The Arizona Notary Public examination is the notary competency examination instituted by the Arizona Secretary of State under A.R.S. § 41-270. Beginning July 1, 2025, all new and renewing Arizona notaries public are required to pass it. It is a 45-question, 60-minute multiple-choice examination drawn directly from the Secretary of State’s Notary Public Reference Manual — the current edition is the 2026 manual — a passing score of 80% is needed, and the examination is ‘open book’ in one exact sense only: the manual is built into the examination, and a physical copy is not allowed at testing sites or during remote testing. The examination can be taken remotely or at any of Pearson’s testing sites, and a $35 cost is assessed for every proctored examination.
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The examination at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Examination | Arizona notary competency examination — Arizona Secretary of State, under A.R.S. § 41-270; required beginning July 1, 2025 |
| Commission | Notary public, commissioned by the Secretary of State; term 4 years; acts performed within Arizona only |
| Who must pass | All new applicants and all renewing notaries public. Suspended or disciplined notaries receive a different examination administered by the Secretary of State (Reference Manual) |
| Format | 45 questions, multiple choice, drawn directly from the Notary Public Reference Manual (2026 edition, October 2026) |
| Length | 60 minutes |
| Passing score | A passing score of 80% is needed (Secretary of State’s Notary Exam Notice); a score of at least 80% (Reference Manual) |
| ‘Open book’ position | The manual is built into the examination. A physical copy is NOT allowed at testing sites or during remote testing |
| Delivery | Remote or at any of Pearson’s testing sites; proctored |
| Examination cost | $35 for every proctored examination, paid to Pearson — an Arizona Secretary of State figure |
| Attempts | 3 takes; after the 3rd fail, wait 30 days to reschedule |
| Result validity | Passing score good for 90 days after achieving it |
| Registration | Contact Pearson before completing the application; obtain a Candidate ID Number |
| Application and bond | $43 Arizona State application and bond filing fee; four-year $5,000 bond from a licensed surety; application, bond, and fee submitted together |
| Administrator | Arizona Secretary of State, Business Services Division. PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with the Secretary of State |
Arizona’s examination is the youngest in this guide’s notary family, and its youth shapes everything about preparing for it. Before July 1, 2025 there was no examination: Arizona commissioned notaries on qualifications, a bond, and an application. The examination the Secretary of State then instituted is deliberately narrow in source — one official manual, drawn from directly — and deliberately broad in reach, covering every renewal as well as every first commission, so the tested population includes tens of thousands of working notaries who have never sat a notary test. This guide treats the manual as the complete syllabus, the route as a sequence with two clocks (the 60-minute sitting, and the 90-day life of a pass), and the ‘open book’ label as the single most misunderstood fact about the sitting.
Reading the verified facts
Every fact in the table above is stated as the Secretary of State states it in its own publications, because candidates for a brand-new examination are ill-served by the approximations already circulating about it. Three reading disciplines govern this guide. First, the figures given are the Secretary of State’s figures, reproduced from the Notary Exam Notice the Secretary of State publishes at the head of its notary pages, from the October 2026 Notary Public Reference Manual, and from A.R.S. § 41-270 itself — all named in this file’s INTERNAL section. Where sources in circulation conflict with those documents — on the testing vendor, on the examination cost, on what happens after a single failure — this guide follows the Notice and the current manual, and its INTERNAL section records the conflict and the figures it excludes. Second, the passing standard is printed exactly as published — a passing score of 80% — and never converted into a number of correct answers, because the Secretary of State does not publish that conversion. Third, the companion PassProfessor program is in the works and unbuilt: nothing in this guide describes a question bank, a course, or an enrollment that exists today.
The route, step by step
Step 1 — Place yourself: new, renewing, or suspended
The examination reaches three populations, and the first task is knowing which one you are in. (a) The new applicant must pass before applying — the manual’s order is explicit: take and pass the notary exam before submitting the application for processing. (b) The renewing notary must pass again: the July 1, 2025 requirement covers renewals in terms, and the renewal window opens up to two months (60 days) before the current commission ends — a renewing candidate who leaves the examination to the window’s end risks a gap, because a notary whose commission expires before the new certificate arrives must stop notarizing until it does. (c) The suspended or disciplined notary is a separate case: A.R.S. § 41-270 also reaches a notary public with a suspended commission, and the manual states that suspended notaries and notaries under discipline receive a different examination administered by the Secretary of State — this guide describes the standard competency examination, and a candidate in this third position takes instruction from the Secretary of State’s notice in their own case.
