Honest comparison: CPETrack · NASBA CPE Audit Service · Becker · MyCPE ONE · Surgent · Excel. Who each tool is actually for, what it costs, and where each one falls short.
For solo practitioners: CPETrack (free or $9.99/year) for the lowest price and simplest UX. For active monitoring without enterprise cost: Becker CPE Tracker ($19.99/month) accepts credits from any provider. For content + tracking in one place: MyCPE ONE ($199/year). Free option: NASBA CPE Audit Service — if your state board participates. Excel: fine for simple situations, breaks down at scale.
| Feature | CPETrack | NASBA (Free) | Becker | MyCPE ONE | Surgent | Excel |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free / $9.99/yr | Free* | $19.99/mo | $199/yr | Enterprise | Free |
| Track credits from any provider | ✓ | ~ (upload) | ✓ | ~ (manual entry) | ~ | ✓ |
| All 50 states + DC supported | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ (DIY) |
| State-specific ethics rules | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ~ | ~ | ✗ |
| Deadline alerts (90/60/30 days) | ✓ (Pro) | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Multi-state license tracking | ✓ (Pro) | ~ | ✗ | ✓ | ~ | ✗ |
| Certificate storage / upload | ✓ (Pro) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Audit-ready PDF report | ✓ (Pro) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Team / firm dashboard | ✓ (Pro) | ✗ | ~ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| NASBA category auto-mapping | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | ~ | ~ | ✗ |
| Mobile app | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| CPE content included | ✗ (tracking only) | ✗ | ✓ (1,700+ courses) | ✓ (15,000+ hrs) | ✓ (10,000+ hrs) | ✗ |
| Available in all states | ✓ | ✗ (state-dependent) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
* NASBA CPE Audit Service requires your state board to opt in. Not available in all states. ~ = partial support or requires workaround.
| Your Situation | Best Tool | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Solo CPA, one state, budget-conscious | CPETrack (free) | Zero cost, covers all states, simplest interface, no extra features you won't use |
| Solo CPA who wants deadline alerts + PDF reports | CPETrack Pro ($9.99/yr) | Cheapest paid option with alerts and audit-ready reports |
| CPA who wants active monitoring and is comfortable paying monthly | Becker CPE Tracker ($19.99/mo) | Best external-credit integration; real compliance engine; accepts credits from any provider |
| CPA who earns most hours from a single content platform | MyCPE ONE ($199/yr) | If you use MyCPE for courses, tracking is built in and AI-monitored automatically |
| Multi-state license holder (2+ active licenses) | CPETrack Pro or MyCPE ONE | CPETrack Pro for lowest cost; MyCPE ONE for AI-powered multi-state monitoring |
| Accounting firm (10+ CPAs) | Surgent or MyCPE ONE Teams | Firm portals, team dashboards, usage reporting, compliance monitoring at scale |
| CPA in a state where NASBA CPE Audit Service is available | NASBA (free) + CPETrack state guides | NASBA is free and authoritative; use CPETrack's state pages for detailed requirement research |
| Just starting out, one provider, minimal complexity | Excel template | Free and sufficient until your provider count or state complexity grows |
The NASBA CPE Audit Service is the official NASBA tracking tool, available free to CPAs whose state board has opted into the NASBA system. It uses NASBA's own compliance rules engine — the same one that state boards use — which makes it the most authoritative calculator for whether your hours satisfy your state's requirements.
The catch: not all state boards participate. If your state isn't in the NASBA system, you can't access it. Even in participating states, users report the interface as clunky and time-consuming — you have to manually upload completion certificates from each provider, and the tool doesn't auto-import from NASBA-registered sponsors.
NASBA's tool is also a tracking-only service: it doesn't include CPE courses. You earn your hours elsewhere and document them here. For CPAs who want a single place to both earn and track credits, NASBA isn't the answer.
Ethics CPE is where trackers fail most often. Most tools treat ethics as a simple category — "X hours of ethics per period" — but the actual rules vary significantly:
A tracker that counts "ethics hours" without knowing these distinctions may tell you you're compliant when you're not. CPETrack's state-by-state guides document each state's ethics specifics — not just the hour count.
Most CPAs don't earn all their CPE from one place. A typical year might include:
Each provider issues its own completion certificate. Your state board cares about the total — broken down by category — not which platform delivered the content. A good tracker consolidates all of these into one compliance view and maps each credit to the correct NASBA category (ethics, A&A, technical, other) based on the subject matter, not just what the provider labeled it.
For solo practitioners, CPETrack (free or $9.99/year) offers the best balance of simplicity, price, and state-specific compliance coverage. For teams, Becker CPE Tracker ($19.99/month) provides the best integration of external credits with compliance dashboards. For the widest CPE course library combined with tracking, MyCPE ONE ($199/year) is the most comprehensive.
NASBA's free CPE Audit Service is a strong option if your state board participates — but availability is limited. Excel is viable for very simple situations but breaks down when managing multiple providers, state-specific rules, or multiple licenses.
