Bristol (Avonmouth) test centre: 55.5% pass rate, £314 to get through it.
DVSA conducted 9,400 car practical tests here between April 2025 and March 2026, and 5,214 candidates passed. On the expected-attempts arithmetic that is 1.80 attempts, £112 in DVSA fees and £202 of retake lessons before a licence.
- Pass rate
- 55.5%
- Tests conducted
- 9,400
- National rank
- 100
- Median wait
- 8 wk
+5.4 pts vs national
5,214 passes
of 308 ranked centres
July 2026
What passing at Bristol (Avonmouth) costs
Expected cost of the test cycle for the average candidate at a 55.5% centre.
- Expected attempts (1 ÷ pass rate)1.80
- DVSA fees at £62 weekday£112
- Retake lessons (0.80 × 7 hr × £36)£202
- Test cycle at this centre£314
- Against a national-average centre-£62
- Extra queue time from retakes6.4 wk
Add the parts that do not change with the centre and the full bill from provisional to licence at South West lesson rates is about £1,991: £34 provisional, £23 theory, 45 hours of tuition at £36 (£1,620) and the test cycle above. Full cost stack.
What 55.5% at Bristol (Avonmouth) actually means for your budget.
Over 2025/26 the examiners at Bristol (Avonmouth) conducted 9,400 car practical tests and issued 5,214 passes. The resulting 55.5% makes it a high-volume centre sitting 100th of 308 on the national pass-rate table and 6th of 21 in South West.
That is 5.4 percentage points above the 50.03% recorded across all 317 centres, and 3.7 points above the 51.7% South West average. A centre in this band is usually working quieter road layouts with fewer forced lane decisions, not a softer marking standard: the DVSA marking sheet is national.
Turn 55.5% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.80 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Bristol (Avonmouth) pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.80 times, or £112. Add 0.80 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the South West rate of £36 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £202. The test cycle at Bristol (Avonmouth) is therefore about £314. Testing here therefore saves about £62 against a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, because the higher pass rate buys back part of an attempt.
Waiting time at Bristol (Avonmouth) ran to a median 8 weeks between booking and test in July 2026, 3.9 weeks below the 11.9-week national median. Across 0.80 expected retakes that is roughly 6.4 weeks of extra queueing before a licence arrives. In the same month DVSA offered 7,790 standard slots inside the booking window here and 33.7% of them were still free to book.
First attempts track the headline closely: 2,679 passes from 4,840 first tests at Bristol (Avonmouth), 55.4% against 55.5% for all attempts. 167 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 3.45% of them.
Since 2021/22 the pass rate at Bristol (Avonmouth) has fallen by 0.7 points, from 56.1% to 55.5%. Test volume has grown over the same span, from 7,487 to 9,400 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £7 to the average candidate.
Male candidates passed at 56.3% and female candidates at 54.5%, a gap of 1.8 points across 4,932 and 4,468 tests. Automatic tests made up 29.9% of the workload and passed at 51.2%, 4.3 points below the manual-inclusive rate, worth knowing before paying the automatic lesson premium. Month to month the rate ran from 51.8% in June 2025 to 60.7% in August 2025, a 8.9-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.
None of the similarly sized centres in South West runs more than five points ahead of Bristol (Avonmouth) on pass rate, so travelling elsewhere is unlikely to pay for itself once you add an unfamiliar route, the travel and the settling-in lessons. The cheaper lever here is preparation on the roads your instructor already knows.
Bristol (Avonmouth) vs its region and the country.
- Rank in South West
- 6 of 21
- First-attempt rate
- 55.4%
- Zero-fault first passes
- 167
- Automatic pass rate
- 51.2%
- Male candidates
- 56.3%
- Female candidates
- 54.5%
+3.7 pts vs region
4,840 first tests
3.45% of first attempts
29.9% of tests here
4,932 tests
4,468 tests
Down 0.7 points since 2021/22.
Dashed line: the 50.03% national pass rate for 2025/26.
Weeks between booking and taking the test, DVSA table DRT122F. Latest reading 8 weeks, 3.9 below the 11.9-week median across all centres.
A 17-year-old passes at 67.2% here. A 25-year-old passes at 57.0%.