Step 2 — Check the qualifications before paying for anything
The manual prints the list (A.R.S. § 41-269.B), and every item is a gate: at least eighteen years of age; citizen or permanent legal resident of the United States; resident of Arizona for income tax purposes, claiming the individual’s residence in Arizona as the primary residence on state and federal tax returns — the manual glosses this carefully, because temporary absence does not defeat it and temporary presence does not create it; able to read, write and understand English; not disqualified to receive a commission under A.R.S. § 41-271; having passed the § 41-270 examination if required; and keeping as a reference a manual approved by the Secretary of State. Two things are not on the list, and candidates regularly assume both: there is no education course among the qualifications, and there is no attorney exemption from the examination. The disqualification item deserves its weight: the Secretary of State may deny, refuse to renew, revoke, suspend, or impose a condition on a commission for any act or omission demonstrating that the individual lacks the honesty, integrity, competence, or reliability to act as a notary public — resolve a § 41-271 question with the Secretary of State before booking the sitting, not after passing it.
Step 3 — Study the current manual, and only the current manual
The examination’s questions are drawn directly from the Notary Public Reference Manual, and the Secretary of State urges study of it beforehand on the stated ground that it covers all the content tested. The current edition is the 2026 manual (October 2026), available free in electronic form from the Secretary of State, and every commissioned notary must in any event keep the approved manual as a reference. Edition is not a pedantic point on this route: the January 2025 edition taught a different vendor, a different examination cost, and different retake consequences, and it predates the September 12, 2026 thumbprint rule the current manual carries. The next major section of this guide works through the manual chapter by chapter.
Step 4 — Register with Pearson and obtain the Candidate ID Number
Prior to completing your application, you MUST contact Pearson to register for the Notary Exam and obtain a Candidate ID Number — the Secretary of State’s instruction, in its emphasis. Registration is therefore not an afterthought to the application; it precedes it. The examination is offered remotely and at Pearson’s testing sites, proctored either way, at a $35 cost for every proctored examination. Candidates who require special accommodations are directed by the Secretary of State to submit the request, with the appropriate supporting documentation, to Pearson.
Step 5 — Sit the examination
Forty-five multiple-choice questions, 60 minutes, a passing score of 80% needed. The sitting’s defining rule is the footnote the Secretary of State attaches to its own ‘open book’ label: the manual is built into the examination, and a physical copy is not allowed at testing sites or during remote testing. Plan for exactly that event — a closed room or a proctored remote session, one built-in reference, and 80 seconds a question. Section “The sitting itself” below works the pace and the lookup discipline in full.
Step 6 — Read the result against its two clocks
A pass starts a 90-day clock: the Reference Manual states the exam score is good for 90 days after achieving a passing score, and the application that consumes it cannot itself be older than 90 days — pass, bond, and file promptly, as one motion. A failure starts the attempts count: the examination can be taken 3 times, and after the 3rd fail you will be required to wait 30 days to reschedule — note the shape of that rule, because material in circulation misstates it as a wait after every failure. Each sitting is a new $35 proctored examination.
Step 7 — Bond, application, and fee — together
Obtain the bond before submitting: a four-year $5,000 notary bond, purchased in duplicate from a licensed surety — a notary bonding company, an insurance company, or a notary organisation — never from the Secretary of State, which does not provide or sell bonds. The bond protects the public for whom the notary acts, not the notary; errors and omissions insurance is the product that protects the notary, it is not required by the State, and it is not sold by the Secretary of State either. Complete the online web-based application on the Secretary of State’s website, print it, and sign it — the application cannot be submitted online. Then submit all three items together by mail to the Phoenix office: the signed application form, a bond with original signatures, and the $43 application and bond filing fee (check or money order payable to the Arizona Secretary of State). Photocopies of an application or bond are not acceptable. The bond’s mechanics are return-for-revision traps, and the Secretary of State names them: the printed name and signatures on the application must match the bond exactly; the bond’s commission dates must be four years apart and one day less; and the bond must be issued up to 60 days before or 30 days after the commission’s effective date.
Step 8 — The commission, and the cycle that now includes this examination
The commission term is four years. The commissioned notary obtains a seal imprinted with the notary’s commission number, keeps the journal and the current manual, and performs acts only within Arizona. Renewal opens up to two months before expiry and — the change this guide exists to explain — requires passing the examination again, on the manual current in that cycle. Keep the examination result, the application, and the bond papers together: the two clocks of this route (the 90-day score life, the four-year term with its two-month renewal window) are both counted from documents in that file.
The manual in full: what the examination is drawn from
The Secretary of State publishes no content outline and no weights beyond one sentence — 45 basic questions drawn directly from the Notary Public Reference Manual, which covers all the content tested. This section therefore follows the manual’s own structure, chapter by chapter, and studies each chapter for what it is: the application machinery, the commission’s life, the duties, the six acts, the law itself, and the prescribed forms.