Yes, the NASBA CPE Audit Service is free — but only if your state board has opted into the NASBA system. Not every state participates. The tool allows centralized certificate storage and uses NASBA's rules engine to calculate compliance.
The main limitation is UX (described by users as time-consuming) and the fact that it doesn't seamlessly consolidate credits from external providers unless those providers report to NASBA.
Yes — several tools support multi-provider consolidation. CPETrack lets you enter credits from any provider (Becker, Surgent, MyCPE, CPA Academy, live events) and maps them to NASBA categories automatically. Becker CPE Tracker also allows external credit uploads. NASBA's system accepts certificate uploads. MyCPE ONE tracks credits earned within their platform automatically but requires manual entry for external credits.
NASBA CPE Audit Service is free (if your state participates). CPETrack has a free tier and a Pro tier at $9.99/year — the cheapest paid option on the market. Excel templates are free but require significant manual effort. Becker CPE Tracker starts at $19.99/month. MyCPE ONE costs $199/year for individuals. Surgent CPE is enterprise-priced and does not publish individual pricing.
This varies significantly by tool. NASBA's system is programmed with all state rules and is the most authoritative for compliance calculation. CPETrack's state-specific deadline pages cover all 50 states (plus DC) with detailed requirement breakdowns — ethics mandates, A&A requirements, self-study caps, carryover rules, and deadline dates. Becker and MyCPE track completion but leave state-specific compliance interpretation to the user. Excel templates are only as accurate as what you program in.
Multi-state license tracking is a genuine pain point — few tools handle it well out of the box. CPETrack Pro ($9.99/year) tracks multiple state licenses simultaneously. NASBA's system supports multi-state but is limited by state participation. MyCPE ONE's AI compliance tracker monitors all 50 states. Becker can upload credits but multi-state compliance calculation is manual.
Most CPAs with 2+ active licenses use a combination of tools — a primary tracker plus state-specific reference guides for each state's rules.
Excel works for simple situations: one state, one license, one or two CPE providers. It breaks down when you add complexity — multiple providers requiring different certificates, state-specific category rules (e.g., Alabama's 8-hour A&A mandate for all CPAs, not just attest), carryover calculations, or multiple active licenses.
The main risk is that Excel gives no alerts: if you forget to update the spreadsheet or miscategorize a credit, you may certify compliance incorrectly, which is an audit risk. A purpose-built tracker eliminates that exposure.
CPE content providers (Becker, Surgent, MyCPE, CPA Academy, Illumeo) sell CPE courses and also offer tracking for credits earned on their platform. CPE trackers (CPETrack, NASBA CPE Audit Service, Excel) focus on compliance management across all your credits regardless of provider.
Many CPAs use one or two content providers for their hours, then need a separate tracker to consolidate everything for audit purposes. Some providers like Becker now offer hybrid tools that handle both.
Key factors: (1) State-specific rules — does it know your state's ethics hour requirements, A&A mandates, self-study caps, and deadline dates? (2) Multi-provider support — can you log credits from any provider, not just one platform? (3) Certificate storage — can you upload PDFs for audit documentation? (4) Deadline alerts — does it notify you 90/60/30 days before your renewal? (5) Multi-state capability — if you hold licenses in multiple states, can it track all of them? (6) Price — individual trackers range from free to $240/year.
Ethics requirements vary significantly by state — from 2 hours annually (Alabama) to 4 hours per triennial period (most states) to state-specific course requirements. Florida requires Board-approved ethics covering Chapters 455 and 473 specifically; Wyoming requires a Board-approved ethics course with an 80% pass score.
A good CPE tracker explicitly separates ethics hours from general CPE hours and alerts you if you're at risk of failing ethics minimums separately from total hour minimums. NASBA's tracker is the most authoritative here. CPETrack's state pages document each state's ethics specifics in detail.
Yes — most dedicated trackers offer audit documentation export. CPETrack Pro generates a PDF renewal report showing all logged credits by category, provider, and date. NASBA CPE Audit Service outputs a compliance report that some state boards accept directly. Becker exports credit summaries. MyCPE ONE generates downloadable certificates and compliance reports.
For actual state board audits, you also need original completion certificates from each provider — trackers organize and reference these but don't replace them.
For firm-level CPE compliance tracking, the best options are: (1) MyCPE ONE teams plan ($499/user/year) — AI compliance monitoring, assignment tools, team dashboards; (2) Surgent CPE Firm Portal — flex access with firm-wide usage reports and compliance monitoring; (3) CCH CPELink (Wolters Kluwer) — integrates with the broader CCH ecosystem; (4) CPETrack Pro — affordable team-level tracking at $9.99/year per user.
Firms with 10+ CPAs should evaluate Surgent or MyCPE ONE for their richer team management features.
CPE requirements vary by state — use these guides to look up your specific deadlines and category rules before choosing a tracker: