CBA® and BACOE™ cost about the same. Once you count the tools, BACOE™ is the cheaper credential.
REAL Talk With Sam Holcman:
The $375 CBA® exam fee is real. It is also not what a candidate actually pays. Add the Business Architecture Guild® dues that never stop, the required prep course, and every method, template, workshop, and mentoring hour a certified holder still has to source separately - and the CBA path lands well above BACOE™ in year one, and further above every year after.
The comparison I hear from business architects evaluating certification paths is this: “CBA is $375. BACOE is $3,895. Ten times more expensive.”
The $375 figure is the exam voucher price, and it is honest as far as it goes. But it is the sticker on one component of the CBA path, not the total a candidate pays to earn and keep the credential - and it does not begin to cover the methods, templates, value templates, workshops, or mentoring that a business architect actually needs to deliver.