Chapter 1: Notary Application Process
The manual opens with the office’s premise — a notary is an impartial witness who authenticates signatures and ensures notarizations are properly performed, central to the prevention of fraud and deception — and with the conflict rule: a notarial officer may not perform an act on a record to which the officer or the officer’s spouse is a party, or in which either has a direct beneficial interest (A.R.S. § 41-252(B)), and notarizing for family members is discouraged as calling impartiality into question. It then gives the qualifications (worked in Step 2 above), the how-to-apply sequence, the bond in full (amount, surety types, duplicate originals, what a bond does and does not protect, the optional character of errors and omissions insurance), the fees schedule, and processing and rejection. Study the sequence items as sequence: this chapter is where the examination’s route questions — exam before application, bond before application, all items together, no photocopies, the 90-day application age — are written down.
Chapter 2: Notary Commissions
The commission chapter covers the term and its renewal, the seal, the journal obligation, name and address changes (address changes must be notified within 30 days, on pain of a $25 civil penalty), resignation and the delivery of journal, seal, and records, complaints and the Attorney General investigation route the manual describes, and discipline: suspension, revocation, or conditions, with 30 days from notification to appeal by requesting an administrative hearing. It is also the chapter that carries the examination’s compliance box, worked in the route above — § 41-270’s text, the Pearson delivery, the $35 fee paid to Pearson, the 45-question / 60-minute / multiple-choice / at-least-80% form, the 90-day score life, the three takes and the 30-day wait after the third failure, and the different examination for suspended or disciplined notaries. The same pages carry the manual’s training warning, which every candidate should read once: private companies offer notary training, the State designates no official trainer and endorses none, and candidates should be wary of any company claiming to be an official trainer for the State of Arizona. Preparation — including the companion program to this guide — is private preparation, and is honest exactly when it says so.
Chapter 3: Notarial Duties
The duties chapter is the working core. Its key-to-success line is presence: the document signer must be present for the notarization to take place — a document may have been signed beforehand, but the signer must still appear. It covers the authority to refuse a notarial act where the officer is not satisfied the individual is competent or has capacity, or that the signature is knowingly and voluntarily made (A.R.S. § 41-256); documents with and without signatures and certificates; foreign-language documents (the act may be performed on a document in a language the notary does not understand, so long as the notarial certificate is worded and completed only in a language the notary reads, writes, and understands) and translators, who must be physically present with signer and notary and are not the notary’s to provide; satisfactory evidence of identity, with the manual’s listed forms — personal knowledge, driver licence or non-operating identification licence, United States passport, armed forces identification, inmate identification, and other government-issued identification meeting the stated requirements, with the real-estate exceptions the chapter notes; the notary journal — paper form, chronological order, a complete entry for each act including the signer’s satisfactory evidence, and, for deeds, quitclaim deeds, deeds of trust, other documents affecting real property, and powers of attorney, the signer’s right thumbprint under the rule effective September 12, 2026; and the notary fee schedule, whose ceiling the Secretary of State states as no charge up to a maximum of $10.00 per notarial act.
Chapter 4: Notarial Acts
The acts chapter names the whole repertoire and insists on its exclusivity: a commissioned Arizona notary public may only perform six notarial acts (A.R.S. § 41-251(6)(b)) — acknowledgments; verification on oath or affirmation (jurat); certifying or attesting a copy; taking a verification on oath or affirmation; witnessing or attesting a signature; and noting a protest of a negotiable instrument. Its method is the manual’s refrain: the language is the key to a proper notarization — always read the notarial language on the document, because the pre-printed language tells the notary which act is requested, language prepared in another jurisdiction may not be proper in Arizona, and incorrect certificate language is corrected by crossing out and initialling in ink, never by erasure or correction fluid. Each act then gets its definition, its distinctions, and its checklist. The distinctions are the examinable substance: an acknowledgment’s signer may pre-sign and need not sign in the notary’s presence, but must appear and acknowledge; a jurat’s signer must be placed under oath and sign in the notary’s presence, on a document complete with no blanks; a copy certification is the notary certifying a copy, while apostilles and certificates of authentication belong to the Secretary of State and are not the notary’s to perform. Work the checklists as procedures to be recited, not paragraphs to be recognised — the chapter is written as checklists because the acts are performed as checklists.
