cardiovascular Credentialing International’s own published 2025 figures. Roughly seven in ten people who sit the RCES for the first time pass it.
That figure comes directly from CCI’s student community resources, where CCI publishes annual pass rates for every credential it administers. It is not a survey, not a forum estimate, and not our inference — it is the credentialing body reporting on its own exam.
That sentence needs saying because a great deal of the RCES content online asserts that CCI does not publish pass rates. That claim is out of date. The table exists and it is public; the full 2025 figures for all nine credentials are reproduced on our RCIS pass rate page.
Why RCES sits two points below RCIS
People read a lot into that gap. I would read very little into it.
Two percentage points across two different candidate populations, two different blueprints, and two different annual cohorts is well within the range you would expect from noise. It does not establish that the RCES is a harder exam than the RCIS, and it certainly does not tell you anything about your own odds on either.
What is defensible to say is that the two exams are structurally comparable: same length, same duration, same scaled passing standard, same testing vendor, same fee. If you are trying to decide between them, the pass rates should not be a factor at all — the question is which lab you work in. We lay that decision out properly in RCIS vs RCES.
Reading the number, and knowing whether you are ready
What a first-attempt pass rate does and does not tell you, what separates the candidates who pass from the ones who do not, and the signals that say you are ready apply to both registry exams, so they are covered once, on the RCIS pass rate page. The short version for the RCES: 73% is not a target score, and the best readiness signal is consistent performance on full-length, timed, blueprint-matched practice.
What CCI does not publish
CCI publishes first-time test taker rates only. There is no published RCES retake pass rate, no published pass rate by eligibility pathway, and no published breakdown by professional background. If you find a page quoting any of those, it is not sourced — and we are not going to invent one to fill the gap.
Likewise, we do not publish a pass rate for Cardiac Codex users. We could construct a flattering number from self-reported outcomes; it would mean nothing, because the people who report back are not a representative sample. Judge our material on the free questions instead.
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Start the free diagnostic The RCES Exam: Complete 2026 Guide →RCES pass rate FAQ
What is the RCES exam pass rate?
CCI’s published 2025 pass rate for the RCES exam is 73% for first-time test takers. This is CCI’s own figure, published in its student community resources, not a third-party estimate.
Does CCI publish official RCES pass rates?
Yes. CCI publishes annual pass rates for all nine of its credential exams in its student community resources at cci-online.org. The figures cover first-time test takers. Content claiming CCI does not publish pass rates is out of date.
Is the RCES pass rate lower than the RCIS?
Slightly. The 2025 figures are 73% for RCES and 75% for RCIS. A two-point gap across different candidate populations and different blueprints is small enough that it should not influence which credential you pursue.
What is the RCES retake pass rate?
CCI publishes first-time test taker rates only; it does not publish retake figures. Any second-attempt number you see quoted elsewhere is unsourced, and we will not estimate one.
Is the RCES exam hard?
It is demanding because it is broad — 170 questions across the entire EP lab in three hours — but a 73% first-attempt rate places it in the upper third of CCI’s range, which runs down to 56%. Roughly seven in ten first-time candidates pass.
Does a 73% pass rate mean I need 73% correct to pass?
No. These are unrelated numbers. 73% is the share of first-time candidates who pass. The passing standard itself is a scaled score of 650 on a 0 to 900 scale, calibrated to the difficulty of your particular exam form.
Why do the invasive credentials pass at higher rates?
Largely because of eligibility. Every RCES and RCIS pathway requires substantial full-time clinical experience or graduation from a programme built for the work, so the candidate population has already been filtered by the job before anyone sits the exam.