The theory exam is not an interview and not an essay. It is a run of questions with a clock beside them, and the clock does not wait. Knowing the shape of it in advance costs you nothing on the day and leaves your head free for the thing that actually matters: the traffic situation on the screen.
So this lesson is not about traffic rules but about the exam itself. How many questions, how much time, which question forms exist, how to read a question, what language you get it in, what your booking and your result mean, and how to spend those thirty minutes. The rules themselves live in the other lessons of the route; this is the frame you have to apply them inside.
The numbers everything rests on
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Questions | 50 |
| Time | 30 minutes |
| Pass mark, category B | 44 correct |
| Pass mark, category AM | 43 correct |
| Pass mark, category A | 41 correct |
| Time with an extension | 45 minutes |
The CBR published the 50 questions, the 30 minutes and the pass mark of 44 for category B, the car. For AM and A our practice works with a pass mark of 43 and 41 at the same number of questions and the same time: those are the pass marks of our practice.
Every question counts: the pass mark is counted over the same questions that appear on your screen.
For the car the bar sits at 44 out of 50. That means you may make 6 mistakes and not a seventh. It is a strict line, and it was drawn on purpose: it was recalculated by the research institute RCEC together with the police, VVN, SWOV, OTCRij and KRV, on the principle that the renewed exam should be neither easier nor harder than the old one.
The longer slot of 45 minutes is not a favour you can ask for because you read slowly. It belongs to three situations: an exam with extra time, an exam with an interpreter, and an individually supervised exam. What those variants cost is further down.
What changed on 7 April 2025
Since 7 April 2025 the exam for the car, category B, has been one continuous run with one result. That is a genuine break with the previous design, so old practice books and old stories from friends no longer describe what you will sit.
Before that date the exam consisted of 65 questions in 3 parts, each with its own threshold: hazard perception with 25 questions and a threshold of 13, knowledge with 12 questions and a threshold of 10, and insight with 28 questions and a threshold of 25. You could clear two parts and still fail on the third.
That split is gone. There is no separate hazard-perception part with a photo test; the CBR abolished that part in that form. Hazard perception itself has not left the exam — it has moved into the ordinary questions. In place of the photo test there are now short animations without sound: a few seconds of a realistic traffic situation, after which you say what will happen next or what you should do.
So remember this above all: one block, one result, and hazard perception scattered throughout instead of sitting in its own chapter.
The forms a question can take
The exam uses a handful of question forms. They all weigh the same — there are no bonus points for a harder form.
- Yes/no. A statement or a situation, and you say whether it holds. Two buttons, no middle ground.
- Multiple choice. One correct answer out of 2 to 4 options. Note that there are not always four. A question with only two answers looks harmless and is not.
- Multiple response. You have to tick all the correct answers. A partly ticked question is wrong, even if everything you did tick was right. This is the form that leaks the most points.
- Enter a number. No list of options; you type the value. This form is rare — expect roughly 1 or 2 out of 50.
- Short animation. A silent clip of a situation, followed by a question about what comes next.
The CBR has three more forms: the sleepvraag, where you put things in order inside the picture, the single-sleepvraag, where you drag a single tick into the picture, and the hotspot question, where you tap a place in the picture. Those three are not in our practice yet: what you get here are the four forms above and the animation. Of the 25 samples the CBR publishes, five have been worked through, and in those dragging and tapping did not appear; five samples are not a complete list, so count on meeting one. If you do, the content is the same as what you have practised here; only your finger does something different.
How to read an exam question
The CBR publishes 25 sample questions, and we took 5 of them apart completely. Four things follow that are worth knowing before the day.
The question is inside the picture. Not beside it, not below it. You do not read a text first and then look at an image: the image is the question. If you are used to books full of standalone text questions, you will lose time here just looking for the words.
The white car is you. There is a white car in the picture, and the question is always about what its driver should do. «Mag je hier inhalen?» — may you overtake here — means: may you, from that car, at that moment.
The number of answers varies. Example 9 had 2 of them, on whether a post with a white reflector belongs to your left or to your right.
A number is a number, not a sentence. Example 20 asked for a speed, and the answer was 15 kilometres per hour. Example 25 was an animation whose correct answer was the bicycle.
The CBR itself notes that these samples are for practice only and that the real exam may differ. They are a lower bound on what you can meet, not a complete list.
Traps in the wording
Most mistakes made by well-prepared candidates are not knowledge failures but reading failures. Four of them come back again and again.
Mag against moet. «Mag je hier keren?» — may you turn around here — asks whether something is allowed. «Moet je hier stoppen?» — must you stop here — asks whether something is compulsory. Between the two lies a whole field of things you may do but need not do. Answer the question you expected instead of the question on the screen and you fall here.
Negations. «Which driver does not have to give way?» inverts the correct answer. Read such questions twice: first the sentence, then the little word that turns it around.
The subject of the sentence. In Dutch law a bestuurder is not the same as a motorist: a cyclist is a bestuurder too, a pedestrian is not. In the same way voertuig and motorrijtuig are different words, and whether a rule reaches a bicycle depends on which one stands in the article. Voorrang verlenen and voor laten gaan also look alike and are two different duties.
