Porthmadog Theory Test Centre: 33.71% pass rate
DVSA recorded 700 car theory tests here in April 2025 to March 2026 and 236 passes. The fee is £23 a sitting everywhere in Great Britain, so at this rate a pass takes £68.22 of test fees.
Porthmadog is one of the smallest centres DVSA reports, with fewer than 60 sittings in a typical month. Across April 2025 to March 2026 it conducted 700 car theory tests and issued 236 passes, a pass rate of 33.71% against the national 44.84%. That is the 164th highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 17th of 17 in Wales.
Fees are the same £23 nationwide, which makes the pass rate the whole of the cost story. A pass here costs more in fees than almost anywhere: 2.97 sittings on average, so £68.22 against the £51.29 national figure, a gap of £16.93. Put another way, 66.3% of the £16k paid in theory fees at Porthmadog last year bought a test that did not end in a pass, or £11k.
DVSA publishes the split by recorded gender. Women passed at 38.22% here against 30.05%, a difference of 8.17 points, where the national gap is 4.20 points. In fee terms the group with the lower rate spends about £16.36 more per pass at this centre.
Month to month the rate moves about. August 2025 was the strongest month here at 46.1%, January 2026 the weakest at 27.1%, and April 2025 the busiest with 66 sittings. A swing of 19.0 points across one year is normal in a sample this size and is not a reason to time a booking.
Against 2024/25 the rate slipped by 2.00 points, from 35.71% to 33.71%. DVSA has published 5 years for this centre. Back in 2021/22 the rate was 45.50%, so today's fee bill per pass is £17.67 higher than the same £23 fee would have produced then, purely because the pass rate has fallen 11.8 points.
Porthmadog sits 16 miles from Dolgellau, its closest neighbour, which recorded 45.08%. Aberystwyth, 35 miles out, is the strongest of the five nearest at 49.05%, a difference worth £21.33 per pass on paper, and still not worth the journey. Travelling changes nothing you can bank: every centre runs the same question bank and the same 43-out-of-50 pass mark, and DVSA charges the same £23 wherever you sit it.
The lever a candidate actually controls is revision, not location. At £23 a sitting, a single failed attempt costs more than the £4.99 official app and the £15 book put together, and the £68.22 of fees a pass takes at Porthmadog is 4.6% of the £1,470 minimum cost of learning to drive on this site's Wales lesson band. There is also a clock: a theory pass is valid for 2 years, and letting it lapse before the practical means paying the £23 again from scratch.
Across Wales as a whole, DVSA recorded 125,666 car theory tests at 17 centres over the same twelve months, a pass rate of 42.98% and £53.51 of fees per pass. Porthmadog is below that regional figure by 9.27 points.
Porthmadog at a glance
- Financial year
- 2025/26
- Tests conducted
- 700
- Passes
- 236
- Pass rate
- 33.71%
- Rank, Great Britainhighest pass rate first
- 164 of 165
- Rank in Wales
- 17 of 17
- Male pass rate386 tests
- 30.05%
- Female pass rate314 tests
- 38.22%
- Gender gapfemale minus male
- +8.17 pts
- Year on yearfrom 2024/25 (35.71%)
- -2.00 pts
- Years published
- 5
- Region
- Wales
- County or unitary
- Gwynedd - Gwynedd
- Nearest other centre
- Dolgellau, 16 mi
- SnapshotDVSA table DRT112A
- 2026-09-05
The £23 fee, applied to Porthmadog
The theory test fee does not vary by centre, so this table is the same £23 arithmetic everywhere, run against Porthmadog's own published pass rate. It describes what theory testing costs the candidates who book here on average. It is not a prediction for one person, and it is not a reason to travel: the question bank and the pass mark are national.
| Measure | Porthmadog | Wales | Great Britain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass rate | 33.71% | 42.98% | 44.84% |
| Sittings per pass | 2.97 | 2.33 | 2.23 |
| DVSA fees per pass | £68.22 | £53.51 | £51.29 |
| On top of one £23 sitting | £45.22 | £30.51 | £28.29 |
| Against the national average | +£16.93 | +£2.22 | £0.00 |
| Fees paid on tests that failed | £10,672 | £1.6m | £37.1m |
Sittings per pass is tests conducted divided by passes, so it counts everyone who sat at this centre, including repeat attempts. Fees per pass is that figure multiplied by the £23 DVSA fee. The fee is ours, from the fee page; the counts are DVSA's.
