Series 24 vs Series 9/10: Which Principal Exam Do You Need?

What’s the difference between the Series 24 and the Series 9/10?

Scope. The Series 24 is a single, full-scope principal exam: pass it and you’re qualified to supervise every major function of a broker-dealer, from registration and personnel to trading, investment banking, and customer activity. The Series 9/10 is narrower by design. It qualifies you as a General Securities Sales Supervisor, which covers sales-activity supervision, including account opening, sales practices, trading conducted through the sales channel, and public communications, but explicitly does not cover underwriting, market making, or firm-wide compliance oversight.

The two-part structure follows the scope split. Series 9 (55 questions) tests supervision of options accounts and options sales practices. Series 10 (145 questions) tests supervision of general securities accounts, sales practices, and communications. You take them as separate sittings, each with its own fee and its own passing score, and both must be passed to hold the registration. The Series 24 overview covers what the broader principal exam tests in full.

How do the specs compare side by side?

Here’s every number, pulled directly from FINRA’s exam pages.

Add the Series 9 and Series 10 fees together and the combined cost to hold that registration is $410, against $235 for the Series 24 alone. FINRA’s page for the Series 9/10 doesn’t break out a separate unscored pretest count the way the Series 24 spec does, so the totals above are each exam’s full item count as published.

Do the Series 24 and Series 9/10 have the same prerequisites?

Yes, with one small variation. Both paths require the SIE plus the Series 7 (the most common qualifying representative exam for each). FINRA’s Series 9/10 page names the Series 7 specifically as the required companion exam. The Series 24 accepts a slightly wider set of qualifying rep-level exams, the Series 7, 57, 79, 82, or 86/87, since it’s built to sit on top of whichever registration a principal is meant to supervise. There’s one exception on the Series 24 side with no Series 9/10 equivalent: the Series 16 (Supervisory Analyst) exam qualifies on its own, without the SIE, for the research-principal track. Full detail on which exams qualify and how sponsorship works is in the Series 24 requirements guide.

Neither exam is one you sit for cold. Both need a FINRA member firm to file a Form U4 sponsoring you before you can even register, exactly like every other principal-level exam.

Which one should you actually take?

That depends on the supervisory authority your role requires, not on which exam is easier. A branch manager, an OSJ principal, or a compliance officer with sign-off authority across trading, investment banking, and firm-wide supervision needs the Series 24, because the Series 9/10 doesn’t cover those functions at all. A supervisor whose authority is limited to sales-desk activity (reviewing account openings, sales practices, and communications for a sales team) fits the scope the Series 9/10 was built for.

In practice, most firms today default new principals into the Series 24 rather than splitting sales supervision into its own registration, since one exam covering the full supervisory scope is simpler to staff around than two narrower ones. But the Series 9/10 remains a valid, active FINRA registration for firms and candidates whose supervisory need really is limited to sales. If you’re not sure which authority your role calls for, that’s a conversation with your firm’s registration team before you pick an exam, not something to guess at from a study guide. Once you know which exam you’re sitting for, Series 24 career paths lays out what the broader principal license typically leads to.

What about the Series 24 vs the Series 7?

The Series 7 and Series 24 aren’t competing options the way the Series 24 and Series 9/10 are. They’re sequential. The Series 7 (General Securities Representative) qualifies you to sell and trade securities and work directly with clients. The Series 24 is the supervisory layer on top of that: it tests whether you can oversee people doing the Series 7’s job, not whether you can do it yourself.

You can’t take the Series 24 without a qualifying rep-level exam already in hand, and the Series 7 is by far the most common one candidates use to get there. Virtually every Series 24 holder passed the Series 7 (or another qualifying exam like the 57, 79, 82, 86/87, or the standalone Series 16) first. If you’re deciding between the two, the real question isn’t which exam is better; it’s whether your job is to perform the work or to supervise the people who do. The what is the Series 24 guide covers that distinction in more depth.

Which exam is harder to pass?

Neither exam publishes a pass rate breakdown by part, so there’s no clean head-to-head number to cite. What’s true structurally: the Series 24 tests a wider content scope in a single sitting (five weighted areas from registration rules to investment banking), while the Series 9/10 tests a narrower scope split across two sittings, each with its own retake clock if you fail. Candidates who’ve done both report the Series 24’s breadth, especially the compliance and written-supervisory-procedure material, as the harder part to study for, simply because there’s more ground to cover in one pass.