Wales test centres: 52.4% average, a 27.1-point spread and £277 between the best and worst.
DVSA ran 96,367 car practical tests across 21 Wales centres in April 2025 to March 2026 and 50,478 candidates passed. The gap between Pwllheli at 68.1% and Cardigan at 41.0% is worth about £277 of expected fees and retake lessons.
- Regional pass rate
- 52.4%
- Test centres
- 21
- Median wait
- 8.9 wk
- Lesson rate
- £28-£35
+2.4 pts vs national
21 with full data
across the region, July 2026
per hour, manual
Wales learner budget
At the Wales average of 52.4% and £32 an hour.
- Provisional licence£34
- Theory test£23
- 45 hours at £32£1,440
- DVSA fees (1.91 attempts)£118
- Retake lessons£204
- Typical Wales total£1,819
Excludes learner insurance and costs after passing. Full cost stack.
Wales passes above the national rate.
Across 21 centres, Wales recorded 52.4% in April 2025 to March 2026, 2.4 percentage points above the 50.03% figure for Great Britain, which ranks it 2 of 11 DVSA regions. That is 96,367 tests and 50,478 passes.
The regional average hides the choice that actually matters. Pwllheli finished the year on 68.1% from 737 tests, Cardigan on 41.0% from 1,192. On the expected-attempts model the first implies 1.47 attempts and £196 of fees and retake lessons, the second 2.44 attempts and £473. The 27.1-point spread is therefore a £277 decision.
Waiting time varies as widely as the pass rate. Newtown showed a median 14 weeks between booking and test in the latest DVSA reading, against 5.4 weeks at Llanelli. The regional median is 8.9 weeks, and the national median across all 317 centres is 11.9. Queue length is the part of a fail that a cost table misses: each retake pushes the licence back by roughly the local median, with insurance and lesson top-ups running through it.
Cardiff (Llanishen) is the busiest centre in Wales at 16,401 tests, passing 46.5%. Lesson rates across Wales run £28 to £35 an hour for manual tuition, which is what turns a percentage point of pass rate into a pound figure: at £32 an hour, each extra expected attempt costs £286 in fee and follow-up lessons.
All 21 Wales test centres, ranked.
Test cycle cost is the expected DVSA fees plus retake lessons at the Wales rate of £32 an hour, so the column compares centres on the one variable that changes: how many attempts the pass rate implies.
| # | Test centre | Pass rate | Tests | 1st attempt | Wait | Attempts | Test cycle cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pwllheli | 68.1% | 737 | 66.7% | 12.7 wk | 1.47 | £196 |
| 2 | Abergavenny | 64.2% | 5,924 | 64.7% | 5.9 wk | 1.56 | £221 |
| 3 | Bangor | 62.2% | 4,032 | 62.7% | 11.9 wk | 1.61 | £236 |
| 4 | Bala | 61.6% | 607 | 64.8% | 11.4 wk | 1.62 | £240 |
| 5 | Brecon | 58.7% | 1,490 | 60.3% | 6.9 wk | 1.70 | £263 |
| 6 | Newtown | 58.0% | 2,256 | 59.5% | 14 wk | 1.72 | £269 |
| 7 | Barry | 57.0% | 2,244 | 55.5% | 10 wk | 1.75 | £277 |
| 8 | Rhyl | 56.9% | 4,011 | 56.7% | 6 wk | 1.76 | £278 |
| 9 | Aberystwyth (Park Avenue) | 55.1% | 1,529 | 52.1% | 10.6 wk | 1.81 | £295 |
| 10 | Carmarthen | 54.2% | 2,746 | 54.1% | 9.7 wk | 1.85 | £304 |
| 11 | Llantrisant | 54.0% | 9,909 | 55.5% | 8.6 wk | 1.85 | £306 |
| 12 | Bridgend | 53.3% | 5,990 | 55.1% | 5.7 wk | 1.88 | £312 |
| 13 | Wrexham | 51.9% | 4,819 | 54.2% | 7 wk | 1.93 | £327 |
| 14 | Merthyr Tydfil | 51.2% | 4,446 | 50.3% | 8.9 wk | 1.95 | £335 |
| 15 | Llanelli | 51.0% | 4,380 | 52.4% | 5.4 wk | 1.96 | £337 |
| 16 | Monmouth | 51.0% | 1,283 | 52.8% | 11.6 wk | 1.96 | £337 |
| 17 | Pembroke Dock | 50.1% | 1,769 | 50.5% | 13.8 wk | 1.99 | £346 |
| 18 | Newport (Gwent) | 48.9% | 8,227 | 50.1% | 6.2 wk | 2.05 | £361 |
| 19 | Swansea | 48.2% | 12,375 | 51.2% | 5.9 wk | 2.07 | £369 |
| 20 | Cardiff (Llanishen) | 46.5% | 16,401 | 48.4% | 11.1 wk | 2.15 | £390 |
| 21 | Cardigan | 41.0% | 1,192 | 39.5% | 7.1 wk | 2.44 | £473 |
17-year-olds in Wales pass at 65.4%. 25-year-olds pass at 51.2%.
DVSA table DRT122D splits each centre by single year of age. Across Wales that is a 14.2-point spread, against 14.9 points nationally, from 22,223 tests at 17 and 1,573 at 25. On this page’s arithmetic, at the £32 Wales lesson rate, the gap is worth £122 in expected fees and retake lessons.
Aggregated from the age cells DVSA published at the 20 Wales centres in that table. Cells the agency withholds are left out, never estimated, so this curve rests only on published counts. Each centre page below carries its own age split where its cells are large enough to publish. The national age curve and how to read it.
Wales, pass rate by age
- Age 17
- 65.4%
- Age 25
- 51.2%
- Gap
- 14.2 pts
Where Wales sits among the eleven DVSA regions.
Other regions
Local cost guides for Wales
Source and provenance
Pass rates, test volumes, gender splits and waiting times on this page are published statistics from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), taken from Driving test and theory test data: cars, tables DRT122A (Car driving test pass rates by gender and month: test centres, updated 2026-06-25), DRT122C (Car driving test pass rates by first driving attempt and gender, including zero faults: test centres, updated 2026-06-25), DRT122D (Car driving test pass rates by age (17 to 25 year olds), year and test centre, updated 2026-06-25) and DRT122F (Car driving test waiting times and availability by driving test centre, updated 2026-08-12). Centre-level figures cover the April 2025 to March 2026 financial year; the national quarterly series runs to June 2026. Snapshot taken 2026-09-04.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Cost figures are drivingtestcost.com’s own, from the GOV.UK fee schedule and our regional lesson survey; DVSA publishes no prices and none of the money on this page comes from DVSA.
drivingtestcost.com is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the DVSA, the DVA or GOV.UK. Pass rates are DVSA published statistics reproduced under the Open Government Licence, not our assessment of any centre. Great Britain only; Northern Ireland tests are run separately by the DVA. DVSA cautions that centre figures below about 100 tests a year are not robust for comparison.
The age curve is aggregated from the single-year-of-age cells DVSA published for the 20 Wales centres in DRT122D. DVSA withholds the counts in small age cells; those cells are excluded here rather than estimated or back-filled from a block total.