What does ISACA membership cost?
USD, from ISACA's membership page, benefits page, the 2027 chapter dues schedule, and the 2026 exam candidate guide, read November 2026. Exam fees match the Club's cost tables verified September 2026. ISACA runs join promotions a few times a year and reprices without notice, so check the live page before you pay.
| Line item | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Professional membership | $145 a year | ISACA global dues. Covers 70+ free CPE credits, 50+ free webinars, up to 25% off exam registration, and up to 30% off exam prep. |
| Local chapter dues | $0 to $130 a year | Required where a chapter exists. Set by each chapter; most charge $20 to $55. Some charge new members a different rate than renewing ones. |
| Recent Graduate membership | $68 a year + chapter dues | Degree from a recognized college or university within the last two years. Not open to current or former professional members. |
| Student membership | $25 a year + chapter dues | Enrolled in a degree program. Three years at this rate, then Recent Graduate. Most chapters charge students $0 to $10. |
| Exam fee, member vs non-member | $575 member, $760 non-member | CISA, CISM, CRISC, CGEIT, and CDPSE. The $185 gap is the single biggest member saving. Priced by status at registration. |
| Certification maintenance, member vs non-member | $45 vs $85 a year | Per certification, due by 1 January. Drops to $25 vs $50 from your third ISACA certification on. |
| Webinars | $0 vs $75 each | Members attend free. Non-members pay $75 per webinar, per ISACA's benefits page. |
Two fees people confuse. Membership dues keep you a member. Certification maintenance keeps a credential active, and you owe it whether or not you are a member; membership only changes the rate. A member holding CISA pays $145 in dues, chapter dues, and $45 to maintain CISA. A non-member holding CISA pays $85 and nothing else. ISACA invoices maintenance in September for the following year and it is due by 1 January. Student and recent graduate terms are on ISACA's student and recent graduate pages.
How much are ISACA chapter dues?
ISACA requires members to join their local chapter unless none exists in their area, and each chapter board sets its own dues. The published schedule for 2027 covers 232 chapters. Renewing professional members pay anywhere from $0 to $130 a year. The median is about $35, 18 chapters charge $45, 26 charge $50, and about ten charge nothing. The outlier at the top is the Czech Republic at $130. Many chapters also charge new professional members a different rate than renewing ones, in both directions.
Chapters where Club members tend to live, renewing professional rate for 2027: New York Metropolitan $55, Atlanta $60 ($40 for new members), Chicago $50 ($25 new), Phoenix $45, Denver $45, San Francisco $45, Silicon Valley $45, London $45, Singapore $45, Greater Houston $40, Greater Washington, D.C. $40 ($20 new), Philadelphia $40 ($20 new), San Diego $40 ($20 new), North Texas $35, Charlotte $35, Minnesota $35, Los Angeles $30 ($50 new), Tokyo $30, Kenya $30 ($40 new), Toronto $25, Central New York $25, Karachi $25, Chennai $15, Lahore $15, and Bangalore $10. Student dues are $0 in most of those.
Chapter dues matter more than they look, because they decide whether the exam discount covers your membership. At $145 plus a $35 chapter you pay $180 and the exam saves $185. At $145 plus New York Metropolitan's $55 you pay $200 and the exam discount alone no longer covers it. Look your chapter up before you run the math below.
When does ISACA membership pay for itself?
Three savings have hard dollar values: $185 on each core exam you register for as a member, $40 a year on maintenance for each of your first two certifications, and $25 a year from the third on. Everything else, free webinars, CPE, exam prep discounts, chapter meetings, is worth exactly what you would otherwise have paid for it. The table counts only the hard savings against $145 in dues (a $0 chapter) and against $180 ($145 plus a typical $35 chapter). Negative means you paid more in dues than you got back in fee savings.
| Your year | Fee savings | Net at $145 | Net at $180 | Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 certifications, no exam this year | $0 | -$145 | -$180 | Pay only for the CPE and the chapter. Nothing else comes back. |
| 0 certifications, first exam this year | $185 | +$40 | +$5 | Roughly even on the exam alone. Study materials at member prices tip it positive. |
| 1 certification, no exam | $40 | -$105 | -$140 | The maintenance discount does not carry the dues. |
| 1 certification, second exam this year | $225 | +$80 | +$45 | Join before you register. Clear saving. |
| 2 certifications, no exam | $80 | -$65 | -$100 | Closer, still negative on fees. One paid webinar avoided closes most of it. |
| 2 certifications, third exam this year | $265 | +$120 | +$85 | Best case. The third cert also renews at the reduced $25 member rate. |
| 3 certifications, no exam | $105 | -$40 | -$75 | Nearly even at a cheap chapter. Any CPE you would have paid for flips it. |
The pattern is simple. Any year with an exam, membership wins, and the win grows with each certification you already hold. Any year without an exam, membership loses on fees, and the loss shrinks with each certification you hold. A member with three ISACA credentials in a cheap chapter is $40 short of break-even before counting a single webinar. A member with none, in an expensive chapter, taking no exam, is paying $200 for access and community, which is a legitimate purchase as long as you call it that.
