FAA Part 107 Drone Pilot Practice Test
Free FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot practice questions in English, Chinese, and Spanish — regulations, airspace and sectional charts, weather, loading and performance, and operations.
Choose a knowledge area
Practice questions based on 14 CFR Part 107 and the FAA Airman Certification Standards for the Remote Pilot — Small UAS Rating. This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Federal Aviation Administration. Regulations are amended over time and airspace authorization procedures change; confirm the current rules with the FAA and check NOTAMs and TFRs before every flight.
About the FAA Part 107 remote pilot knowledge test
The Remote Pilot Certificate with a small UAS rating — almost always called "Part 107" after the regulation that created it — is what the FAA requires before you fly a drone for anything other than pure recreation. Getting it means passing one knowledge test at an FAA-approved testing center: multiple choice, no flight test, and no requirement to own a drone first. The test draws on five areas: the Part 107 regulations themselves, airspace and sectional chart reading, weather, loading and performance, and operations including crew duties and emergency procedures. Airspace and chart questions are where most candidates lose points, because reading a sectional is a genuinely new skill rather than something you can reason your way through. These free practice questions follow the FAA's certification standards in English, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish, with an explanation for every answer.
How to Study for the Part 107 Knowledge Test
Spend your study time where the questions actually are. Airspace and chart reading is consistently the largest and hardest slice of the test, regulations are the next biggest and the easiest to lock down, and weather, loading and performance, and operations fill out the rest. That ordering should drive your schedule: if you have two weeks, give the first week to sectional charts alone. The reason is that charts are a decoding skill rather than a reasoning skill — you cannot infer what a dashed magenta line means, you either know it or you do not, and no amount of general aviation sense will rescue you in the moment. Regulations reward the opposite approach, because once you understand why a limit exists, the number attached to it tends to stay put.
Learn the sectional chart as a legend-driven exercise, not as memorization. Work with the chart legend open beside you until you can name a boundary by its line style and color, read the ceiling and floor figures stacked in an airspace box, and tell a towered airport from a non-towered one at a glance. Then drill the one conversion that trips up more candidates than any other: turning between altitude above ground level and altitude above mean sea level for a given site. Obstruction heights on a chart are printed both ways for exactly this reason, and a question will happily give you a tower height, a ground elevation, and a proposed operating altitude and ask whether the flight is legal. Practice until that arithmetic is boring, and practice it against a printed figure rather than in your head, because that is the physical task on test day.
Memorize the operating limits as a single block, because they come up constantly and they are free points. Know the maximum altitude above ground level and the exception that lets you go higher near a structure, the maximum groundspeed, the requirement to keep the aircraft within visual line of sight, the minimum flight visibility, and the cloud clearance you must maintain both below and horizontally from a cloud. Add the rules that govern the person rather than the aircraft: how long you must wait after consuming alcohol, the blood-alcohol limit, and the prohibition on careless or reckless operation. Then learn the reporting rule properly — what kind of injury or property damage obliges you to report an accident, to whom, and by when. Questions in this area are usually scenario-shaped, so practice applying each limit to a described situation rather than reciting it.
Finish with weather decoding and a realistic dress rehearsal. Take a raw METAR string and work left to right until wind, visibility, sky condition, temperature and dewpoint fall out automatically, and be clear on which sky-cover codes create a ceiling and which do not — then connect that to the Part 107 minimums so you can judge whether a described day is legal to fly. Understand density altitude and the temperature/dewpoint spread as cause-and-effect rather than definitions, because the exam asks what they do to your aircraft and your visibility. Then sit a full timed practice run, review every miss until you can explain the correct answer without looking, and re-drill only the areas you actually missed. Before test day, handle the logistics early: you will need an FAA applicant identification number before you can schedule, and a government-issued photo ID at the testing center.
FAQ
Do I actually need a Part 107 certificate?
It depends on why you are flying, not on how big the drone is or whether you are paid. Flying strictly for your own enjoyment falls under the recreational-flyer rules, which have their own separate free online safety test. Anything else — real estate photos, roof or tower inspections, mapping, wedding video, agricultural survey, even posting monetized footage or flying for your employer without pay — is a non-recreational purpose and requires a Part 107 remote pilot certificate. The line is the purpose of the flight, so the same drone and the same flight path can be legal recreationally on Saturday and require Part 107 on Monday. When in doubt, get the certificate.
What is the test like, and what score do I need?
It is a multiple-choice knowledge test taken on a computer at an FAA-approved testing center, with three answer choices per question and a time limit generous enough that most candidates finish early. The passing standard has long been 70 percent, and a number of questions reference a supplement booklet of sectional chart excerpts and figures that the testing center provides — so part of your preparation is simply getting comfortable flipping to a figure and reading it under time. Your score report lists the knowledge areas you missed, which is what you study if you have to retake. Confirm the current question count, time limit, and fee when you schedule, since those details are set by the FAA and its testing providers rather than by the regulation.
Do I need flight training or my own drone first?
No. Part 107 has no flight test, no logged-hours requirement, and no training-course prerequisite — it is purely a knowledge test, and you can pass it having never touched a drone. The practical requirements are simple: meet the minimum age, be able to read, speak, write, and understand English, be in a physical and mental condition to fly safely, and pass security vetting. That said, flying is a skill the certificate does not measure, so the responsible sequence is to get certificated, then build hours somewhere open and forgiving before you take on a paid job over a client's property.
How do I keep the certificate current?
The certificate itself does not expire, but your privileges lapse unless you complete recurrent training on a recurring cycle — historically every 24 calendar months. For several years now that recurrence has been satisfied by a free online training course rather than by returning to a testing center, which makes staying current far easier than it used to be. Because the FAA has changed the recurrency mechanism before, check what is currently required well before your window closes rather than assuming the last method you used still applies. Keep a record of completion; you must present your certificate and evidence of currency on request.
Can I fly in controlled airspace or over people?
Controlled airspace is not off limits, but it requires authorization before you fly, and in much of the country that approval is available quickly through an automated system rather than by paper application. Uncontrolled airspace near the surface needs no authorization, which is why knowing how to tell them apart on a sectional chart is such a heavily tested skill. Flight over people and over moving vehicles is restricted by rule and is permitted only under defined categories that depend on the aircraft and its safety features, and operations the rules do not allow outright can sometimes be conducted under a waiver if you show an equivalent level of safety. Note that some Part 107 rules are waivable and others are not — knowing which is which is itself a common exam question.
The test is in English — why practice in Chinese or Spanish?
Because understanding the concept and recognizing the English phrasing are two different jobs, and doing the first one in your strongest language is faster. Airspace structure, the temperature/dewpoint spread, load factor, and density altitude are unfamiliar ideas to almost everyone starting out — wrestling with them and with unfamiliar English at the same time slows you down twice. Every question here appears in English, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish with the same explanation, so you can settle the reasoning first and then read the stem in English, which is how you will see it on test day. Being able to read, speak, write, and understand English is itself an eligibility requirement for the certificate, so the English reading practice is part of the preparation, not a detour.