IL-REB Passing Score 2026: Exactly What You Need to Pass

The Two Scores You Must Hit

The IL-REB Exam Prep team gets one question more than any other from candidates: "What's the passing score?" The honest answer is that there are two passing scores, not one, and you must clear both on the same test date to receive a passing result. The Illinois Real Estate Broker Exam, administered through PSI Services LLC under the authority of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, Division of Real Estate, is split into a national portion and a state portion - and each has its own scoring threshold.

To pass, you need 70% on the national portion and 75% on the state portion. These are not averaged together. A candidate who scores 95% nationally but 68% on the state law questions still fails the exam that day. This structure catches a lot of people off guard because they assume a strong overall performance will carry them through. It won't. For a full breakdown of how the license exam is put together content-wise, see the IL-REB Exam Domains 2026: Complete Guide to All 15 Content Areas.

How the 140 Scored Questions Break Down

The exam consists of 140 scored multiple-choice questions - 100 national and 40 state - delivered over 240 total minutes, with 150 minutes allotted for the national portion and 90 minutes for the state portion. PSI may also insert 5-10 unscored experimental questions somewhere within that testing time. You won't know which questions are experimental, so every question deserves your full attention regardless of how it "feels."

Because the experimental questions don't count, your actual passing threshold is calculated only against the 140 scored items. In practical terms:

• National portion: You need roughly 70 correct answers out of 100 scored national questions to clear the 70% cutoff.
• State portion: You need roughly 30 correct answers out of 40 scored state questions to clear the 75% cutoff.

Those numbers illustrate why the state portion leaves almost no margin for guessing. Missing 11 out of 40 questions fails you; missing 10 keeps you right at the edge. This is one reason candidates who treat the state-specific domains as an afterthought tend to underperform relative to how they felt walking out of the national section.

National Portion vs. State Portion

Understanding the mechanical differences between the two portions helps you plan pacing and review strategy. Here's how they compare side by side:

Notice the time-per-question math too: the national portion gives you about 90 seconds per question, while the state portion gives you about 135 seconds per question. That extra time on the state side isn't a gift - it reflects the density and specificity of Illinois statutory material, which often requires reading a longer fact pattern before you can identify the correct rule. If you're still deciding how much runway to give yourself before test day, the IL-REB Exam Dates 2026: Testing Windows, Deadlines & Scheduling guide walks through registration timing.

Domain Weights That Decide Your Score

Since the national and state portions are scored independently, weighting works separately within each. Knowing the heaviest domains tells you exactly where your correct-answer count is won or lost.

Put together, the Illinois Real Estate License Act alone is worth more raw questions than three of the smaller national domains combined - Land Use Controls (5%), Property Management (3%), and Transfer of Title (6%) added together. That single domain deserves its own dedicated review block rather than being folded into general "state law" studying. For the complete list of all 15 domains with descriptions of what each one actually tests, read the IL-REB Exam Domains 2026: Complete Guide to All 15 Content Areas.

What Happens If You Fail a Portion

Candidates get up to four examination attempts within their two-year eligibility period, which begins once the 75-hour prelicense education is completed (60 hours of Broker Pre-License Topics plus 15 hours of Broker Pre-License Applied Real Estate Principles-Interactive). If you fail either the national or state portion, you retake only that portion on a subsequent sitting - you don't have to redo a portion you already passed, as long as you're still within your eligibility window.

The catch: a fourth unsuccessful attempt requires repeating the entire 75-hour education program and the full examination from scratch, national and state both. That's a meaningful cost and time penalty, which is why treating your first attempt as the real attempt - rather than a "practice run" - pays off. Each sitting also carries the $58 PSI exam fee, so repeated failed attempts add up financially as well. For a full accounting of what the licensing path costs from education through renewal, see the IL-REB Certification Cost 2026: Complete Pricing Breakdown.

Format, Timing, and Test-Day Rules

The IL-REB is a closed-book, computer-based exam offered either at a PSI test center or via remote proctoring. The format itself affects how you should approach pacing toward that passing score:

• Test-center candidates may use an approved basic calculator and PSI-supplied scratch paper - useful for the Real Estate Calculations domain (7% of the national portion) and any math embedded in Financing questions.
• Remote candidates may use neither a calculator nor scratch paper, and receive no breaks during the full 240-minute session. That's a meaningful constraint if you're weak on mental math for prorations, commission splits, or loan-to-value calculations.

Given the no-break, no-calculator reality of remote testing, many candidates find it easier to hit the required percentages at a physical test center, particularly if calculation-heavy questions are a weak spot. Whichever format you choose, the clock keeps running - 150 minutes for 100 national questions, 90 minutes for 40 state questions - so pacing practice under timed conditions before test day is not optional if you're aiming to comfortably clear 70% and 75% rather than scrape by.

If you want a broader sense of how difficult candidates generally find this pacing and content load, the How Hard Is the IL-REB Exam? Complete Difficulty Guide 2026 article breaks down where most time pressure and content difficulty tend to concentrate.

Where to Spend Your Study Hours

Once you know the two cutoffs and the domain weights behind them, the smartest use of a limited study calendar is to allocate hours in proportion to points at stake - not in proportion to how comfortable a topic feels. A simple weighted approach looks like this:

This isn't a generic study calendar - it's built directly from the weighting that determines your national and state scores. A candidate who spends equal time on Property Management (3%) and Illinois Real Estate License Act (40%) is misallocating effort relative to what actually moves the needle on passing. For a structured, step-by-step version of this approach, see the IL-REB Study Guide 2026: How to Pass on Your First Attempt, and use timed practice questions on illinoisrealexam.com to simulate both the 100-question and 40-question sections separately before combining them into full-length runs.

It's also worth remembering that passing the exam is only one checkpoint. The license application must be filed within one year of passing, and an entry-level broker must be sponsored by a managing broker before practicing. If you're weighing whether the whole path - education hours, exam, sponsorship - is worth pursuing given the work involved, the Is the IL-REB Certification Worth It? Complete ROI Analysis 2026 article and the IL-REB Requirements 2026: Eligibility, Prerequisites & How to Qualify guide cover what comes before and after the score report. For a wider look at how often candidates clear both cutoffs on their first try, see IL-REB Pass Rate 2026: What the Data Shows.

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