How many questions are on the firefighter written test?

It depends entirely on which one your department uses, and there is no national exam. The FCTC test in California is 100 questions in two hours, plus a 30-minute reading period before it. I/O Solutions’ NFSI is 155 questions in two and a half hours, 50 of them a personality inventory. FPSI publishes no count for the NFST. The job announcement you applied through is the document that names your test.

Across all four tests, three things recur and they are what this site drills: reading and recalling written material, arithmetic in practical units, and mechanical reasoning. Most also include a judgment or human-relations component, and two of them use video, which no written page can practise honestly.

Is there a free official practice test?

For California, there is something better than most paid prep and it is free: FCTC publishes a 25-page study guide covering all four sections, with worked mechanical concepts and sample questions. Read it first. What FCTC charges for is a $25 online practice test of past questions, a $25 prep course and a $25 in-person class. FPSI and I/O Solutions sell their candidate guides.

Is this site affiliated with FCTC or Cal-JAC?

No, and they publish a warning about exactly this: materials from FCTC and Cal-JAC are the only authorised FCTC materials, and outside vendors have no affiliation with them. Nothing here is a past FCTC question. These are original questions written to the published skills, and the official free guide is linked on this page because it is the better place to start.

What is the passing score?

No publisher sets one for you. Departments choose their own cut, and many rank candidates rather than passing them — FCTC adds scores to a candidate’s record and departments draw from that list. Score tables on prep sites are inventions.

Can I bring a calculator?

Not to the FCTC test. It publishes the list of what may not come into the testing facility and it includes calculators, along with phones, watches, hats, food and drink, backpacks and notebooks. Assume no calculator anywhere in this category unless told otherwise, and practise that way.

Is the CPAT part of the written test?

No — separate test, separate day, separate booking. The CPAT is eight physical events on a closed course in 10 minutes 20 seconds, wearing a 50-lb vest. There is a page about it here, with no questions on it, because a website cannot practise carrying a hose.

Do I need firefighting experience first?

No. These are entry-level tests and FPSI states it plainly: no prior firefighting experience is needed. The reading material is department-flavoured, but everything needed to answer is in front of you on the day.

Firefighter practice test

There is no national firefighter written exam — four publishers sell four different ones, and your department picked one. 150 original questions on the three things all of them ask for: mechanical reasoning, maths, and reading you have to remember.

30 questions · 25 minutes Our practice length, not a publisher’s No calculator Free, no account

Firefighter written practice run

30 questions. 25 minutes.

That is 50 seconds a question. The clock starts when you press the button and submits the test when it runs out. You will not be told whether an answer was right until the end — that is the point of a timed run.

50s a question No calculator No publisher here penalises a wrong answer more than a blank — answer everything No account, nothing saved off your device

2 free full-length runs left on this test. Unlimited for $24.99, one payment.

Four tests, and your department chose one

This is the first thing to sort out and it takes one phone call. The four products below cover most entry-level firefighter hiring in the United States, and they do not have the same structure, the same length or even the same media. Practising the wrong shape is the most common wasted month in this process.

Test	Publisher	Published shape
FCTC Written Test	Cal-JAC, administered by FCTC	100 questions in 2 hours, after a separate 30-minute essay reading period — 20 video recall, 25 mechanical reasoning, 20 maths, 35 recall from written material
NFST, FACT and CEB	Fire and Police Selection, Inc. (FPSI)	No count or clock published. The NFST measures reading, mathematical reasoning, map reading, writing, human relations and reasoning
NFSI	I/O Solutions	155 questions in 2.5 hours — 105 cognitive, and 50 behavioural items with no right answers
FireTEAM	Ergometrics, sat at National Testing Network centres	Video-based, with mechanical, maths, reading and human relations components

Every figure here comes from the publisher’s own document, listed at the bottom of this page and read on 3 September 2026. The 30-question run above is this site’s own practice length at 50 seconds a question, because there is no common length to copy.

FCTC practice test →NFSI practice test →

Practise one part at a time

Untimed sets with the explanation immediately after each answer. These three are what the four tests have in common — practise them and you are practising for whichever one you get.

Mechanical reasoning

Gears, pulleys, ladders, hose lines and head pressure — the fireground as physics.

50 questions

Maths

Area, volume, ratios, percentages and angles, in the units the job uses.

50 questions

Reading and recall

A passage of department material, then what it said — from memory on the day.

50 questions

The free guide you should read before this site

This is unusual enough to be worth saying plainly. The California Firefighter Joint Apprenticeship Committee publishes a free 25-page study guide for the FCTC written test, and it is better than most of what is sold in this category. It prints the exact number of questions in each of the four sections. It teaches the mechanical section properly — gear direction, pulley ratios, block and tackle advantage, the three classes of lever, head pressure — with diagrams and worked answers. It contains a sample essay and sample questions. It costs nothing.

If you are testing in California, read it first, and read it before anything here. It is listed as the second source at the bottom of this page. What FCTC charges for are the things a free site can be instead: a $25 online practice test built from past questions, a $25 online course and a $25 in-person class. Those are its own and they are the only authorised FCTC materials.

This site is not FCTC and is not affiliated with it or with Cal-JAC. They publish a warning that outside vendors claiming to help with the FCTC written test have no affiliation with them, which is fair and worth repeating here. Every question on this site is original, none is a past test question, and the official material is linked rather than paraphrased.

