CySA+ CS0-003 Retires December 22, 2026 — Take It Now or Wait for CS0-004?

CompTIA launched CySA+ V4 (exam code CS0-004) on June 23, 2026 — which started the retirement clock on the current exam. If you’re studying for CS0-003, or deciding whether to start, you now have a hard deadline: the English-language CS0-003 exam retires on December 22, 2026. After that date, the only CySA+ exam you can book is CS0-004.

Deadlines like this create two kinds of candidates: the ones who plan around the date and walk in ready, and the ones who discover it in November and panic-book a December seat. This post is about being the first kind.

The three dates that matter

CompTIA is winding down CS0-003 in stages, and the dates are different depending on what you’re doing:

• November 22, 2026 — CompTIA’s own English CS0-003 learning products (CertMaster) retire. Third-party materials, including practice banks, keep working right up to exam day.
• December 22, 2026 — the English CS0-003 exam retires. This is the date that matters for most readers. No English CS0-003 sittings after this, period.
• March 23, 2027 — the Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish versions retire, giving translated-exam candidates an extra three months.

One thing that trips people up: your voucher does not extend the deadline. CompTIA vouchers are valid for 12 months from purchase, but a voucher for a retired exam is a voucher for an exam that no longer exists. If you buy a CS0-003 voucher today, the real expiration date is December 22 — not next July.

What retirement does NOT mean

Let’s kill the most common fear first: if you pass CS0-003 before it retires, your certification is not “retired” with it.

A CS0-003 pass earns exactly the same credential as a CS0-004 pass: the CompTIA CySA+ certification, valid for three years, renewable through continuing education. Your transcript, your badge, and every job application say “CySA+” — employers see the certification, not the exam code behind it. Nobody’s résumé says CS0-003.

So there is zero penalty for passing the outgoing version. The only risk is not passing it in time.

What actually changes in CS0-004

CS0-004 is an evolution, not a rebuild. The format is identical — up to 85 questions, 165 minutes, 750 to pass on a 100–900 scale — and the voucher is the same $439. What shifts is the emphasis:

Domain	CS0-003	CS0-004
Security Operations	33%	34%
Vulnerability Management	30%	26%
Incident Response and Management	20%	24%
Reporting and Communication	17%	16%

Two changes are worth calling out. First, incident response gains the most weight and gets reframed around doing — triage, evidence handling, escalation, root-cause analysis — rather than describing phases. Second, CS0-004 adds a brand-new objective: AI in security operations — the use cases, risks, and governance questions that come with AI tooling showing up in real SOCs. It’s the same modernization CompTIA has been rolling through its whole lineup.

If you’ve been studying CS0-003 material, most of it transfers. But “most of it transfers” is not the same as “you’re prepared” — the objectives, domain structure, and question pool are distinct, and a study plan built for one doesn’t automatically pass the other.

The decision: race the deadline or start fresh on CS0-004

This comes down to simple math. A realistic CySA+ prep runway is 8–12 weeks of consistent study. Count backward from December 22 and add one non-negotiable ingredient: retake buffer.

Here’s the framework:

Take CS0-003 if you can sit the exam by mid-November. That means starting serious prep by roughly early September. Aiming for mid-November — not December 20 — leaves you a genuine retake window if exam day goes sideways. A first attempt in late December has no safety net: fail it, and you’re not retaking CS0-003, you’re starting over against a different set of objectives, with a new $439 voucher, after your study materials just became historical documents. That’s the single worst outcome on the board, and it’s entirely avoidable by scheduling early.

Start on CS0-004 if you’re beginning from zero in October or later. By then the deadline math stops working in your favor, and there’s no prize for racing it. The new exam will also be the current exam for the next three-plus years — no ticking clock, and a version employers will see as current for the life of your study effort.

If you’re mid-study on CS0-003 right now: finish. You’re closer to done than you think, your materials are valid until the day you test, and the certification you earn is identical. Just book the seat — this week, not “when I feel ready.”

How to prep for CS0-003 with a deadline attached

The core method doesn’t change because there’s a deadline — it just loses its slack. Here’s the plan:

1. Schedule the exam first. Book a mid-November (or earlier) seat at Pearson VUE now, before you feel ready. An unscheduled exam has a way of staying unscheduled, and retirement deadlines make it worse: every other CS0-003 candidate is racing the same clock, and test-center seats and OnVUE slots get scarce in the final weeks. The appointment is your forcing function — let it anchor the study plan, not the other way around.

2. Switch to practice questions early. Watching videos builds recognition; answering realistic scenario questions builds the thing the exam actually tests. CySA+ is an applied exam — you read log excerpts, triage vulnerabilities, pick the next action in an incident — and the only way to get fast at that is reps with explanations that teach you why the almost-right answer is wrong. That’s exactly what our CySA+ CS0-003 bank is built for: 1,250 original questions mapped to every CS0-003 objective, a written explanation on every one, plus PBQ-style interactive drills for the log-analysis and triage formats.

3. Drill your weak domains, not your comfortable ones. Security Operations and Vulnerability Management together are 63% of the CS0-003 exam. If your practice scores say Incident Response is your weak spot, that’s where the remaining weeks go — a readiness score that breaks performance out by domain turns “am I ready?” from a feeling into a number.

4. Respect the PBQs in your time budget. 165 minutes for up to 85 questions sounds generous until a performance-based question eats fifteen of them. In practice sessions, train the discipline of moving briskly through multiple-choice you know cold, flagging what you don’t, and protecting time for the interactive items.

5. Book it when your numbers say so. Consistently scoring 85%+ on practice material you trust is the green light. With a retirement deadline, there’s one amendment: if you’re at 80% in early November, take the exam anyway — a near-miss with time for one retake beats a “perfectly prepared” attempt on December 20 with no safety net.

For the full domain-by-domain breakdown and a six-week study plan, our CS0-003 study guide goes deeper than this post.

The bottom line

CS0-003 retiring isn’t a crisis — it’s a calendar. If you can test by mid-November, the outgoing exam is a completely legitimate path to the exact same CySA+ certification, and finishing what you started is almost always the right call. If you’re starting late, skip the race and build for CS0-004 instead.

Either way, the failure mode is the same one it’s always been: unlimited “getting ready,” no exam date, and a deadline that eventually makes the decision for you. Book the seat.