Two soft savings flip most of the negative rows. ISACA's benefits page lists 70+ free CPE credits a year and 50+ free webinars, with non-members paying $75 per webinar. If you hold a certification you owe 20 CPE a year, and two or three paid ISACA webinars avoided is $150 to $225. And if you buy official study materials, our CISA cost breakdown puts the manual plus a year of the question database at about $450, so the member discount of up to 30% is worth another $90 to $135 in an exam year.
Timing matters as much as the math. The 2026 candidate guide says exam fees are set by your membership status at the time of registration, so join first, register second, and never the other way around. Maintenance invoices arrive in September and are due 1 January, so a membership that covers both your exam registration and your first maintenance invoice does the most work. Check your renewal date in MyISACA before you plan around it.
What does membership do to the full cost of a certification?
Take CISA over one exam attempt and three years of maintenance, no study materials. A non-member pays $760 for the exam, $50 to apply, and $85 a year, which is $1,065. A member pays $575, $50, and $45 a year, which is $760, plus three years of dues at $145 and three years of chapter dues at about $35, which is $540. Total $1,300. Membership costs $235 more over three years than going without, unless you use it for anything beyond the exam. Keep it for the exam year only and the member path is $760 plus one year of dues at $180, which is $940, or $125 less than the non-member path, and your maintenance reverts to $85 from year two.
That is why the common advice is to join for the exam and decide about renewing on the merits of the chapter and the CPE, not the discount. It applies the same way to CISM and CRISC, which share CISA's fees; the comparisons in CRISC vs CISA and CISA vs CISM cover the experience gates. The full CRISC line items are in how much CRISC costs, and every GRC credential's exam and renewal fee sits in the GRC certification cost table.
Should you join ISACA? Pick by your situation
Join ISACA only if you will use it. The fee structure rewards people who sit exams and hold credentials, and it does nothing for people who do neither, so start from what your next twelve months actually hold.
| Your situation | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Sitting CISA, CISM, or CRISC in the next 12 months | Join, before you register | The $185 exam discount alone covers $145 in dues. Add member prices on the official manual and question database and you are ahead by $100 or more even in an expensive chapter. |
| Holding one ISACA cert, no exam planned | Join only if you use the CPE | You save $40 on maintenance and pay $145 plus dues. The 20 CPE hours you owe each year cost nothing if your employer or a free community covers them, and $75 a webinar from ISACA if not. |
| Holding two or more ISACA certs | Usually join | You save $80 or more on maintenance, your CPE load is 40 hours a year or more, and the chapter is where your peers and the next audit engagement are. The gap to break even is $65 to $100. |
| Student or graduated within two years | Join | $25 or $68 plus chapter dues that are often $0 for students. If you sit the exam while a member you also get the $185 discount, which is seven times the student dues. |
| GRC engineer or security engineer, no ISACA exam in sight | Skip, or let your employer pay | Nothing in the fee structure comes back to you. ISACA chapters are where IT audit and governance have lived for decades; if your work is building controls rather than testing them, that is not where your gap is. |
| Employer reimburses dues | Join | Most audit and compliance employers pay ISACA dues, and some pay chapter dues. At $0 to you the break-even question goes away. Get the policy in writing before you pay. |
If CISA itself is the open question, not the membership, start with is CISA worth it. If the budget is tight, the cheapest GRC certifications ranks the options by real first-year cost, and the sibling breakdowns for SSCP and SANS GIAC show what the other vendors charge for the same decision.
Is ISACA membership worth it if you are not sitting an ISACA exam?
Treat it as a community purchase and judge it like one. ISACA chapters are where IT audit and governance have lived for decades: CISA and CRISC study groups, CPE events, and the auditors and compliance managers who hire auditors. If your work is testing controls and reporting on them, that network is worth $145 plus dues the same way any professional association is, and the free webinars and CPE are a real offset for anyone maintaining a credential. The test is the one we apply to every community: six months in, can you name something it gave you that you would not have had otherwise.
If your work is building and automating controls rather than auditing them, the fee structure gives nothing back and the chapter programming is aimed at a different job. That is not a knock on ISACA. It is the credentialing body most of our members hold certs from, and several ISACA chapter leaders are Club members. It is a statement about where your gap is. Our full read on which communities earn their fee is in the best cybersecurity communities.