Almost-right answers. A distractor is usually an answer that would be correct in some other situation. So do not ask yourself «is this true?» but «is this true here, in this picture, for this driver?».
The language of the exam
The exam exists in Dutch and in English. Russian and Ukrainian do not exist as exam languages; for those there is only the interpreter variant.
| Variant | CBR fee |
|---|---|
| Dutch | € 50.50 |
| English | € 57.00 |
| With extra time | € 64.00 |
| With an interpreter or individual supervision | € 118.50 |
The surcharge for English is € 6.50 and applies to the car category only. Extra time costs € 13.50 on top of the base fee; if you hold a dyslexia certificate you can claim that amount back within 14 days of the exam through Mijn CBR, and not afterwards.
The figure of € 118.50 is a full fee, not a surcharge. The interpreter is not included: you find and pay that person separately. An interpreter also translates words, not legal categories — the exam still runs on Dutch concepts. The trade-off between the variants is set out in which language to sit the theory in.
Booking, age and your identity document
Car theory is allowed from 16, moped theory from 15.5 and motorcycle theory from 17. Booking is allowed earlier than sitting: you may book a theory exam up to 20 weeks before you reach the age, but on the day itself you must have reached it.
Choose your date and time deliberately. An exam from 18:00 or at the weekend costs € 6.25 extra. If you cancel or move the date, the CBR withholds € 12.70 in administration costs for a theory exam — annoying, but still far cheaper than sitting an exam you are not going to pass.
Bring a valid identity document. The duty to identify yourself does not come from the road traffic act but from the Wet op de uitgebreide identificatieplicht and applies from 14; the document has to be original and valid.
After the exam
Your result stays valid for 18 months. The Reglement rijbewijzen puts it literally as «een jaar en zes maanden», and planning on one year squeezes your practical exam for no reason.
If you fail you may enrol again. Each new exam does cost the full fee again, while moving a date does not. So if you doubt whether you are ready, postponing is cheaper than pushing on — how to make that call is in the last week before the exam.
The whole route after the theory, with ages, amounts and the health declaration, is in from zero to a licence.
The clock: how to spend the time
30 minutes for 50 questions works out at 36 seconds per question. The clock counts down 1800 seconds, and that piece of arithmetic is the whole secret of pacing. With the extension to 45 minutes it becomes 54 seconds.
In 36 seconds you can recognise a situation. You cannot derive a rule in it, look up an article in it, or talk yourself out of a doubt in it. That is why you practise not «until the right answer» but until recognition: you need to know the situation before you have finished reading it.
In practice: read the question once properly, find the white car, decide what applies in that situation and choose. Getting stuck costs you the time of two other questions. You may make 6 mistakes; at 7 you have failed, and mistakes caused by running out of time count exactly as much as mistakes caused by not knowing.
How our practice mirrors the exam
The mock exam on the exam page runs on exactly the same numbers: 50 questions, 30 minutes, pass mark 44. It is not there to measure your knowledge but to get you used to the pace, so sit it in one go, without a break and without looking anything up.
Under the question our page carries the buttons «Previous», «Next» and «Flag»: a question you are unsure about you flag, you move on, and at the end you come back to it. That is how our page is built; about how the screen looks at the CBR we say nothing here.
We put the mix of question forms together ourselves, so that no form drops out of your practice: multiple choice 62 %, yes/no 14 %, multiple response 14 %, entering a number 10 %. Those are our targets for the whole question bank and not a measured mix of the exam. At least 30 % of the questions hang on a drawing or an animation — that too is our own lower bound, and we are raising it. The percentage for number entry applies to the bank and not to one sitting: a single mock exam contains at most 2 number-entry questions, exactly the rarity named above.
Individual topics are practised on practice. And because the language needs as much practice as the rule, reading the question in the exam language sits separately on language training: the question in Dutch or English, the explanation in your own language.
What to remember
- 50 questions, 30 minutes, 44 correct for the car: one continuous run with one result.
- 36 seconds per question means recognising, not reasoning.
- The question sits inside the picture, and the white car is you.
- On multiple response only the complete set scores.
- Mag, moet and negations decide the answer more often than the rule does.
- Dutch or English; Russian and Ukrainian do not exist as exam languages.
- Your result stays valid for a year and a half; a new exam costs the full fee again.
Where these numbers come from
- CBR, «Vernieuwd theorie-examen B-rijbewijs vanaf 7 april» (20.02.2025) — 50 questions, 30 minutes, pass mark 44, one continuous run.
- CBR, «Voorbeeldvragen theorie-examen auto» — the question forms and the way a question is put.
- CBR Tarieven 2026 — every amount in this lesson.
- Reglement rijbewijzen art. 2 and 7 — the formula «een jaar en zes maanden» (there for the theory result at AM and A; the CBR applies the same term for B).
- Reglement rijbewijzen art. 5 and WVW 1994 art. 110 — the minimum ages.
- Wet op de uitgebreide identificatieplicht — identifying yourself from 14.