One retake buys nothing
A second sitting is another full £23. There is no retake discount. The official DVSA revision app is £4.99, so a retake costs about 5 times as much as the thing that would have prevented it.
Share of the learner bill
At Porthmadog's rate the theory fee works out at 4.6% of the £1,470 minimum cost of learning to drive, alongside lessons at about £30 an hour on this site's Wales band. See the full budget.
The two-year clock
A theory pass lasts 2 years. Miss that window before the practical and the £23 is due again. Retakes also need 3 clear working days between attempts, so a fail costs time as well as money.
Porthmadog month by month, April 2025 to March 2026
Best month August 2025 at 46.1%, weakest January 2026 at 27.1%, busiest April 2025 with 66 sittings.
| Month | Tests | Passes | Rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 25 | 66 | 19 | 28.8% | £79.89 |
| Jun 25 | 64 | 25 | 39.1% | £58.88 |
| Jul 25 | 61 | 23 | 37.7% | £61.00 |
| Aug 25 | 52 | 24 | 46.1% | £49.83 |
| Sep 25 | 56 | 18 | 32.1% | £71.56 |
| Nov 25 | 59 | 21 | 35.6% | £64.62 |
| Dec 25 | 58 | 19 | 32.8% | £70.21 |
| Jan 26 | 59 | 16 | 27.1% | £84.81 |
| Feb 26 | 53 | 16 | 30.2% | £76.19 |
| Mar 26 | 62 | 27 | 43.5% | £52.81 |
2 months of this year are withheld by DVSA at this centre because the numbers involved were small enough to risk identifying an individual.
What the pass rate alone has done to the bill
Today's £23 fee applied to each year's published pass rate at Porthmadog. The fee is held constant on purpose, so the only thing moving the right-hand column is how often candidates passed.
| Year | Tests | Passes | Pass rate | Fees per pass at today's £23 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025/26 | 700 | 236 | 33.71% | £68.22 |
| 2024/25 | 714 | 255 | 35.71% | £64.40 |
| 2023/24 | 717 | 274 | 38.21% | £60.19 |
| 2022/23 | 744 | 293 | 39.38% | £58.40 |
| 2021/22 | 334 | 152 | 45.50% | £50.54 |
Theory test centres near Porthmadog
The five closest centres by road-distance proxy. DVSA publishes no address for a theory test centre, so distances are measured town centre to town centre and are indicative. They are here for context, not as a shopping list: the fee and the test are identical at all of them.
| Centre | Distance | Tests | Pass rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dolgellau | 16 mi | 488 | 45.08% | £51.02 |
| Bangor | 21 mi | 8,034 | 43.61% | £52.73 |
| Bala | 22 mi | 540 | 43.15% | £53.30 |
| Aberystwyth | 35 mi | 2,214 | 49.05% | £46.89 |
| Rhyl | 38 mi | 6,477 | 43.06% | £53.41 |
More centres on the Wales page, which covers 17 centres and 125,666 tests, or in the full directory.
Where these figures come from
Test volumes, passes, pass rates and gender splits on this page are published statistics from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, taken from the GOV.UK statistical data set Driving test and theory test data: cars:
- DRT112A, Car theory test pass rates by gender and month: test centres. Updated 2026-07-17, covering April 2007 to March 2026.
- DRT111A, Car theory tests conducted, passed and pass rates by financial quarter and financial year: Great Britain. Updated 2026-09-03, covering April 2007 to June 2026.
Centre-level figures cover the April 2025 to March 2026 financial year, the most recent full year DVSA publishes at centre level. Snapshot taken 2026-09-05. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
DVSA publishes no region or address for theory test centres. Each centre is named after its town, and the town's country, region, county and centre point come from OS Open Names. Source: Ordnance Survey Open Names, via postcodes.io, Open Government Licence v3.0.
Every pound on this page is theorytestcost.com's own arithmetic on the £23 DVSA fee and the cost figures published elsewhere on this site. DVSA publishes no prices and none of the money here comes from DVSA.
theorytestcost.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: theory tests in Northern Ireland are run separately by the DVA. DVSA cautions that centre figures below about 100 tests a year are not robust for comparison, and withholds a centre's figures entirely where publishing them could identify an individual.