How does the Club's $70 compare with ISACA's $145?
They are different purchases. ISACA's $145 plus chapter dues buys standing in the body that issues CISA, CRISC, and CISM, discounts on its exams and materials, 70+ free CPE a year, and a local chapter of auditors and governance professionals. The GRC Engineering Club's $70 a year buys three hands-on certifications (CGE-P, CGE-AUD, and CGE-AZ, $350 each standalone) with no exam fee and no maintenance fee, labs in AWS and Azure, 4 self-reported CPE hours a month on your transcript, live Q&A, and chapters in 50+ cities. ISACA does not teach you to write a Terraform control or wire evidence collection into a pipeline. The Club does not issue a credential HR filters recognize the way CISA is recognized.
Keep your ISACA membership if you sit its exams or hold its credentials. Add the Club for the labs, the capstone-graded certifications, and the people already doing GRC as engineering. One issues CISA, the other teaches you to engineer the controls CISA audits, and the combined bill of $215 plus chapter dues is less than one non-member exam fee. Pricing for both Club tiers is on the pricing page.
What $70 a year adds to an ISACA membership
Club membership is $70 per year, or $9.99 a month. Every certification in the Training Academy is included. Bought one at a time, the three current certifications are $350 each, so $1,050 of credentials come with a membership that costs less than most single exam vouchers.
Students and transitioning veterans pay $35 for their first year with a verified school email or .mil email.
- CGE-P, CGE-AUD, CGE-AZ: training, labs, exam, and certificate, no exam fee
- Hands-on AWS and Azure compliance labs you build in your own account
- Weekly private podcast and live Q&A with working GRC engineers
- Mock interviews, playbooks, and live builder sessions
- Local chapters and a Slack of 1,600+ GRC professionals
- 4 CPE hours a month (48 a year) logged to your transcript, earned through articles, live Q&As, recordings, labs, and courses, to self-report to ISC2, ISACA, IAPP, or GIAC
Frequently asked questions
How much is ISACA membership?
ISACA professional membership is US$145 a year plus your local chapter dues, as of November 2026. Chapter dues are set by each chapter and run from $0 to $130 a year, with most between $20 and $55, so the realistic total is about $165 to $200. Recent graduates pay $68 and students pay $25, both plus chapter dues.
Are ISACA chapter dues required?
Yes. ISACA requires members to join their local chapter unless no chapter exists in their area, and the chapter sets its own dues. ISACA publishes the full list for all 232 chapters. Examples for 2027: New York Metropolitan $55, Chicago $50, San Francisco $45, London $45, Greater Washington, D.C. $40, Kenya $30, Bangalore $10, and about ten chapters at $0.
What is the ISACA renewal fee?
Two separate renewals. Membership renews at $145 plus chapter dues each year. Each certification you hold carries its own annual maintenance fee of $45 for members or $85 for non-members, due by 1 January, dropping to $25 or $50 from your third certification on. A member with one certification pays about $190 plus chapter dues a year to keep both.
Does ISACA membership make the CISA exam cheaper?
Yes, by $185. CISA, CISM, CRISC, CGEIT, and CDPSE cost $575 for members and $760 for non-members, and ISACA sets the price by your membership status at the moment you register. Membership at $145 plus typical chapter dues of about $35 costs $180, so joining for one exam leaves you roughly even on the exam alone and ahead once you count discounted study materials and the $40 maintenance saving.
Is ISACA membership worth it if I am not taking an exam?
On fees alone, no. Without an exam the only hard saving is $40 a year per certification you maintain, which does not cover $145 in dues. It becomes worth it when you would otherwise pay for CPE: ISACA says members get 70+ free CPE credits a year and 50+ free webinars that cost non-members $75 each, so two or three paid webinars avoided covers the dues. If you are not taking an exam and your CPE is already free, the membership is a donation to the chapter network, which is a fine reason to pay it, just not a savings.
How much is ISACA student membership?
US$25 a year plus chapter dues, and most chapters charge students $0 to $10. You need to be enrolled in a degree-seeking program at a recognized college or university and show a schedule, transcript, or university letter. Students get three years at that rate before moving to the Recent Graduate rate of $68, which is open for two years after your degree.
Can I join ISACA and the GRC Engineering Club?
Yes, and many members hold both. ISACA issues CISA, CRISC, and CISM and runs the chapter network where IT audit lives. The GRC Engineering Club is $70 a year and includes three hands-on certifications (CGE-P, CGE-AUD, CGE-AZ) with no exam fee and no maintenance fee, plus labs that teach you to build and automate the controls an ISACA credential assesses. Several ISACA chapter leaders are Club members. The two cover different halves of the same job.