Updated for the 2026 PMP® Exam
Six questions. Sixty seconds. A straight answer — and if the answer is “not yet”, the exact date you will qualify.
✅ Free — no sign-up
📅 Counts overlapping projects correctly
👤 Works if you’ve never had the title
Nothing you enter leaves your browser.
This sets how many months of experience PMI asks you for.
Dates, not a total. If two projects ran at the same time, those months only count once — PMI is explicit about this, and it is where most applications go wrong.
Add your first project above.
PMI never asks for your job title. Its words are “taking responsibility for planning, decisions, delivery and outcomes”.
Any format counts — classroom, live online or self-paced — as long as the provider issues a certificate with hours on it.
Only matters if you’re audited — but it’s worth knowing now rather than in month three.
Rules last verified against the PMI Certification Handbook: 30 July 2026
The rules, in one table
Every pathway also needs the same 35 hours of training. Nothing else on this page changes that.
| Your education | Experience leading projects | Training |
|---|---|---|
| High school diploma / GED | 60 months (5 years) | 35 hours |
| Associate degree / vocational / trade | 48 months (4 years) | 35 hours |
| Bachelor’s degree or higher | 36 months (3 years) | 35 hours |
| Bachelor’s or post-graduate degree from a PMI GAC programme | 24 months (2 years) | 35 hours |
A master’s or MBA doesn’t reduce the requirement below the bachelor’s line unless the programme itself is GAC-accredited — in which case it does, because PMI accepts both bachelor’s and post-graduate GAC degrees. And all experience must fall within the last 10 years; the checker above handles that for you.
The question everybody actually has
Find your situation. Each one tells you the answer and — more usefully — how to word it on the application.
PMI has no list of approved job titles. The application asks what you were responsible for. If you set the plan, chased the dependencies, managed the stakeholders and were the person asked “when will it be done?” — you led a project, whatever HR called you.
How to word it“Led a cross-functional team of 9 to deliver a warehouse management rollout across 4 sites. Owned the schedule, budget tracking, vendor coordination and go-live decision.”
Yes — the current exam is roughly half agile and hybrid, and PMI expects agile experience. Write in delivery language, not ceremony language. “Facilitated stand-ups” describes a calendar invite; “led delivery of X across Y sprints, managing scope, risk and stakeholders” describes a project.
How to word it“Led delivery of the customer portal across 14 sprints. Managed backlog priorities with the product owner, removed impediments, ran release planning, and reported progress to the steering group.”
Counts when you were accountable for delivery, not only for what got built. If you owned dates, dependencies and the release, that’s project leadership. If you wrote requirements and someone else drove delivery, it’s weaker — lead with the releases you personally shipped.
Extremely common, and perfectly acceptable. The trap is describing your function instead of your leadership. Don’t write “gathered requirements”. Write what you were accountable for delivering, to whom, and by when.
How to word it“Owned end-to-end delivery of the payments integration: planned the phases, coordinated 3 vendors, tracked risk, and delivered UAT sign-off two weeks early.”
Counts. PMI measures calendar months during which you led a project, not billable hours or headcount. Self-employed applicants list a client contact as the reference rather than a manager.
PMI’s own instruction is blunt: “Don’t double-count time for projects that overlapped.” Two projects across the same three months is three months of experience, not six. This is the single most common reason a confident application fails audit — and the checker at the top of this page does the maths for you.
PMI counts experience from the last 10 years only. Anything older stops counting — which means an application you could have made a few years ago may no longer work, and every month you wait, the oldest month drops off the back. Waiting is not free.
No problem at all. PMI wants total months of project leadership within the window — it never asks for them to be continuous. A gap for parenting, study, illness or a career change costs you nothing.
The PMP is deliberately industry-neutral. Construction, pharma, events, education, manufacturing, banking, NGO programmes, government schemes — all count. Write in plain language rather than industry jargon, because the reviewer may not know your sector.
The test is whether it was temporary, had a defined outcome, and ended. An office relocation, an ERP migration, a compliance programme, a new product launch — all projects. Ongoing operations, support rotas and BAU are not, however well you ran them.
Military and government projects count without question. Volunteer work needs one extra test: PMI’s wording is “managed projects in a professional setting”, so a formal, accountable role on a real NGO or association project counts — helping out informally does not. If you held a defined role, had a sponsor and were answerable for delivery, list it.
Whichever it is, translate rank and internal terminology into plain project language. The person reading it will not know your organisation’s vocabulary and cannot give you credit for what they can’t understand.
Honest answer: task-level contribution inside someone else’s plan isn’t what PMI is asking for. But look harder before you accept that verdict — most people have led something and simply never called it a project. And if you’re genuinely not there yet, the CAPM route exists precisely for you.
Watch instead
If you’d rather be walked through it than read.
PMP Audit
A small share of applications are picked at random. Nothing you do makes it more or less likely — so stop optimising for it and just keep your records tidy.
A scan of your degree certificate or a transcript. That’s it.
The certificate for your 35 hours. Save a PDF copy the day you finish the course.
Someone who worked with you confirms the projects you listed. A colleague or client is fine — it does not have to be your manager.
Which is a long time. The people who struggle are the ones who wait 80 of them before starting.
Then ask a peer, a client, a vendor or anyone else who was on the project and can confirm you were there. PMI’s question is whether a real person can verify the work happened — not whether that person is still your boss.
If your PMP APPLICATION got rejected
Here is what to do with the waiting time so that the day you qualify, you’re already ready to sit the exam.
Once you’re eligible
Study plans, the application walkthrough, exam-day guidance and mentoring — all of it lives on my PMP page. Plans you can actually finish. No cramming.
Go to the PMP page →PMP FAQ
Yes. PMI never asks for your job title — it asks whether you led and directed the work. Business analysts, team leads, engineers, Scrum Masters and operations staff qualify every day.
No. Two projects across the same three months is three months, not six. Double-counting is one of the most common audit failures.
Yes, provided you genuinely led the project. PMI counts calendar months of project leadership, not billable hours.
Not on its own. A master’s puts you on the same line as a bachelor’s — three years. The 24-month requirement applies only to degrees from PMI GAC-accredited programmes, and there both bachelor’s and post-graduate degrees qualify.
No. An active CAPM is one of the five routes PMI accepts for the training requirement. If it’s active, that box is ticked.
Ten years. Experience older than that stops counting, and PMI is explicit that you must not double-count months where projects overlapped.
Any colleague, client or vendor who was on the project can confirm it. It does not have to be your manager.
For many people, yes. It demonstrates intent to employers, the study overlaps heavily with the PMP, and an active CAPM also satisfies the 35-hour training requirement when you do apply. More on the CAPM route →
Most people spend a few focused hours on it. The slow part is assembling project dates and contacts — which is exactly why you should start the log today.
PMI, PMP, CAPM and PMBOK are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc. This page is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by PMI. Eligibility rules are set by PMI and can change at any time — this checker is a guide, and the PMI Certification Handbook is the only authority. Always confirm your position with PMI before paying an exam fee.