How do you get a drone license?

There is no drone license as such — the FAA issues a Remote Pilot Certificate with a small UAS rating. The route is: create an IACRA profile to get an FAA Tracking Number, book a Knowledge Testing Center, pass the Unmanned Aircraft General (UAG) knowledge test, file Form 8710-13 in IACRA with your 17-digit exam ID, clear a TSA background check, then print the temporary certificate from IACRA while the permanent one is mailed.

How much does the Part 107 test cost?

The FAA states that Knowledge Testing Centers charge approximately $175 to take the initial aeronautical knowledge test. The word “approximately” is the FAA’s: the testing centre sets and collects the fee, not the agency, so confirm the exact figure when you book. Read from the FAA’s cost FAQ on 2 September 2026.

How much does a drone pilot license cost in total?

The FAA charges nothing for the certificate itself. The costs are the testing centre’s fee for the knowledge test — approximately $175, once — and $5 to register the aircraft under part 48, valid for three years. Staying current afterwards is free. A pilot who already holds a part 61 certificate with a current flight review skips the knowledge test entirely, which leaves the $5 registration as the only unavoidable cost.

Do you need a license to fly a drone for fun?

No. Flying purely for recreation falls under the Exception for Limited Recreational Operations of Unmanned Aircraft (49 U.S.C. § 44809), which requires the Recreational UAS Safety Test — TRUST — which the FAA states is free and online, plus carrying proof of completion. A Remote Pilot Certificate is for flying for work or business. The FAA’s own advice where the line is unclear: “When in doubt, assume Part 107.”

Do you need an instructor to sign you off for the Part 107 test?

No. The FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix states that the UAG test requires no instructor endorsement or other form of written authorization, and none is required to retest either — including after a failure, which carries a 14-day waiting period instead.

How long does it take to get a drone license?

The FAA publishes only one duration in the process: it may take up to 48 hours from the test date for your knowledge test to appear in IACRA, so the application cannot be filed before then. It does not publish how long TSA vetting takes, and this page will not invent a number. What it does publish is that you fly on a temporary certificate printed from IACRA as soon as vetting clears, rather than waiting for the permanent one in the post.

Do I have to renew a drone license?

Not with a test and not with a fee. Aeronautical knowledge recency is kept by completing a free online recurrent course every 24 calendar months. The recurrent knowledge test was removed in 2021; material that says you must retake an exam every two years is describing a rule that no longer exists.

How to get a drone license

The FAA does not issue a drone license. It issues a Remote Pilot Certificate with a small UAS rating, and it publishes the route to one as seven numbered steps. This page walks those steps in the FAA’s own order, prints what each one costs next to the sentence the FAA used, and flags the two places people are turned away at the door — neither of which is the exam.

First: check that you need one at all

The FAA splits drone flying in two, and the split is about why you are flying rather than what you are flying. Part 107 is the rule for flying for work or business, and it is the rule this certificate belongs to. Flying purely for fun falls under a statutory carve-out, the Exception for Limited Recreational Operations of Unmanned Aircraft at 49 U.S.C. § 44809, which asks for the Recreational UAS Safety Test — TRUST — instead of a certificate. The FAA states that TRUST is free and online.

So the honest first answer to “how do I get a drone license” is that a large minority of the people asking do not need one, and can be legal this afternoon at no cost. The FAA also publishes the tie-breaker for anyone unsure, and it is worth quoting exactly: “When in doubt, assume Part 107.”

This site sells practice for the part 107 knowledge test, so it has an obvious interest in you sitting that test. Read the paragraph above with that in mind, and then note that it is the FAA’s own division, on the FAA’s own page, linked at the foot of this one. If you are flying for fun, take TRUST and keep your $175.

Step 1 — the eligibility list, and the two ages that are not the same number

The FAA publishes four eligibility requirements for a first-time applicant. They are short, and none of them involves flying hours, a medical certificate or an instructor.

Be at least 16 years old.
Be able to read, speak, write, and understand English.
Be in a physical and mental condition to safely fly a drone.
Pass the initial aeronautical knowledge exam, “Unmanned Aircraft General – Small (UAG)”.

⚠️ Two ages, and they are not the same one. Sixteen is the age to HOLD the certificate. The minimum age to SIT the knowledge test is fourteen — the Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix prints 14 in the age column of the UAG row. A fourteen-year-old can pass the test and then wait; every prep site read while building this property printed exactly one of these two numbers as “the age requirement”, which is wrong half the time.

Step 2 — get an FTN, before you book anything

Step one in the FAA’s numbering is not the exam. It is obtaining an FAA Tracking Number by creating a profile in the Integrated Airman Certification and Rating Application system — IACRA — and the FAA says to do it prior to registering for a knowledge test.