The parts with no questions here

Two real parts of firefighter hiring get pages on this site and deliberately no questions. The video recall section is 20 of FCTC’s 100 questions and the core of Ergometrics’ FireTEAM: you watch, once, with pencils down, and answer from memory. Writing that out as text would let you re-read it, which removes the only thing being measured. And the CPAT is a physical course — eight events, a weighted vest and a stopwatch — which no website can simulate.

Both get a page anyway, because they are real parts of the process, people search for them by name, and the honest thing a page can do is say exactly what they are and where the real preparation is.

Video recall

Two short videos, no note-taking, seven to ten questions each — and one showing only.

No question bank — what to expect

CPAT

Eight events, ten minutes twenty seconds, fifty pounds of vest — the physical test, not a paper one.

No question bank — what to expect

How to read for the recall part

The largest section of the FCTC test is reading, and part of it is unlike any reading test you have sat: the essays are handed out for thirty minutes, annotated, then collected, and the questions come afterwards. Answers must come from what you remember of the essays and not from anything you already knew. FCTC sets essay length by an average reading speed of 200 words a minute, so the time is enough — the difficulty is knowing what to hold on to.

Four things carry most of the questions: numbers, order, exceptions and definitions. Every figure in a procedure, the sequence steps happen in, every sentence that begins “unless” or “except”, and any term the passage stops to define. On the reading set here the passage stays on screen, which is easier than the real thing — cover it before you answer and you get the difficulty back.

Frequently asked

How many questions are on the firefighter written test?: It depends entirely on which one your department uses, and there is no national exam. The FCTC test in California is 100 questions in two hours, plus a 30-minute reading period before it. I/O Solutions’ NFSI is 155 questions in two and a half hours, 50 of them a personality inventory. FPSI publishes no count for the NFST. The job announcement you applied through is the document that names your test.
What is on it?: Across all four tests, three things recur and they are what this site drills: reading and recalling written material, arithmetic in practical units, and mechanical reasoning. Most also include a judgment or human-relations component, and two of them use video, which no written page can practise honestly.
Is there a free official practice test?: For California, there is something better than most paid prep and it is free: FCTC publishes a 25-page study guide covering all four sections, with worked mechanical concepts and sample questions. Read it first. What FCTC charges for is a $25 online practice test of past questions, a $25 prep course and a $25 in-person class. FPSI and I/O Solutions sell their candidate guides.
Is this site affiliated with FCTC or Cal-JAC?: No, and they publish a warning about exactly this: materials from FCTC and Cal-JAC are the only authorised FCTC materials, and outside vendors have no affiliation with them. Nothing here is a past FCTC question. These are original questions written to the published skills, and the official free guide is linked on this page because it is the better place to start.
What is the passing score?: No publisher sets one for you. Departments choose their own cut, and many rank candidates rather than passing them — FCTC adds scores to a candidate’s record and departments draw from that list. Score tables on prep sites are inventions.
Can I bring a calculator?: Not to the FCTC test. It publishes the list of what may not come into the testing facility and it includes calculators, along with phones, watches, hats, food and drink, backpacks and notebooks. Assume no calculator anywhere in this category unless told otherwise, and practise that way.
Is the CPAT part of the written test?: No — separate test, separate day, separate booking. The CPAT is eight physical events on a closed course in 10 minutes 20 seconds, wearing a 50-lb vest. There is a page about it here, with no questions on it, because a website cannot practise carrying a hose.
Do I need firefighting experience first?: No. These are entry-level tests and FPSI states it plainly: no prior firefighting experience is needed. The reading material is department-flavoured, but everything needed to answer is in front of you on the day.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from one of the documents below, with the date it was read. Requirements change; if a source has moved on since that date, the source is right and this page is out of date.

Firefighter Candidate Testing Center (Cal-JAC) — FCTC Written Test, test details for candidates Read September 3, 2026
Firefighter Candidate Testing Center (Cal-JAC) — FCTC Written Test Study Guide (free candidate guide, 25 pages) Read September 3, 2026
Firefighter Candidate Testing Center (Cal-JAC) — Test Prep (what FCTC gives and sells) Read September 3, 2026
Fire and Police Selection, Inc. — National Fire Select Test (NFST) candidate orientation guide Read September 3, 2026
I/O Solutions — National Firefighter Selection Inventory (NFSI), assessment information sheet as published by a testing college Read September 3, 2026
Firefighter Candidate Testing Center (Cal-JAC) — Candidate Physical Ability Test (CPAT) Read September 3, 2026

Hiring Test Practice is independent practice material and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by Criteria Corp, Wonderlic, Inc., National Testing Network, the electrical training ALLIANCE, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, NECA, Biddle Consulting Group, Inc., Pearson Education, Inc. or its TalentLens business, the California Firefighter Joint Apprenticeship Committee or the Firefighter Candidate Testing Center, Fire and Police Selection, Inc., I/O Solutions, Inc., Ergometrics & Applied Personnel Research, Inc., the International Association of Fire Fighters or the International Association of Fire Chiefs. CCAT® is a registered trademark of Criteria Corp; Wonderlic® is a registered trademark of Wonderlic, Inc.; CritiCall is a trademark of Biddle Consulting Group, Inc.; Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test is a trademark of Pearson Education, Inc.; FCTC and CPAT are used to name tests administered by others. Test names are used only to describe what this material prepares you for. Every question here is original and none is taken from any actual assessment. Cal-JAC and FCTC publish that materials supplied directly by them are the only authorized FCTC Written Test materials; this site is one of the outside sources that warning refers to, and it links their free study guide rather than reproducing it.