CA Foundation Attempts Left: Work Out Your 4-Year Window

• Your CA Foundation deadline is four years after your first eligible attempt, not four years after you registered.
• Use the calculator below to turn your first eligible sitting into an end date and a count of sittings left. The worked examples show three starting points.
• A sitting is used up by the calendar once it passes, whether you sat it, skipped it or failed it.
• Before you pay for another form, compare your mock marks with the pass rule and your sittings left with the table in the result section.

You get a four-year window, not a fixed number of attempts. ICAI's rule is that Foundation registration is valid for four years from the first eligible attempt, and that revalidation is not permitted at Foundation level. The Chartered Accountants (Amendment) Regulations 2023, as reported by Taxscan, use the same wording.

ICAI holds Foundation in January, May and September. Three sittings a year over four years gives 12. That 12 is our own count from ICAI's rule, not a figure ICAI publishes, and it holds only for a window that starts when Foundation was already held three times a year. If your window began under an earlier schedule with fewer sittings a year, do not use 12: use the end-date rule in the calculator below.

The clock runs from your first eligible attempt, so registering early does not start it. ICAI's FAQ says that if you registered after Class 10, your first attempt comes only after you have appeared in the Class 12 examination. You must also register at least four months before the exam month: by 1 January for May, by 1 May for September, and by 1 September of the previous year for January.

Two things follow:

• Someone who registered in Class 10 and someone who registered after Class 12 can share the same first eligible sitting, and so the same deadline.
• Intermediate works differently from Foundation: its registration lasts five years and can be revalidated once for ₹400, and Final lasts ten years, according to ICAI's FAQ.

Find your first eligible sitting, work out your last sitting, then count the sittings from the one you plan for up to that last one. The calculator below is our model, built on ICAI's four-year rule. Run it with the dates from your own situation.

Results and formulas

1. Last sitting to plan on. When your window started with Foundation held three times a year, this is the 12th sitting counted from your first eligible one, so it falls one sitting before the same month four years later. January in year Y gives September in Y+3. May in Y gives January in Y+4. September in Y gives May in Y+4. We recommend treating a sitting in the anniversary month itself as a bonus you cannot count on.
2. Sittings already gone. The number of January, May and September sittings from your first eligible sitting up to, but not including, the one you plan for. Count a skipped sitting as gone: the four years keep running whether or not you file a form.
3. Sittings left. 12 minus the sittings already gone, for a window that started with three sittings a year.
4. Exam-form cost at today's fee. Sittings left × ₹1,500. The ₹1,500 is the on-time, Indian-centre fee in Taxscan's report (24 September 2026) of ICAI's notice of 23 September 2026, so check the current fee before you budget. Late or overseas-centre fees are higher, and the fee may change over four years. You stop paying once you pass. The ICAI registration fee is ₹9,000 as of its FAQ updated on 27 September 2024.

Three illustrative starting points show how the formulas behave. They are invented for the purpose, not real candidates, and all start in 2026 or later, when Foundation was held three times a year. All figures are our calculations from ICAI's rule.

For candidate A the 12 sittings run January, May and September of 2027, 2028, 2029 and 2030. Adding the ₹9,000 registration fee, A's on-time Indian-centre cost across the whole window at today's fees is ₹9,000 + ₹18,000 = ₹27,000, before any coaching.

Registration is not an attempt, and the window runs on the calendar either way. Registering only enrols you. To sit a sitting you also submit a separate online exam form, which opens about two months before each exam, according to ICAI's FAQ.

Our advice is to count a submitted form as a used sitting, even if you do not turn up. If you forget the form for one sitting, do not assume you have lost nothing. That sitting has gone, and your end date has not moved.

Because the rule counts from the first eligible attempt, we also advise counting from the first sitting you could have sat, even if you skipped it. If your date is close to the end, write to ICAI's Board of Studies at bosnoida@icai.in, the address ICAI's FAQ gives for queries, and confirm it before relying on it.

Look at sittings left first, then at how you failed. The pass rule is at one sitting: at least 40 out of 100 in each paper and at least 50% overall, which is 200 out of 400. A 200 total with a 38 in one paper still fails.

The thresholds of 6, 3 and 2 sittings are our recommendation, not ICAI rules.

Mock scores need margin. Papers 3 and 4 are objective and carry a negative mark of 0.25 for every wrong answer, which can wipe out a thin lead. We would want mock totals consistently above 200, with every paper above 40, before paying for the next form.

For how many candidates pass at each sitting, see our CA Foundation pass percentage page.

We start from your window, not from a batch. At our free demo classes and in a visit to the academy, you can speak to our Career Advisors with your first eligible sitting, sittings left and last result in hand, and work out which sitting to aim for.

Our CA Foundation coaching costs ₹25,000 (as of October 2026; compare totals in our CA Foundation coaching fees guide). It is offered in blended, live online and onsite formats, with recordings, study materials, practice questions and mock tests, and our Courses List shows the full catalogue. You can pay by UPI, net banking, credit or debit card, NCEMI (no-cost EMI) or a flexible payment plan. Fees once paid are not refunded, so see the demo first.

One of our students, Ashish Kumar, passed CA Foundation in his first attempt with 296 out of 400 in the September 2025 window. His result was announced on 3 November 2025.

To start, call us on +91 90198 10080 or +91 87925 71811, or write to us through Contact Us. We respond to calls within 5 minutes.

For dates and results, our pages on 2026 CA Foundation exam dates, how to register for CA Foundation and the CA Foundation result cover each in full.