The reason it comes first is administrative rather than bureaucratic: the FTN is what ties the test you sit to the application you will file afterwards, and it is printed on your Airman Knowledge Test Report. Booking a test without one is the most common way to create two records that then have to be reconciled by a human.

Step 3 — book a Knowledge Testing Center, and bring ID that will actually be accepted

The FAA’s step two is to schedule an appointment with an FAA-approved Knowledge Testing Center and to bring a government-issued photo ID. That sentence hides the single most common reason a candidate is sent home without sitting, and it is worth reading the testing matrix rather than the summary.

Identification has to be valid and current, and between them your documents have to show four things: photo, date of birth, signature, and a physical residential address. More than one document may be used to cover the four.

⚠️ The trap is the address. The matrix names the addresses that are NOT acceptable: a post office box, a rural route, a flight school address unless you live there, and a commercial business or employer address. A driver licence carrying a PO box is the classic failure. If none of your documents show a residential address, the matrix lists separate acceptable forms of address verification — and an applicant under 18 without acceptable identification may be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian, who presents their own ID and attests to the applicant’s identity.

What the Part 107 test costs, and what a drone pilot license costs all in

There is no single price for a drone pilot license, and the shape of the answer is the answer. The FAA charges nothing for the certificate itself. What money there is goes to a testing centre, once, and to the aircraft register, every three years.

Each figure below is printed as its source words it, and the source’s own sentence is in the last column. Note in particular that the FAA writes “approximately” about the test fee, because the Knowledge Testing Center sets and collects it — the agency deliberately declined to state a fixed price, and a site that prints a flat number is stating something the FAA did not.

What	What it costs	Who charges it	The source’s own words
Sitting the UAG knowledge test, per attempt	approximately $175	the Knowledge Testing Center — not the FAA	“Knowledge Testing Centers charge approximately $175 to people seeking to take the initial aeronautical knowledge test.”
Registering the aircraft under 14 CFR part 48	$5, valid for 3 years	the FAA, through FAADroneZone	“Registration costs $5 and is valid for 3 years.”
Staying current, every 24 calendar months	no cost	nobody — it is an online course, not a test	“Complete the Part 107 Small UAS Recurrent (ALC-677) online training course (no cost)”

Test fee read from the FAA’s cost FAQ on 2 September 2026; registration and recurrent training re-read from the FAA’s own pages the same day. Full documents, with what each says about its own currency, at the foot of this page.

⚠️ Of everything on this page, this is the number most likely to be wrong when you read it. It is a third party’s price, quoted approximately, on the one FAA page cited here that carries no “last updated” line of its own — so nothing on that page would tell you it had drifted. That is why the figure is declared to this property’s staleness gate with the date it was read, and why the sentence above it is the FAA’s rather than ours. Confirm it at the point of booking, which is the only moment the real number exists.

Step 4 — sit the UAG knowledge test

The test is 60 multiple-choice questions in 120 minutes — 2 minutes each — with three options per question and one correct response, and 70% passes, which is 42 of 60. Five areas of operation, weighted by a percentage band the FAA publishes in Appendix 1 of the Airman Certification Standards, and the largest of them by a distance is Operations at 35–45%.

Two procedural points that are specific to this test and that the matrix states plainly. The UAG requires no instructor endorsement and no other written authorisation, either to sit it or to retake it — which is unusual among FAA knowledge tests and means nobody has to sign anything for you. And if you fail, there is a 14-day waiting period before you may retest, and you have to hand the failed test report to the testing centre when you do.

What comes out of the room is not just a score. The Airman Knowledge Test Report prints ACS codes — one for each knowledge element you were found deficient in — and does not reprint the questions. That list, rather than the number, is what tells you what to study. It is also the thing this site’s full-length mock reproduces.

What is actually on the test → Take a free full-length mock → Every ACS code in the FAA’s wording →

Step 5 — file Form 8710-13 in IACRA

With a passing test report, you complete FAA Form 8710-13 — the Airman Certificate and/or Rating Application — electronically in IACRA. The application type is “Pilot”, the certification is “Remote Pilot”, and you sign and submit it electronically.

The field that stops people is the 17-digit Knowledge Test Exam ID. The FAA warns that it may take up to 48 hours from the test date for the knowledge test to appear in IACRA, so an application attempted the same evening will simply not find it. That is a wait, not a fault.

Step 6 — TSA vetting, then a temporary certificate you can print

The application goes to a TSA security background check. When it clears, a confirmation email arrives with instructions for printing a copy of the temporary remote pilot certificate from IACRA — and that temporary certificate is what lets you start flying under part 107.

The permanent certificate is mailed once the rest of the FAA’s internal processing is complete. From then on the rule is simply that you have your Remote Pilot Certificate available whenever you fly.

