Texas Retake Rules & Pass Rates

Texas publishes no mandatory wait between attempts. What it publishes instead is a budget: one fee buys three examinations of each part of the test on a single application, and if you have not qualified after the third, you file a new application and pay again. Nothing in the law makes you wait a set number of days in between. In practice the delay is whatever the office schedule gives you, so book the next attempt as soon as you know you need it.

Source: Texas Transportation Code Sec. 521.161(d): "On payment of the required fee, an applicant is entitled to three examinations of each element under Subsection (b) for each application to qualify for a driver's license. If the applicant has not qualified after the third examination, the applicant must submit a new application accompanied by the required fee." No waiting interval appears in Sec. 521.161, in the Texas Driver Handbook (DL-7), Revised January 2026, Chapter 1, or on the Department of Public Safety driver license pages. · Verified Sep 2026

The application fee paid before testing covers the exams; the application is held for 90 days, and after 90 days or three failed exams a new application and fee are required. (The original Class C fee is $33 ages 18-84, $16 under 18 learner license, per Appendix D.)

Source: Texas Driver Handbook (DL-7), Revised January 2026, Chapter 1 'Examinations', p. 7: "your application will be held for 90 days. After 90 days or three failed exams, a new application and fee will be required." · Verified Aug 2026

Texas publishes no knowledge-test pass rate. The USA TODAY Blueprint analysis that supplies this figure for 37 other jurisdictions covered 36 states' agency-provided results for 2020 through 2023, and Texas was not among the agencies that supplied data. No TxDPS annual report, legislative audit, or news report citing agency data publishes a knowledge-exam pass rate for the state. Figures do circulate, and none of them qualify. The pass rates that appear on driving-school and test-prep sites are for the road test rather than the knowledge exam, and they are unsourced. Recording one of those as a Texas fact would put an invented number in front of a reader who has no way to check it, which is worse than leaving the question unanswered.

Source: No official source exists. Checked: TxDPS driver-license pages and published reports; the USA TODAY Blueprint pass-rate analysis (Apr 18, 2024), whose dataset covers 36 states' agency-provided results for 2020-2023 and does not include Texas; and news searches for agency-cited figures. Third-party pass rates found in searching are road-test numbers from driving-school sites with no stated source, which the sourcing rules exclude. · Verified Sep 2026