The Series 7 (General Securities Representative) exam has 125 scored questions (plus 5 unscored), a 72 passing score, and a 3-hour-45-minute limit. The fee is $395, you must first pass the SIE and be sponsored by a firm, and the first-time pass rate is about 65%. It's the "top-off" exam that qualifies you to sell nearly every securities product.
The Series 7 exam — officially the General Securities Representative Qualification Examination — is FINRA's assessment of whether you're ready to work as a full general securities representative. Passing it qualifies you to solicit, purchase, and sell a broad range of products: corporate stocks and bonds, municipal securities, options, investment company products, direct participation programs, and variable contracts. It's often called the "top-off" exam because it builds on the foundational knowledge tested by the SIE.
The Series 7 is a co-requisite with the SIE exam: you need to pass both to earn the General Securities Representative registration. Unlike the SIE, which anyone can self-enroll for, the Series 7 requires you to be sponsored by a FINRA member firm — in practice, your employer. That's why most Series 7 candidates are already hired and studying on a firm's timeline, and why firms usually pay the exam and prep costs.
| Scored questions | 125 (plus 5 unscored pretest) |
| Time limit | 3 hours 45 minutes (225 minutes) |
| Format | Multiple choice, four options (A–D) |
| Passing score | 72 (scaled, 0–100) · ~90 of 125 correct |
| Fee | $395 (non-refundable) |
| Eligibility | Age 18+, SIE + firm sponsorship required |
| Delivery | Prometric center or online proctored |
| Prerequisite | SIE exam (co-requisite) |
As of October 27, 2025, FINRA reduced the unscored pretest items from 10 to 5, so the exam is now 130 questions total instead of 135. The scored content, passing score, and time limit did not change — you simply get slightly more time per question, roughly 1 minute 44 seconds each.
FINRA organizes the Series 7 around four job functions, and the weighting is dramatically lopsided. One function — providing information and making recommendations — is nearly three-quarters of the entire exam:
| Job function | Weight | ~Questions |
|---|---|---|
| F1 — Seeks business from customers | 7% | 9 |
| F2 — Opens & maintains accounts | 9% | 11 |
| F3 — Provides information & recommendations, transfers assets | 73% | 91 |
| F4 — Processes & confirms transactions | 11% | 14 |
The takeaway is unmistakable: Function 3 is the exam. Suitability, product analysis, investment strategies, and — above all — options are where the questions live and where candidates lose. If your study time isn't heavily concentrated on recommendations and options, it's misallocated.
The Series 7 is widely considered one of the tougher FINRA representative exams, with a first-time pass rate around 65%. It's harder than the SIE for two reasons: breadth — it spans every major product type in depth — and calculation under pressure. Options questions in particular ask you to identify a strategy, judge whether it's bullish or bearish, and compute max gain, max loss, and breakeven, often in under two minutes each. Options are consistently the single most-failed topic. Suitability scenarios add a second layer: they test judgment, not just recall.
When a bond is purchased, the buyer typically pays the seller the price PLUS:
Answer: C. In a regular-way trade, the buyer pays accrued interest from the last coupon date up to settlement, compensating the seller for interest earned but not yet paid. The buyer recovers it at the next coupon.
That one trips up a lot of people. There are 270+ real questions inside Trelos — and the app schedules your reviews so the ones you miss come back until they stick. The first concept is free.
Start free — no signup →Nice — you'd be surprised how many miss that. Keep it going: Trelos drills the full SERIES 7 bank and schedules reviews so it all sticks by test day. The first concept is free.
Start free — no signup →Plan on roughly 80–150 hours over about 6–10 weeks, weighted heavily toward options and suitability. The exact number depends on your background and how much of the SIE material is still fresh, but the pattern that predicts passing is consistent: frequent, active recall sessions beat long passive reading. The Series 7 punishes shallow familiarity — you have to be able to produce answers, fast, not just recognize them.
The classic Series 7 failure looks like this: a candidate reads the textbook, grinds a big question bank, feels ready, then freezes on options and suitability questions on exam day. The cause is almost always the same — reading and re-reading build recognition, but the exam demands recall under time pressure. Closing that gap is a solved problem in cognitive science. The techniques that work are retrieval practice (testing yourself before you feel "ready"), spaced repetition (revisiting each concept right as you're about to forget it), and immediately re-teaching the questions you get wrong, especially the ones you got wrong confidently.
Trelos is built entirely around those techniques. Instead of a wall of videos, it teaches each concept, drills it with exam-style questions, and schedules your reviews so the material sticks — weighted toward the heavy Series 7 sections like options and suitability. It's a complete prep engine designed to take you from the SIE foundation to Series 7 exam-ready on your phone, and you can feel the difference on the first session.
Start the Series 7 on Trelos — freeNo credit card. Feel the retention engine work in your first session.You'll get a pass/fail result immediately, and once both your SIE and Series 7 credits are on file and your firm completes registration, you're a General Securities Representative. Many roles pair the Series 7 with a state law exam — the Series 63 or the combined Series 66 — to complete your registration, since the Series 7 covers products and conduct but not state (blue-sky) law. If you're mapping your path, the Series 7 → Series 63/66 sequence is the most common route to full registration, and supervisors later add the Series 24 or Series 9/10 (and see Series 65 vs 66 if you're weighing the advisory route).