What Is F5-CA Certification?

What the F5-CA Credential Actually Is

The F5-CA is the F5 Certified BIG-IP Administrator credential, issued by F5. Current F5 materials style it as F5 Certified Administrator, BIG-IP. It validates that you can operate, configure and troubleshoot F5 BIG-IP systems, the application delivery controllers many organizations use for load balancing, TLS handling and traffic management. If you want the shorter definitional versions of this topic, see our pages on what F5-CA is and what F5-CA stands for.

A quick note on naming: the "F5-CA" acronym in this article always refers to this BIG-IP administrator credential. It is not a general networking certification, and it is not tied to any other vendor's program. The scope is defined by F5's production exam blueprint, identifier F5-CAB.0425, a seven-page document that lists the objectives for each of the five exams.

Five Separate Exams, Not One Sitting

The most common misunderstanding about this credential is its structure. There is no single combined certification exam. Instead, there are five named exams, each separately scheduled, separately timed and separately scored:

• F5CAB1: BIG-IP Administration Install, Initial Configuration, and Upgrade
• F5CAB2: BIG-IP Administration Data Plane Concepts
• F5CAB3: BIG-IP Administration Data Plane Configuration
• F5CAB4: BIG-IP Administration Control Plane Administration
• F5CAB5: BIG-IP Administration Support and Troubleshooting

You must pass all five to earn the credential, and F5 allows them in any order. That also means the "domains" here are not percentage-weighted slices of one test. Each domain is its own exam. F5 does not publish percentage weightings, and equal question counts across exams should not be read as equal importance. For a deeper breakdown, our complete guide to all five F5-CA content areas goes objective by objective.

Question Style, Timing and Scoring

Every current F5CAB exam has 30 multiple-choice questions and a 30-minute time limit. That works out to roughly one minute per question, which rewards candidates who recognize BIG-IP behavior quickly rather than reasoning from scratch. One source caveat worth knowing: F5's June 2025 overview page still says 25-30 questions, while the individual exam pages updated in December 2025 state 30 items each. We use the newer, exam-specific figure.

F5 staff have confirmed that some questions require you to select two choices rather than one. Read each prompt carefully for how many answers it asks for. F5 has not been verified here on how partial credit works for these items, so the safe approach is to assume both selections must be correct.

Why 245 is not "70 percent"

The passing score of 245 sits on F5's scaled range of 100-350. It is a scaled score, not a published percentage-correct requirement, so you cannot convert it into a number of questions you can miss. Be skeptical of any site that states a precise "percent you need to pass" or a headline pass rate for this credential. F5 has not published a candidate pass rate, and provider-advertised figures are marketing claims. Our articles on the F5-CA passing score and the F5-CA pass rate explain how to read these claims.

What Each Exam Expects You to Know

The five exams follow the life cycle of a BIG-IP deployment: get it running, understand how traffic moves through it, configure the objects that handle that traffic, administer the system itself, and fix it when it breaks. Below is how to think about each one. These descriptions reflect typical BIG-IP administration topics; always confirm the exact objectives against the current blueprint.

The blueprint does not target version-specific BIG-IP features, so conceptual fluency matters more than memorizing release-specific behavior. For a candid read on the difficulty of this material, see how hard the F5-CA exam is.

The 101/201 Transition

Older articles and some third-party sites still describe a two-exam route, exams 101 and 201. That route is no longer the path for new candidates. Exam 101 retired on April 30, 2025, and F5 moved the credential to the five-exam structure, with the formal route change set for May 1, 2025. The five exams were already described as live and schedulable from the April 23 launch announcement.

There is a nuance, though. Qualifying holders of a 101 pass keep a 24-month eligibility window to complete exam 201. So 201 is not universally unavailable, but it is a legacy path for people already in it, not a fresh route. If you are starting today, plan around F5CAB1 through F5CAB5.

Fees, Registration and Delivery

To begin, register in F5's certification program and accept the candidate agreement. The production materials specify no formal degree, no fixed years or hours of experience, no mandatory training hours and no references. F5 does expect practical BIG-IP competence, and it does not describe a course alone as sufficient preparation. Our page on F5-CA requirements and eligibility covers this in more detail.

These totals exclude retakes and preparation costs, and F5 publishes no member versus non-member split. Fees were last confirmed against F5's price list updated August 17, 2026, and may change. Because you pay per exam, you can spread the cost across months and take them in whatever order suits you. Our F5-CA certification cost breakdown adds retakes and prep budgeting, and F5-CA exam dates and scheduling covers booking logistics.

Retakes: an unresolved policy conflict

Retake waits are an area where F5's own pages disagree. Current catalog pages list waits of 15, 30 and 45 days after the first three failures, which the candidate agreement matches. They diverge after the fourth failure: the catalog lists one year, while the July 2025 candidate agreement describes up to 90 days or the release of a new version, whichever is shorter, and requires prerequisite exams to be retaken. We are not presenting one settled rule for the fourth failure. Confirm directly with F5 before relying on it, and aim to prepare well enough that you never reach that point.

Validity and Renewal

The credential is valid for two years, counted from the final required passing exam, the one that actually awards the credential. Because the exams can be taken in any order and spread over time, your clock starts only when the fifth one is passed.

Under F5's August 26, 2026 renewal policy, you can renew by passing F5CABR, a separate recertification exam, or by achieving or renewing a higher F5 certification that lists F5-CA as a prerequisite. Passing an intermediate exam alone does not establish renewal. F5CABR details:

• 50 total questions and 60 minutes
• Passing score of 245
• US$100 online or US$130 at a test center
• Available to previous holders, including inactive or expired holders, regardless of when the credential expired

No CEU or CPE renewal route is published. An older transition page mentioned renewing by retaking all five CAB exams, but the latest renewal page lists the F5CABR and higher-credential routes, so treat those as current.

Who Hires For It and Who Should Pursue It

The credential fits people whose daily work touches BIG-IP: network engineers, application delivery and infrastructure engineers, security and operations staff, and system administrators supporting applications that sit behind a BIG-IP. Employers that run F5 in the data path, along with the integrators, managed service providers and consultancies that support them, are the natural audience. Our overview of F5-CA jobs looks at the roles where it shows up.

On earnings, be careful. No credential-specific salary survey was available, and broad networking or F5-company salary figures do not measure any pay premium attributable to this certification. A more honest value case is practical: the exams push you to understand virtual servers, pools, persistence, TLS handling and traffic flow, which are skills that transfer directly to the job. For a measured view, read the F5-CA ROI analysis and the F5-CA salary guide.

A Study Order Tied to the Five Exams

F5 allows any exam order. That is the official rule; the sequence below is an editorial suggestion, not an F5 requirement. It follows how the concepts build on each other, so each exam reinforces the next. Our full F5-CA study guide expands on resources and lab ideas, and the F5-CA cheat sheet is useful for last-minute review.

Troubleshooting works best last because it draws on everything else: you cannot diagnose a traffic-flow fault without understanding the flow. When you are ready to test yourself under timed conditions, use our F5-CA practice tests, and look for sets organized by exam so you can see which of the five needs more work. Since each real exam is only 30 questions in 30 minutes, practicing at that exact pace is worth the effort.

Frequently Asked Questions