The CAPM Exam: What It Tests, How to Study, and 1,500+ Free Practice Questions
The CAPM — Certified Associate in Project Management — is PMI's entry-level project management credential. It's the exam that makes sense before you have the experience to sit for the PMP, and it's the one most people don't prepare for seriously enough.
That's a mistake. The CAPM isn't a participation trophy. It tests real project management knowledge across four domains, including a significant chunk of agile methodology and business analysis. Candidates who treat it as a straightforward test of PMBOK recall tend to underestimate how much scenario reasoning it actually requires.
GanttGrind has 1,500+ CAPM practice questions. They're free. No subscription, no credit card, no trial that converts to a charge. This post explains what the exam actually covers, what GanttGrind provides, and how to use it to pass.
What the CAPM exam actually tests
The 2023 Examination Content Outline divides the CAPM into four domains:
Project Management Fundamentals and Core Concepts (36%) This is the largest domain and covers the foundations: project life cycles, project management processes, roles and responsibilities, and the governance structures that projects operate within. The PMBOK 7th edition's principles framework lives here, along with the distinction between projects and operations, constraint management, and the mechanics of how a project moves from initiation through closure. At 36%, this domain is weighted more heavily than the others and rewards candidates who understand why project management works the way it does, not just what the terms mean.
Predictive, Plan-Based Methodologies (17%) This is the traditional waterfall territory — defined scope, sequential phases, formal change control, earned value management. PMI's PMBOK 6th edition is the primary reference for this domain. The questions test whether you can apply predictive concepts in context: reading a CPI/SPI situation and knowing what it means, choosing the right procurement contract type for a given scenario, or identifying which planning artifact addresses a specific project need. At 17%, it's the smallest domain — but don't underweight it, because these questions tend to be precise and knowledge-specific.
Agile Frameworks/Methodologies (20%) The CAPM explicitly tests agile, and not just at a surface level. This domain covers Scrum events, roles, and artifacts; Kanban flow principles; the Agile Manifesto values and principles; and how iterative delivery differs from predictive delivery in practice. Expect questions that put you in an agile team scenario and ask what the Scrum Master should do, how a sprint retrospective differs from a sprint review, or when to use a burndown chart versus a velocity chart. The PMI Agile Practice Guide is the primary reference.
Business Analysis Frameworks (27%) This is the domain that catches candidates off guard. Business analysis at the CAPM level covers requirements elicitation and management, stakeholder analysis, traceability, and the documentation artifacts that connect business needs to project deliverables. PMI's Business Analysis for Practitioners guide is the reference here. At 27%, it's the second-largest domain and requires deliberate study — it's not covered in depth by most traditional PMP prep materials.
The exam itself
150 questions. 180 minutes. PMI does not publish a numeric passing score — instead, your score report shows an overall PASS or DID NOT PASS, followed by a performance rating for each of the four domains:
| Domain | Rating |
|---|---|
| Project Management Fundamentals and Core Concepts | Above Target / Target / Below Target |
| Predictive, Plan-Based Methodologies | Above Target / Target / Below Target |
| Agile Frameworks/Methodologies | Above Target / Target / Below Target |
| Business Analysis Frameworks | Above Target / Target / Below Target |
This breakdown is useful. If you don't pass, it tells you exactly which domains pulled your result down. If you do pass, it tells you where you were strongest and weakest — which matters if you're continuing on to the PMP.
The questions are scenario-based. PMI designs the CAPM to test applied understanding, not memorization. A question might describe a project where the sponsor is asking for a scope change mid-execution and ask what the project manager should do first — the answer requires understanding change control processes, stakeholder management, and the governance structure, all applied to the specific scenario.
No experience requirement. The CAPM requires 23 hours of project management education (a formal training course or program), but no professional experience hours. This makes it genuinely accessible to people entering the field, recent graduates, and career changers — which is exactly who it's designed for.
What GanttGrind offers for CAPM
1,500+ practice questions — completely free.