Chapter 5: Notarial Law and Rules (including E-Notary and Remote Online Notary)
The law chapter reprints and explains the governing text: the Revised Uniform Law on Notarial Acts provisions (A.R.S. §§ 41-251 to 41-275, including definitions in § 41-251, authority and requirements for acts, identity, journal, seal, the § 41-269 commission and § 41-270 examination provisions, the § 41-271 grounds to deny, refuse to renew, revoke, suspend, or condition a commission, prohibited acts, and validity), the miscellaneous notary provisions that follow them in Title 41, and the administrative rules for electronic notarization and remote online notarization. The electronic layer’s route facts belong here and are stated as the Secretary of State states them: an electronic or remote online notary must first be a current, active Arizona notary public; the applicant must review the applicable Administrative Rules before applying, contract with a vendor supplying the technology, and name the technology and vendor on the application; there is no additional fee or bond at this time; the $10.00 per-act maximum applies equally to electronic and remote acts; and a remote notarization may be performed only while the notary is physically located in Arizona, including for a signer in another country. Keep the layers distinct in study, as the manual does: the base commission’s examination is this guide’s subject; electronic and remote authority is an additional commission layer built on it, not a different examination.
Chapter 6: Sample Certificates
The closing chapter gives the sample certificates — the prescribed wording for the acts of Chapter 4 — and the index closes the book. Treat the samples as text to be known: venue, the act’s operative words (“acknowledged before me”; “sworn to (or affirmed) before me”), the signature, the seal with its commission number, and the commission expiration. An examination drawn directly from this manual can test a certificate the way the manual prints it — which element belongs, which wording triggers which act — and candidates who skipped the samples as forms have skipped examinable pages.
The sitting itself: format, scoring, and what follows
The sitting’s arithmetic is simple and unforgiving: 45 questions in 60 minutes is 80 seconds a question, against a passing score of 80%. There is no published weighting to pace by, so pace must be uniform: answer, verify in the built-in manual only where the rule is genuinely in doubt, mark, and move. The ‘open book’ footnote cuts both ways — the manual’s presence in the interface means a candidate is never wholly without the source, and its presence is also the trap, because a manual searched from ignorance is a manual read at examination speed, and three long searches consume a tenth of the sitting. The preparation consequence is the one this guide keeps returning to: know the manual well enough that the built-in copy is a check, not a text.
Scoring, as published, is a percentage against a stated line: a passing score of 80% is needed. This guide prints no conversion of that percentage into a number of correct answers, because the Secretary of State does not publish one; a preparation plan needs no conversion in any case, since the only safe target on a 45-question paper is command of the whole manual. What follows the sitting is procedural, and the route section above states it in order: a pass lives 90 days and must be consumed by a together-filed application, bond, and $43 fee; a failure counts toward three takes, with the 30-day wait falling after the third failure, and each new sitting at the $35 proctored cost.
What this examination is for
The catalog’s notary coverage is organised state by state, because notary law is state law — there is no national notary examination. Arizona’s gate is the family’s newest: a single official manual as the entire stated source, a proctored competency examination instituted in 2025, and a tested population that includes every renewing notary in the state. This guide and its companion cover the Arizona examination itself — its manual, its route, and its traditional commission, with the electronic and remote layers described as the additional authorities they are — and nothing borrowed from another state’s scheme, whose fees, terms, exemptions, and acts differ at exactly the points this examination tests.
Preparation errors this guide is written to prevent
The recurring errors are specific to this examination’s newness. Candidates study a superseded edition — January 2025 material carrying a retired vendor, a superseded examination cost, and a wait-after-every-failure rule — against an examination drawn from the October 2026 manual. Candidates believe the ‘open book’ label and under-study, then discover the built-in manual’s cost in minutes. Candidates invert the route: complete an application before registering with Pearson for a Candidate ID, or sit the examination before resolving a disqualification question, or pass and let the score age past 90 days while a bond is arranged. Renewing notaries prepare from habit and meet checklist questions — journal entries, thumbprint documents, certificate corrections — where the manual’s procedure is narrower than their practice. And candidates merge the layers, treating electronic or remote online authority as part of the base commission rather than the additional, vendor-dependent commission it is. Every section of this guide is aimed at one of those errors.
After the examination
A pass inside its 90-day window, followed by the together-filed application, bond, and fee, produces the commission: a four-year term, a seal bearing the commission number, the journal duty, and authority to perform the six notarial acts anywhere in Arizona. Keep the result communication with the commission papers, note the term’s expiry and the two-month renewal window’s opening, and remember that renewal is now an examined event — the manual current in that future cycle is the book to keep, and to re-study, then.