DVSA publishes Bristol (Avonmouth) broken down by single year of age, and the two ends of that range behave like different centres. 1,256 tests were taken here by 17-year-olds and 67.2% of them passed; 302 were taken by 25-year-olds and 57.0% passed. That is 10.3 points, against 14.9 points between the same two ages across Great Britain.
Put that through the same arithmetic the rest of this page uses and the gap stops being academic. A 17-year-old at Bristol (Avonmouth) expects 1.49 attempts, £215 in fees and retake lessons. A 25-year-old expects 1.76 attempts and £299, £84 more on identical £62 fees and the same £36 South West lesson rate. The only thing that moved was the pass rate.
17-year-olds here pass 3.6 points above the 63.6% that 17-year-olds manage nationally. Against South West, where the same age passes 62.0%, they are 5.2 points ahead. Either way, budgeting a 17-year-old against this centre's all-ages 55.5% is pessimistic by 11.7 points.
Bristol (Avonmouth) is large enough that DVSA published every age cell from 17 to 25 with its counts intact, which is true of 187 of the 307 centre pages here. Nothing in the table above is withheld, rounded up from a small base or filled in by us.
None of this says a 17-year-old drives better. DVSA counts who passed, not why. The most likely reading is course continuity: a candidate testing at 17 is usually mid-course with weekly lessons behind them, while an older first-timer more often books a test after a gap. That is a lever, not a birthday, and it is the one part of this page you can actually change.
- Age 17 here
- 67.2%
- Age 25 here
- 57.0%
- Age gap
- +10.3 pts
- Age 17 vs country
- +3.6 pts
1,256 tests
302 tests
national gap +14.9 pts
63.6% nationally
Pass rate by age at Bristol (Avonmouth)
DVSA table DRT122D, April 2025 to March 2026. Dashed line is the same age across Great Britain.
What each age costs at Bristol (Avonmouth), on the same arithmetic as the rest of this page.
Expected attempts is 1 ÷ the pass rate for that age, fees are £62 an attempt and retake lessons are 7 hours at the South West rate of £36. Ages where DVSA withheld the counts are shown as withheld and are not priced: a rate the agency would not put a denominator against is not a rate to budget from.
| Age | Tests conducted | Passes | Pass rate | Expected attempts | Test cycle cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 | 1,256 | 844 | 67.2% | 1.49 | £215 |
| 18 | 1,030 | 644 | 62.5% | 1.60 | £250 |
| 19 | 608 | 327 | 53.8% | 1.86 | £332 |
| 20 | 452 | 254 | 56.2% | 1.78 | £307 |
| 21 | 406 | 227 | 55.9% | 1.79 | £310 |
| 22 | 404 | 239 | 59.2% | 1.69 | £279 |
| 23 | 346 | 204 | 59.0% | 1.70 | £281 |
| 24 | 346 | 198 | 57.2% | 1.75 | £297 |
| 25 | 302 | 172 | 57.0% | 1.76 | £299 |
| Under 26 | 5,150 | 3,109 | 60.4% | 1.66 | £268 |
| All ages | 9,400 | 5,214 | 55.5% | 1.80 | £314 |
The under-26 row is DVSA’s own block total from DRT122D and counts the withheld cells, so it will exceed the sum of the ages printed above it wherever a cell is withheld. The all-ages row is DRT122A, the figure the rest of this page uses. Nothing on this table is estimated or back-filled.
What the age gap is worth at Bristol (Avonmouth)
- Expected attempts, age 171.49
- Expected attempts, age 251.76
- Test cycle at age 17£215
- Test cycle at age 25£299
- Cost of waiting from 17 to 25+£84
- Extra queue time from the extra retakes2.1 wk
Pass rates are DVSA’s. The pounds are ours, on the same fee and lesson rate the rest of this page uses, applied to each age’s published rate and nothing else. Age is not the cause: the DVSA figures describe who passed, not why, and a 17-year-old mid-course typically arrives with recent, continuous tuition behind them. The national age curve.