Every CAPM question on GanttGrind is free. No paywall, no question limit per day, no features locked behind a subscription. All 1,500+ questions across all four domains are available the moment you create an account.
This wasn't a marketing decision. We made CAPM free because the entry-level certification shouldn't require a paid question bank on top of the PMI application fee. People pursuing the CAPM are often early in their careers. The barrier shouldn't be financial.
Adaptive practice that knows where you're weak.
GanttGrind tracks your performance at the subtopic level. After answering enough questions, the platform builds a mastery map — which domains you're strong in, which need work, and which specific subtopics within those domains are pulling your scores down.
The adaptive practice mode uses that map to weight your sessions: more questions from your weak areas, review of questions you've missed, exposure to content you haven't seen yet, and reinforcement of areas you've already built strength in. You're not just answering 1,500 questions in a random order. You're building toward a specific outcome.
Domain-level mastery tracking that mirrors the score report.
Your dashboard shows your mastery across all four CAPM domains, updated in real time as you practice. Because the real exam reports performance by domain — Above Target, Target, or Below Target — knowing your per-domain mastery before exam day tells you exactly what the score report is going to say. If your Project Management Fundamentals score is strong and your Business Analysis score is lagging, you know where to focus without waiting for results to tell you.
Full exam simulations.
When you're ready to test under real conditions, GanttGrind offers full 150-question exam simulations in the actual domain distribution. These aren't just random question pulls — they're weighted to match the real CAPM's domain percentages so your practice exam experience reflects the real exam experience.
How to actually pass
Start with a diagnostic. Before you follow any study schedule, take 30-40 practice questions with no prep. Don't worry about the score. Look at the domain breakdown. Your starting weaknesses tell you where to invest study time first.
Don't skip Business Analysis. Most candidates who don't pass the CAPM are surprised by the Business Analysis domain. It's the second-largest at 27%, it has its own reference document, and it's rarely covered in depth by study courses that focus on PMBOK fundamentals. Read PMI's Business Analysis for Practitioners, or at minimum understand: requirements elicitation techniques, the requirements traceability matrix, stakeholder analysis tools, and the distinction between functional and non-functional requirements.
Understand agile properly, not just the vocabulary. The CAPM agile questions test understanding, not recall. Knowing that a sprint is 2-4 weeks isn't enough — you need to know what happens in sprint planning, why the Scrum Master shields the team from interruptions, how to read a burndown chart, and what to do when a product owner keeps changing priorities mid-sprint. Practice agile scenario questions specifically.
Use the domain weights to prioritize. With 180 minutes and 150 questions, you have about 72 minutes of exam time allocated proportionally to Fundamentals alone (36%). Make sure your preparation time reflects the same distribution. A candidate who spends equal time on all four domains is underinvesting in the domain that accounts for more than a third of the exam.
Practice timed. The real exam is 150 questions in 180 minutes — 1.2 minutes per question. That's tighter than it sounds when you're working through scenario-based questions that require reading a paragraph of context before evaluating four options. Run at least two full 150-question timed simulations before your exam date.
Review every explanation, not just wrong answers. GanttGrind provides an explanation for every question. The explanations for questions you answered correctly are often just as valuable as the ones for questions you got wrong — they confirm whether you got the right answer for the right reason, or whether you're guessing correctly in ways that won't hold up on the real exam.
A note on why this is free
We made CAPM fully free because we think it should be.
The PMP exam is the right goal for most working project managers. The CAPM is what gets people there — it's the credential that opens doors for people who are qualified to manage projects but haven't yet accumulated the experience hours to sit for the PMP. Putting a paid question bank in front of that path seemed wrong.
Every person who uses GanttGrind for CAPM prep and then uploads their score report — pass or not — contributes to the platform's prediction model. That data helps calibrate readiness scores for every candidate who comes after them. The free access isn't charity — it's how the system gets better.
If you pass the CAPM, come back for the PMP. We'll be here.