A preparation plan that respects the source
Build the plan on the manual’s own order, because there is no published weighting to build it on instead. Open with Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 — qualifications, the application and bond machinery, the commission’s life, and the examination’s own compliance text — converting each rule into worked items as you finish it. Then work Chapter 3’s duties and Chapter 4’s six acts until each act’s checklist can be recited and its distinctions from the neighbouring acts stated without the book: presence, oath, blanks, certificates, corrections. Give Chapter 5 its own complete pass as law, keeping the electronic and remote layer visibly separate from the base commission, and close with Chapter 6’s certificates reproduced from memory. Throughout, practise at the sitting’s real arithmetic — timed sets inside 60 minutes for 45 questions, with the manual available only as the built-in copy will be: for verification, inside the clock. Finish by returning to the numbers the manual repeats, because they are the cheapest marks on the paper: 80%, 60 minutes, 45 questions, 90 days, three takes, 30 days, $35, $43, $5,000, $10.00, four years, two months, 30 days’ notice. The companion Arizona Notary Public Exam Preparation page describes the preparation program itself, which is in the works; this guide stands on its own as the route and source reference.
Frequently asked questions
Why does this guide keep correcting the phrase ‘open book’?
Because the Secretary of State’s own footnote narrows it to one exact arrangement: the manual is built into the examination, and a physical copy is NOT allowed at testing sites or during remote testing. A candidate who prepares to bring a book, notes, or any outside copy has prepared for a sitting that does not exist.
Where do the conflicting vendor and fee figures come from, and which are right?
From the examination’s short, fast-moving history. The Secretary of State’s current Notary Exam Notice — published at the head of its notary pages — and the October 2026 Reference Manual agree: the examination is taken remotely or at Pearson’s testing sites, at $35 paid to Pearson for every proctored examination. Older official material from the examination’s first edition named a different vendor and a different cost, and pages built on that material still circulate. This guide follows the current Notice and the current manual; if a booking screen ever shows something different, confirm with the Secretary of State before paying.
Is there a mandatory course before the Arizona examination?
No. A.R.S. § 41-270 allows the Secretary of State or an approved entity to offer a course of study covering the laws, rules, procedures and ethics relevant to notarial acts; no course appears among the § 41-269.B qualifications, and the manual warns that the State designates no official trainer and endorses no training company. Study is necessary; a mandated course is not part of the route.
What is the difference between the bond and errors and omissions insurance?
The $5,000 surety bond protects the public — whoever needs the document notarized — if the notary’s act causes loss; it does not protect the notary, who must repay a claim made against it. Errors and omissions insurance protects the notary. The bond is required and is purchased from a licensed surety; the insurance is optional and is not sold by the Secretary of State.
Why must the printed name match so exactly?
Because the Secretary of State returns mismatched filings for revision: the name printed on the bond must be the name on the application, the principal signatures on the bond must match the application signature, and the bond’s dates must run four years apart and one day less, issued up to 60 days before or 30 days after the effective date. On a route with a 90-day score clock, a returned filing is not a clerical event — it is time taken from the window.
Can an Arizona notary perform an act for a family member, or on a spouse’s document?
A notary may not perform a notarial act on a record to which the notary or the notary’s spouse is a party, or in which either has a direct beneficial interest — that is prohibition, under § 41-252(B). Notarizing for family members generally is a different, softer rule: the manual discourages it, because it could call the notary’s impartiality into question.
What changed on September 12, 2026?
Senate Bill 1479, addressing deed fraud, took effect: an Arizona notary must obtain the signer’s right thumbprint in the notary journal when notarizing deeds, quitclaim deeds, deeds of trust, other documents affecting real property, and powers of attorney. The October 2026 manual carries the rule — one more reason the examination’s edition discipline matters.
Does passing the base examination authorise remote online notarization?
No. Electronic and remote online authority is an additional layer on a current, active Arizona commission: review the Administrative Rules, contract with a technology vendor, and apply with the technology and vendor named. The base examination qualifies the traditional commission on which that layer is built.
What identification may a signer present?
The manual’s satisfactory-evidence list: the notary’s personal knowledge of the individual; an unexpired driver licence or non-operating identification licence issued by a state or territory of the United States; an unexpired United States passport; an unexpired armed forces identification card; an inmate identification card where the inmate is in the custody of the named authorities; or another unexpired government-issued identification card bearing the signer’s signature or photograph and physical description — with the additional forms the manual allows for real estate conveyance and financing transactions. If satisfactory evidence is not presented, the notary must refuse the act.
Where do this guide’s facts come from?
From the Arizona Secretary of State’s own publications — its Notary Exam Notice, its notary pages, and the October 2026 Notary Public Reference Manual — and from A.R.S. Title 41 as published by the Arizona State Legislature, recorded in this file’s INTERNAL section. Facts that could not be verified from those sources were omitted.