← All SIE guides · 4 minute read · Reviewed August 2026
How many questions is the Series 7? 125 scored, 135 on screen
Short answer: your screen will show 135 questions, and 125 of them count. FINRA scores 125 items and mixes in 10 unscored pretest questions it is trialing for future exams. You cannot tell which is which, so you treat all 135 as real. The clock gives you 3 hours 45 minutes.
Where the 125 scored questions come from
FINRA publishes the exact split across the four job functions, and it is wildly lopsided:
| Function | Questions | Share |
|---|---|---|
| F1 · Seeks business | 9 | 7% |
| F2 · Opens accounts | 11 | 9% |
| F3 · Recommendations and product knowledge | 91 | 73% |
| F4 · Orders and transactions | 14 | 11% |
Nearly three of every four scored questions live in Function 3: options, municipal securities, packaged products, margin, suitability, and taxation. If your study time does not lean the same way, the exam will feel harder than it needs to.
The pacing math
225 minutes across 135 on-screen questions is exactly 100 seconds per question. That is more generous than it sounds: recall questions take 20 seconds, which banks time for the options and margin calculations that need two minutes. The candidates who run out of clock are the ones who stall on a hard question instead of flagging it and moving. There is no penalty for guessing, so a blank answer is the only guaranteed-wrong answer on the exam.
How it compares to the SIE
The SIE shows 85 questions (75 scored plus 10 pretest) in 1 hour 45 minutes. The Series 7 is a longer sit with deeper questions: same multiple-choice format, same no-penalty scoring, same passing mechanics, with the passing score set at 72.
Train at the real length
Stamina is a skill the real exam tests and most prep skips. A full 125-question simulation on a 225-minute clock, taken end-to-end, is the single best predictor of exam day you can buy, except ours are free with an account: 2,000 original questions, weighted to the function split above, every answer choice explained. Try three sample questions first if you want to see the difficulty.