The CCIE certification is a very honored and respected industry certification, but it comes at a high cost of time and money. When I started studying for the certification, I couldn’t find a lot of details on its expense, so I decided to keep a running total. I wouldn’t say that these numbers are representative of all cases, but only one CCIE. Knowing these figures helps in terms of budgeting especially when comparing individual financing versus expensing it from a company training budget.
| Product |
Cost |
Description |
| Technical Books |
$436.81 |
Cisco Press books and other study materials |
| Written Exam Prep |
$99.00 |
Boson Exam Environment |
| Written CCIE Test |
$350.00 |
Lab Fee |
| Workbooks |
$1,794.00 |
Practice workbooks |
| Rack Rental Time |
$723.00 |
|
| Bootcamps |
$5,197.00 |
Two CCIE classes |
| Lab CCIE Test |
$3,000.00 |
Lab Fees for two tests |
| Flights/Logging |
$4,753.24 |
Flights and hotel cost to bootcamps and test location from Chicago, IL |
| Total Cost |
$16,353.05 |
My own CCIE cost (five years ago) was roughly half this amount. Basically I needed one more attempt, but no bootcamps.