Licensing

The cost of failing your knowledge test, province by province

Drive IQ Canada Editorial Team · July 13, 2026 · 8 min read

Facts verified: July 13, 2026

Every figure below comes from the licensing authority or the fee regulation itself, and each jurisdiction's sources are listed at the bottom. Where an authority publishes nothing, this article says so rather than repeating a number from a practice-test site.

Most people worry about the fee. The fee is almost never the real cost. A failed knowledge test costs you between $5 and $47 depending on where you live, and that is the smallest thing that happens to you.

What actually costs you is time, and the amount varies more than almost any other rule in Canadian licensing. Fail in Alberta and you can be back the next morning. Fail in Quebec and you are locked out for 28 days, and every day of that month is a day your learner's permit clock is still running. Fail three times in New Brunswick and you lose the ability to take the test online at all.

The waiting period is the punishment

Here is what each jurisdiction makes you do before you can try again.

Jurisdiction	Wait before you can retake
Quebec	28 days
Manitoba	7 days
British Columbia	1 day
Alberta	1 day (once per day)
Saskatchewan	1 day (once per day)
Yukon	1 day (next day)
Nova Scotia	0 days online, 1 day in person
New Brunswick	Officially contradictory — see below
Ontario	No waiting period published
Prince Edward Island	No waiting period published
Northwest Territories	No waiting period published
Newfoundland and Labrador	No waiting period published
Nunavut	No waiting period published

Quebec is the outlier, and it is not close. The SAAQ's binding exam policy sets the retake delay for a Class 5 theory exam at 28 days, and the public Class 5 page repeats it: *"En cas d'échec, un délai de 28 jours est requis avant de reprendre l'examen."* Four weeks. Manitoba's seven days is the next longest, and after that the country drops to a single day or nothing at all.

Five jurisdictions publish no waiting period whatsoever. That is worth stating plainly, because it is frequently reported as "same-day retake allowed" and that is not what the sources say. Ontario, PEI, the Northwest Territories, Newfoundland and Nunavut simply do not address it. Ontario's only next-day wait is a penalty for *cheating*, which implies there is no wait otherwise but never says so. The honest answer for these five is "not published", not "zero".

New Brunswick contradicts itself. The Government of New Brunswick says *"Try again whenever you're ready, there's no waiting period to retake a test."* Service New Brunswick, which runs the online written exam, says the opposite: *"If you do not pass your test, you must wait 1 day before your second attempt. If you do not pass your test on the second attempt, you must wait 1 week before attempting the third time."* Both are official. The likely explanation is that one governs in-person testing and the other online, but neither page says so, so we do not assert it.

Where failing escalates

In most of Canada, failing twice costs exactly twice what failing once costs. Three jurisdictions are different.

New Brunswick has the only true repeat-failure ladder in the country. On the online channel: one day after the first failure, one week after the second, and after three failed attempts you lose the online option entirely and must test in person at a Driver Examiner office. Each retest must also be purchased separately, and it is purchased per failed test — New Brunswick runs two separately scored written exams (Rules of the Road, and Road Sign Recognition), so you re-buy only the one you failed.

Quebec escalates for cheating, not for failing. Repeated ordinary failure stays at 28 days each time. But a candidate caught cheating faces a 90-day wait, rising to 180 days on a second offence.

British Columbia's much-quoted escalation is a misreading. ICBC does cut you off from the online test for six months after three disqualifications — but a disqualification is a proctoring violation, not a failure. A second or third ordinary failure in BC is still a one-day wait. If you have read that BC punishes repeat failures, that is where it came from, and it is wrong.

The consequence that catches people out

The one that actually ends journeys is not the retake rule at all. It is the permit clock.

Nova Scotia: *"You must successfully pass the road test to enter the next GDL stage before your learner's licence expires. If you do not, you must rewrite the learner's test before you may renew your learner's licence."*
Prince Edward Island: an instruction permit expired between one and three years requires passing the written exam again; expired more than three years requires the written exam plus a 365-day waiting period.
Ontario: the whole graduated process must be finished within five years. Miss it and you start over.
Quebec: the learner's permit is valid 18 months. Miss it and the replacement is valid only 12.

None of these are triggered by failing. They are triggered by *taking too long*, which is what repeated failure does to you.

What it costs in money

Jurisdiction	First attempt	Each retake
Northwest Territories	$47	$47
New Brunswick	$25 + HST	Chargeable, amount not published
Saskatchewan	$25	$25
Prince Edward Island	$20 (+ $20 for the permit if you pass)	$20
Yukon	$20	$20
British Columbia	$15 (free at 65+)	$15
Nova Scotia	$15.03 (tax included)	$15.03
Manitoba	$10	$10
Alberta	$5 government fee, up to $17 in total	Same
Ontario	No separate fee (bundled)	$16
Nunavut	$30 (bundled)	Not published
Newfoundland and Labrador	No fee	No fee

Four of these need explanation, because a bare number would mislead:

Ontario does not charge for your first knowledge test. The $159.75 G1 package covers the knowledge test, your first G2 road test, and a five-year licence. The $16 is what each *additional* attempt costs. So in Ontario, failing is the only time the test has a price.
Newfoundland does not charge for the written test at all. The province's exhaustive ministerial fee schedule contains a road-test line but no written-test line anywhere in its twenty pages. The Class 5 test is taken online through MyGovNL at no cost; you pay $60 for the learner's permit afterward, if you pass.
Alberta has no single fee. The province sets a $5 government fee, and private registry agents — who actually deliver the test — may add a service charge capped at $12. You will pay somewhere between $5 and $17 depending on which registry you walk into.
Nunavut's $30 is not a knowledge-test fee. It is the statutory "examination of applicant" fee, and one prescribed fee covers the whole examination: knowledge test, vision test, and road test together. It is not comparable to a province that prices the written test on its own.

The Northwest Territories has the most expensive knowledge test in Canada, at $47 an attempt — nine times Alberta's government fee, and roughly three times what most provinces charge. It is also the one place where the territory's own regulation and its booking page disagree: the binding Driver's Licence Regulations say $47, while the Department of Infrastructure's page displays $41. We publish the regulation.

The honest summary

If you are studying for a knowledge test in Canada, the risk of failing is not really financial. In ten of thirteen jurisdictions a retake costs less than a restaurant meal, and in one of them it costs nothing.

The risk is the calendar. It is 28 days in Quebec, seven in Manitoba, a forced return to an in-person office in New Brunswick, and — everywhere — the quiet pressure of a permit that expires whether you pass or not.