The FAA does not publish how long the TSA check takes, so this page does not either. What it does publish is the order — vetting, then temporary certificate by print, then permanent certificate by post — and that order is the useful part: nobody is waiting on a card in the mail before they can fly.

Step 7 — register the aircraft, which is a separate thing from the certificate

Certifying the pilot and registering the aircraft are two different transactions with two different fees, and conflating them is why cost answers in this category vary so widely. Registration under 14 CFR part 48 is $5, valid for 3 years, done through FAADroneZone, and the drone has to be marked with its registration number.

Since 16 September 2023, a drone that requires an FAA registration number is also required to broadcast Remote ID information, unless it is flown within a FAA-Recognized Identification Area. That is a rule about the aircraft, and it is on the test.

If you already hold a part 61 certificate, you skip the test and the fee

This is the shortcut most cost pages never mention, and it removes the largest number on the page. A pilot who holds a certificate issued under 14 CFR part 61 and has completed a flight review within the previous 24 months does not sit the UAG knowledge test at all.

Instead: take the free online Part 107 Small UAS Initial course, ALC-451, on the FAA Safety Team site; complete Form 8710-13 in IACRA; then make an appointment to validate your identity, bringing the completed form, proof of your current flight review, photo ID and your course completion certificate.

An FAA Flight Standards District Office (FSDO)
An FAA-designated pilot examiner (DPE)
An airman certification representative (ACR)
An FAA-certificated flight instructor (CFI) — but note that CFIs cannot issue temporary certificates; they can process applications for applicants who do not want one

The representative signs the application and issues a temporary airman certificate, with the permanent one arriving by US mail within several weeks. On this route the only unavoidable cost in the whole process is the $5 aircraft registration.

Then it stays current by itself, for nothing

There is no renewal fee and no renewal exam. The recurrent knowledge TEST was removed in 2021, and aeronautical knowledge recency is now kept by completing a free online training course every 24 calendar months — ALC-677 for any part 107 remote pilot certificate holder, or ALC-515 for a part 107 holder who also holds a part 61 certificate with a current flight review. The FAA’s page states the cost of both as “no cost”.

This is the single most repeated wrong answer in this category, and it matters to anyone budgeting: the recurring cost of holding a remote pilot certificate is zero. The only thing that recurs with a price attached is the $5 aircraft registration, every three years.

Part 107 recurrent training →

Now find out which ACS codes you would get back.

A full-length mock at the FAA’s published weighting, free, reported the way a real test report reports it.

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Frequently asked

How do you get a drone license?: There is no drone license as such — the FAA issues a Remote Pilot Certificate with a small UAS rating. The route is: create an IACRA profile to get an FAA Tracking Number, book a Knowledge Testing Center, pass the Unmanned Aircraft General (UAG) knowledge test, file Form 8710-13 in IACRA with your 17-digit exam ID, clear a TSA background check, then print the temporary certificate from IACRA while the permanent one is mailed.
How much does the Part 107 test cost?: The FAA states that Knowledge Testing Centers charge approximately $175 to take the initial aeronautical knowledge test. The word “approximately” is the FAA’s: the testing centre sets and collects the fee, not the agency, so confirm the exact figure when you book. Read from the FAA’s cost FAQ on 2 September 2026.
How much does a drone pilot license cost in total?: The FAA charges nothing for the certificate itself. The costs are the testing centre’s fee for the knowledge test — approximately $175, once — and $5 to register the aircraft under part 48, valid for three years. Staying current afterwards is free. A pilot who already holds a part 61 certificate with a current flight review skips the knowledge test entirely, which leaves the $5 registration as the only unavoidable cost.
How old do you have to be to get a drone license?: You must be 16 to hold the Remote Pilot Certificate, but only 14 to sit the knowledge test — the Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix prints 14 in the age column for the UAG. They are two different numbers and most pages print only one.
Do you need a license to fly a drone for fun?: No. Flying purely for recreation falls under the Exception for Limited Recreational Operations of Unmanned Aircraft (49 U.S.C. § 44809), which requires the Recreational UAS Safety Test — TRUST — which the FAA states is free and online, plus carrying proof of completion. A Remote Pilot Certificate is for flying for work or business. The FAA’s own advice where the line is unclear: “When in doubt, assume Part 107.”
Do you need an instructor to sign you off for the Part 107 test?: No. The FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix states that the UAG test requires no instructor endorsement or other form of written authorization, and none is required to retest either — including after a failure, which carries a 14-day waiting period instead.
How long does it take to get a drone license?: The FAA publishes only one duration in the process: it may take up to 48 hours from the test date for your knowledge test to appear in IACRA, so the application cannot be filed before then. It does not publish how long TSA vetting takes, and this page will not invent a number. What it does publish is that you fly on a temporary certificate printed from IACRA as soon as vetting clears, rather than waiting for the permanent one in the post.
Do I have to renew a drone license?: Not with a test and not with a fee. Aeronautical knowledge recency is kept by completing a free online recurrent course every 24 calendar months. The recurrent knowledge test was removed in 2021; material that says you must retake an exam every two years is describing a rule that no longer exists.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from one of the documents below, with the date it was read and what the document says about its own currency. Regulations change by amendment; where a source has moved on since the date shown, the source is right and this page is out of date.

