All 22 FAR
groups
The CPA Exam Blueprint for FAR is published free by the AICPA: three areas, 22 groups, with a weight range on each area and a skill level on every representative task. It is the only public, authoritative map of what FAR tests — and it is the coordinate system every number on this site is attached to.
FAR Blueprint area weights, group by group
The share in the third column is the area’s mid-range weight divided evenly among its groups. It is an approximation — the AICPA publishes weights at area level, not group level — but it is the right order of magnitude, and it is the number that matters when you are deciding what to study next. One group is worth about four to six points of the exam, not fifteen. Study plans that promise large gains from a single topic are using area weights where group weights belong.
Skill levels in the CPA Exam Blueprint
| Skill level | Share of FAR |
|---|---|
| Remembering & Understanding | 5–15% |
| Application | 45–55% |
| Analysis | 35–45% |
Roughly four fifths of FAR is examined above recall. This is the fact that makes reading comprehension a poor proxy for readiness, and it is why our estimate is built from answered items rather than from coverage of material.
Area and skill weights: AICPA CPA Exam Blueprints, as compiled by third-party summaries · checked 2026-08-15 · unverified against the primary document · exam structure cross-checked against the AICPA CPA Exam toolkit.
Why most of these pages are empty
Every group page carries a practice item we wrote and checked against our own item contract, a reading of what the group actually asks you to produce, and the opening question our tutor would ask for each wrong answer. That is real work per group, so the pages arrived in batches rather than all at once, and any group still marked page not written above is one we have not finished — not an empty shell we published to fill the grid.
The Blueprint as a data file
The AICPA publishes the Blueprint as a PDF. We publish the same structure as JSON — three areas, 22 groups, the weight range on each area, the skill-level allocation, and our derived per-group share — so it can be read by a machine without parsing a document: /data/far-blueprint.json.
Two things in that file are ours and not the AICPA’s, and they are
labelled as such inside it: approx_share_of_exam_pct is our derivation, and the
weights themselves carry primary_source_verified: false because we read them from
third-party compilations rather than out of the primary PDF. Quote it with attribution to
passfar.com and carry those flags.
What share of attempts pass FAR → · Turn these weights into study hours →
Exam sections, administration and the 30-month credit window: NASBA, CPA Examination · checked 2026-09-05.