ISTQB Agile Tester Study Guide

A CTAL-AT paper has 40 questions, yet you cannot score 40: it is marked out of 52 points, because ISTQB weights each question by its difficulty. Thirty-one questions are worth one point, six are worth two and three are worth three. You need 34 points in 90 minutes. Answer every one-point question correctly and you still finish on 31, three points short of a pass.

That arithmetic shapes everything below: which chapters you study hardest, how you spend the clock and why the Agile Tester syllabus that ISTQB released in April 2026 is not the one your colleague studied in 2018. The details here were checked in October 2026 against ISTQB's own certification page, the v2.0 syllabus and its exam rules.

How does a 40-question paper turn into 52 points?

ISTQB's exam rules give Advanced Level papers a sliding scale. A question that tests understanding (cognitive level K2) is allocated one point. An applying question (K3) is allocated two points in general, and an analysing question (K4) three. For CTAL-AT the published structure sets the mix at 31 K2 questions, 6 K3 and 3 K4, which gives 31 + 12 + 9 = 52 points. The pass line is 65 percent of 52, which is 33.8, and the rules round up to 34 points.