Every published financial year at Bristol (Avonmouth).
| Financial year | Conducted | Passed | Pass rate | Expected attempts | Test cycle cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025/26 | 9,400 | 5,214 | 55.5% | 1.80 | £314 |
| 2024/25 | 9,980 | 5,362 | 53.7% | 1.86 | £333 |
| 2023/24 | 11,066 | 6,231 | 56.3% | 1.78 | £306 |
| 2022/23 | 7,370 | 4,235 | 57.5% | 1.74 | £294 |
| 2021/22 | 7,487 | 4,202 | 56.1% | 1.78 | £308 |
| 2020/21 | 2,296 | 1,278 | 55.7% | 1.80 | £312 |
| 2019/20 | 8,471 | 4,352 | 51.4% | 1.95 | £359 |
| 2018/19 | 5,071 | 2,634 | 51.9% | 1.93 | £353 |
| 2017/18 | 1,891 | 1,028 | 54.4% | 1.84 | £326 |
| 2016/17 | 843 | 439 | 52.1% | 1.92 | £351 |
Cost columns apply today’s £62 fee and the current £36 lesson rate to each year’s pass rate, so the column isolates what the pass rate does to the bill. The fee itself has moved over time; see fee history.
A 8.9-point swing across the year.
Monthly figures are why a single quarter is a poor guide. Nothing about the centre changed between June 2025 and August 2025; the mix of candidates did.
| Month | Conducted | Passed | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| April 2025 | 651 | 350 | 53.8% |
| May 2025 | 689 | 359 | 52.1% |
| June 2025 | 647 | 335 | 51.8% |
| July 2025 | 597 | 328 | 54.9% |
| August 2025 | 420 | 255 | 60.7% |
| September 2025 | 531 | 283 | 53.3% |
| October 2025 | 643 | 352 | 54.7% |
| November 2025 | 691 | 391 | 56.6% |
| December 2025 | 763 | 428 | 56.1% |
| January 2026 | 911 | 518 | 56.9% |
| February 2026 | 1,167 | 659 | 56.5% |
| March 2026 | 1,690 | 956 | 56.6% |
The five South West centres closest in size to Bristol (Avonmouth).
Matched on annual test volume rather than distance, because a centre doing 9,400 tests a year faces a comparable road and traffic mix. Cost column uses the South West lesson rate of £36 throughout, so the only variable is the pass rate.
| Centre | Pass rate | Tests | Median wait | Test cycle cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bristol (Avonmouth) (this centre) | 55.5% | 9,400 | 8 wk | £314 |
| Chippenham | 56.4% | 9,629 | 7.7 wk | £304 |
| Exeter | 46.8% | 8,679 | 7.6 wk | £419 |
| Poole | 53.4% | 10,375 | 7.1 wk | £336 |
| Taunton | 59.5% | 8,259 | 11.9 wk | £276 |
| Plymouth | 40.7% | 11,167 | 7 wk | £519 |
Higher pass rate in South West
- Chippenham56.4%
- Taunton59.5%
- Weston-super-Mare61.0%
- Yeovil63.4%
Lower pass rate in South West
- Trowbridge55.2%
- Newton Abbot53.8%
- Poole53.4%
- Bristol (Kingswood)51.9%
Source and provenance
Pass rates, test volumes, gender splits and waiting times on this page are published statistics from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), taken from Driving test and theory test data: cars, tables DRT122A (Car driving test pass rates by gender and month: test centres, updated 2026-06-25), DRT122C (Car driving test pass rates by first driving attempt and gender, including zero faults: test centres, updated 2026-06-25), DRT122D (Car driving test pass rates by age (17 to 25 year olds), year and test centre, updated 2026-06-25), DRT122E (Automatic car driving test pass rates by gender: test centres, updated 2026-06-25) and DRT122F (Car driving test waiting times and availability by driving test centre, updated 2026-08-12). Centre-level figures cover the April 2025 to March 2026 financial year; the national quarterly series runs to June 2026. Snapshot taken 2026-09-04.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Cost figures are drivingtestcost.com’s own, from the GOV.UK fee schedule and our regional lesson survey; DVSA publishes no prices and none of the money on this page comes from DVSA.
drivingtestcost.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; Northern Ireland tests are run separately by the DVA. DVSA cautions that centre figures below about 100 tests a year are not robust for comparison.
Age figures are single years of age from DRT122D and are reproduced exactly as published, withheld cells included. DVSA replaces the counts in small age cells with “..”, in most cases while still printing that cell’s pass rate; those cells are shown here as withheld and are excluded from every comparison, ranking and cost figure on this page. Nothing withheld is reconstructed from the block total.