FAA — Become a Certificated Remote Pilot Read September 2, 2026· Page states “Last updated: Tuesday, June 9, 2026” The certification path itself, step by step and in the FAA’s own numbering, for both routes: the first-time applicant who sits the UAG test, and the existing part 61 holder who takes the free ALC-451 course instead. Also the current recurrent training courses by number — ALC-677 for any part 107 certificate holder, ALC-515 for one who also holds a part 61 certificate with a current flight review — which the page states are at no cost. Re-read in full on 2026-09-02 for the licence-process guide; the seven steps and the June 2026 date were unchanged.
FAA — How much does it cost to get a remote pilot certificate? (FAQ) Read September 2, 2026· ⚠️ The page carries NO date of its own — the only FAA source on this site that does not The one FAA surface that answers the cost question, and it answers it in a single sentence: “Knowledge Testing Centers charge approximately $175 to people seeking to take the initial aeronautical knowledge test.” Two things about it matter more than the number. The FAA writes APPROXIMATELY, because the testing centre sets and collects the fee — so a site printing a flat $175 is printing something the FAA declined to say. And this page publishes no “Last updated” line, unlike every other FAA page cited here, so nothing on the page itself would tell you it had gone stale. That is exactly the condition `freshness.config.mjs` exists for, and the fee is declared there for that reason.
FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix Read September 2, 2026· Revised 10/22/25 — the revision date is printed in the footer of every page The document the testing centre itself works from, and the source for what happens in the room rather than what the regulation says: the UAG row (60 questions, minimum age 14, 2.0 hours, passing score 70), that the UAG needs no instructor endorsement to sit or to retake, the 14-day wait after a failure, that ACS codes are printed on the Airman Knowledge Test Report, and the identification rules — including the one that turns people away at the door, that the ID must carry a physical residential address and a PO box or a business address will not do.
FAA — Certificated Remote Pilots including Commercial Operators Read September 2, 2026· Page states “Last updated: Tuesday, March 25, 2025” Registration at $5 for three years, the Remote ID broadcast requirement from 16 September 2023 unless flown within a FRIA, and the list of sections that may be waived under § 107.205. Re-read on 2026-09-02: “Registration costs $5 and is valid for 3 years” still stands word for word, which is why the fee table cites this page rather than a number somebody remembered.
FAA — Drones by the Numbers / Recreational Flyers & Modeler Community-Based Organizations Read September 2, 2026· Page states “Last updated: Wednesday, March 18, 2026” The line between the two regimes, in the FAA’s words rather than ours: part 107 is the rule for flying for work or business, and the Exception for Limited Recreational Operations (49 U.S.C. § 44809) is the carve-out for flying purely for fun, which requires TRUST — free and online — instead of a certificate. Cited on the licence-process guide so that a reader who does not need a remote pilot certificate finds that out before paying for a knowledge test, and for the FAA’s own tie-breaker: “When in doubt, assume Part 107.”
FAA-S-ACS-10B — Remote Pilot – Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Airman Certification Standards Read August 27, 2026· Material in FAA-S-ACS-10B is effective April 6, 2021 The shape of the test and the ACS codes. Appendix 1 publishes the 60-question length, the two-hour limit, the 70% passing score and the share of the test each area of operation gets. Appendix 3 publishes that a passing test report is valid for 24 calendar months.
14 CFR part 107 — Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (eCFR) Read August 27, 2026· eCFR reports title 14 up to date as of 2026-08-25 The regulation itself, and the only acceptable source on this site for an operating limit, a category, an eligibility rule or a recency rule. Amendment 107-8 (86 FR 4381, 15 January 2021) is the one that rewrote night operations and added operations over human beings.
14 CFR part 48 — Registration and Marking Requirements for Small Unmanned Aircraft (eCFR) Read August 27, 2026· eCFR reports title 14 up to date as of 2026-08-25 Registration: the $5 fee, the three-year certificate, the 0.55-pound line, and the marking requirement.

Page facts last verified September 2, 2026.

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Part 107 Drills is independent practice material. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration, PSI Services LLC, or any knowledge testing centre. Every question here is original and none is taken from any actual FAA knowledge test. Regulatory text and FAA publications are works of the United States Government and are in the public domain; where this site states a rule, it cites the section it came from and the date that section was read.