The passing score on the UAG is 70 percent of the scored questions. The PSI bulletin effective 29 September 2025 uses 60 scored questions plus 5 unscored validation questions, so 70 percent is 42 scored questions correct, in 120 minutes. Section 107.67(c) says the Administrator specifies that passing grade.
How the scored form is built
You will not see a label on the five validation items. Treat all 65 as if they count, because a skipped item you thought was practice can be one of the 60. The ACS says 70 percent or better is satisfactory for the Remote Pilot Certificate knowledge test. An older percentage table still printed in an ACS appendix is not the scored split this course uses. The bulletin weights the scored questions as regulations 48 percent, operations 25 percent, airspace 20 percent, weather 5 percent, and loading and performance 2 percent. A miss in the large regulations slice costs more of the 42 than a miss in loading and performance, and both slices still contain short items with a single correct choice.
The test cost page covers the fee. What makes the 42 feel harder than a percentage is on the how hard page. If you finish under 70 percent, the retest wait is 14 calendar days. The score report is the document you bring back.
Regulations is the large slice, and applicability is only part of it
Regulations is roughly 48 percent of the scored form, and it covers far more than whether Part 107 applies. Applicability is one topic inside that slice. The rest includes the remote pilot's duties, the operating limits, operations over people, and the waiver rules. Section 107.1(a) applies the part to registration, airman certification, and operation of civil small unmanned aircraft systems in the United States, and to eligibility to operate over human beings. Section 107.3 defines a small unmanned aircraft as less than 55 pounds on takeoff, including everything attached. A photographer flying a 4-pound civil drone to shoot real estate for a client is inside that scope. The flight is civil, the aircraft is small, and nothing in the exception list removes it. Missing that item costs one of the 42, the same way missing a duty or a waiver item does.
Section 107.1(b) excludes air carrier operations, any aircraft subject to 49 USC 44809, an operation the holder of a section 333 or 49 USC 44807 exemption elects to conduct under that exemption, and an operation someone elects to conduct under Part 91 with a small unmanned aircraft that has an airworthiness certificate. A hobbyist flying strictly for fun under the recreational exception is in the 44809 exclusion. A county sheriff's office flying as a public aircraft operation is outside the civil scope of §107.1(a). Separately, AC 107-2A paragraph 4.1 states that Part 107 does not apply to amateur rockets, moored balloons, unmanned free balloons, or kites. Those operations are governed by other parts. Calling a kite a drone does not pull it into the UAG's operating rules.
The other weights still count toward the same 42
Airspace is about 20 percent of the scored test. It is smaller than regulations, and it still moves the score. One plain item in that slice is the scale of a VFR sectional chart: 1:500,000. The wrong choices on that item are 1:1,000,000 and 1:24,000. When a question says the figure is a sectional, read it at the sectional scale. Do not import a different map's ratio because the sheet looks detailed.
Loading and performance is about 2 percent, the smallest slice. It will not decide most score reports by itself, and it is still scored. One item in it is a one-line equilibrium statement. In steady, unaccelerated flight, lift equals weight. Lift equal to drag is the wrong pairing. "Always greater than weight" is also wrong, because the question is the steady, unaccelerated case, not a climb. A mapping multirotor in a steady hover, not climbing and not accelerating, is that case: lift equals weight. The moment the aircraft is accelerating or established in a climb, you have left the condition the item describes. You do not answer "always greater than weight" in order to sound conservative.
The traps those three items share
People miss the score by studying the smallest slice as if it were half the test, and they miss individual items by importing a neighboring rule. The applicability trap is to put every unmanned object, and every government flight, under Part 107, or to treat a paid civil flight as a hobby because the aircraft is light. The chart trap is to memorize a scale from a topographic map or a world chart and paste it onto a sectional. The performance trap is to answer with the force pair you remember from drag, or to claim lift is always greater than weight because aircraft fly. Steady and unaccelerated is the whole condition. Lift equals weight there, and nowhere does that sentence say lift equals drag.
Score practice sets the way the UAG is scored: 70 percent or better is satisfactory, which is at least 42 of the 60 scored questions. Use the free practice test as a sample, then the full course at pricing.