A free tool that helps you better understand and compare CBR pass rates, Google reviews and lesson prices.
Written by Chris Prosman, Co-Founder of Theorio.
This is a paid advertisement on The Hague Online, specifically written for our international community in The Hague.
You can love cycling in the Netherlands and still want a car. Image: Jules Kassas/Unsplash.
It’s raining sideways. Of course it is. Your jeans are soaked for the third time this week, you spent the whole train ride with a stranger’s backpack in your face, and there’s still twenty minutes of cycling to go. Into the wind, obviously. Dutch wind only blows one way: whichever way you’re heading.
You can love living here and still think: okay, I need a car.
Especially if you already have a licence. You did the lessons back home, passed the tests, maybe drove for ten years without anyone complaining. Then you move here and suddenly you don’t even know if you’re allowed behind the wheel.
That should be a five-minute question, right? Fill in a form, swap the licence, done.
Ha. You open the RDW website. Then the CBR. Then your gemeente. One page is about exchanging foreign licences, another is about Dutch exams, and twenty minutes later you’ve got six tabs open and still no answer to the one thing you wanted to know. Can I drive here, or am I starting over?
Starting over would sting. The Netherlands has a reputation as one of the priciest, strictest places in the world to get a licence, and once you add up lessons, exams and fees you’re easily past €3,000. That’s a lot of stroopwafels. And you haven’t even picked a driving school yet.
Why a Dutch theory app ended up building this
We kept getting these questions at Theorio. Which was a bit awkward, because Theorio is a theory app we built for Dutch teenagers. Duolingo for the CBR exam, basically. We’re good at getting people through the test. Whether you legally have to take it in the first place? At the time, honestly, no idea.
And look, we’re Dutch. Watching people waste time and money on something they might not even need physically hurts us.
So we built a free Dutch driving licence guide in English. You answer a few questions and it tells you which rules apply to you, including whether you can just exchange your licence. There’s an AI assistant on the page too, for when your situation is complicated (if you’re an expat, it usually is). And it’s gratis. Free. Possibly our favourite word.
Then people who did need lessons started asking which school to pick. So we built a driving school comparison tool as well. It puts CBR exam results and Google reviews next to each other, so you’ve got something better to go on than a school’s own website. No ads, no paid spots. A school can’t buy its way up the list, however nicely it asks.
First things first: do you even need a Dutch licence?
Check this before anything else. Plenty of people can keep driving on their current licence for a while, or swap it without going anywhere near an exam.
Got a licence from the EU, EEA or Switzerland? For categories like B (car) and BE (car plus large trailer), you can generally use it for up to 15 years from the date it was issued. There are conditions, like when exactly it was issued and whether it’s still valid, but that’s the general rule.
From outside the EU or EFTA? Then you usually get your first 185 days here.
Some people skip the exams entirely and just exchange. That covers exchangeable EU or EFTA licences, licences from a country or territory on the RDW exchange list, and qualifying workers under the expat scheme most people know as the 30% ruling. Everyone else, according to the RDW, takes both the theory and the practical exam at the CBR. Doable, plenty of expats have done it. And we’ve got plenty of tips for you below.
Our licence guide works out which group you’re in with three questions. Still stuck? Ask the AI assistant, no signup needed. Give it the country that issued your licence, the relevant dates and your licence type, and it’ll point you to the right rule and the official source. One request: keep your personal details out of it. It doesn’t need your BSN to figure out you’re from Canada.
The route finder separates exchange cases from people who need the CBR exams. Image: Theorio.
What it actually costs (spoiler: more than the hourly rate)
Right, so you need lessons. And your inner Dutchman is already sorting the list by price, lowest first. Good instinct! Just make sure you’re sorting by the right thing, because the hourly rate says surprisingly little about what your licence costs in the end.
Here’s a realistic picture, from our cost guide. The CBR average is 41 one-hour lessons. At €60 to €80 a lesson, plus the 2026 CBR fees (€50.50 for the theory exam, €46.90 for the Health Declaration and €143.50 for the practical), you’re looking at roughly €2,700 to €3,520.
Knowing that number upfront already puts you ahead of most people. It covers the big stuff, and the rest is smaller: €6.50 extra for the English theory exam, the municipal licence fee, photos, study materials, any medical checks and your school’s exam-day costs. Much nicer to budget for those now than to discover them at the counter. (And no, there’s no Tikkie you can send to split it with anyone.)
The part you have the most control over is the number of lessons. Every extra lesson or retake adds up, so a good school that gets you through first time is where the real savings are.
A few quick checks help a lot. Compare prices per 60 minutes, since some schools sell “lessons” of 45 or 50 minutes. Look at what’s in the package: the CBR exam fee, the car and instructor on exam day, a warm-up lesson before the test? And ask what happens to unused lessons and what a retake costs. The school comparison shows most of this at a glance.
And here’s the nice part: the school that’s a few euros an hour more expensive can easily work out cheaper, because they teach well and they’re honest about how many lessons you’ll need. The easiest way to find out? Book a proefles (trial lesson). More on that in a minute.
One attempt and 41 hours of lessons already produce an example budget of €2,700 to €3,520. Image: Theorio.
A high pass rate is nice. Context is nicer.
You’re about to hand a stranger a few thousand euros. A nice website shouldn’t be enough.
For reference: in 2025, only 49.8% of learners passed their first practical driving test in the Netherlands. That’s basically a coin toss. The good news? You don’t have to flip it blind. Pick the right school and your odds get a lot better. So a school where roughly 8 out of 10 pass first time is worth a closer look. Do check how many exams that’s based on, though. Three students passing isn’t a track record. It’s a good month.
In the Theorio driving school comparison you type in your town and get nearby schools with their pass rates next to their Google reviews, plus lesson prices where we have them.
Then read the reviews for the stuff numbers can’t tell you. Do people mention clear explanations in English? Lots of cancelled lessons? An instructor who stays calm when you stall at the same traffic light for the third time? You’re going to spend a lot of hours next to this person in a very small car. Chemistry matters.
And please, just call them. Most driving instructors are relaxed, chatty people who genuinely enjoy getting someone through their exam. As we say here: nee heb je, ja kun je krijgen. You already have the no. The only thing left to get is a yes.
The tool lets users sort the evidence themselves. Schools cannot buy a higher position. Image: Theorio.
From shortlist to phone call
The numbers get you a shortlist. The phone call does the rest.
Ask whether your instructor actually teaches in English regularly (you want “yes, all the time”, not “sure, we can try”). Ask when you can start and how often they can fit you in. If you can only do evenings or weekends, say so upfront.
Then find out exactly what you’re paying for:
- Is it pay-as-you-go or a package?
- How many lessons are in the package?
- How long is each lesson?
- Is the practical exam included?
Expect Dutch answers, by the way. Meaning direct ones. Trust me, that’s a good thing here.
Then book that *proefles* (trial lesson) before you commit to anything. Within the hour you’ll know whether you click with the instructor, and they’ll give you a far more honest guess at how many lessons you need than any website will.
A data shortlist should end with a trial lesson, not a blind package purchase. Image: Kindel Media/Pexels.
The English exam, now with bonus Dutch
Then there’s the theory. Good news: you can take the CBR theory exam in English. Slightly less good news: five words stay in Dutch, because English just doesn’t have an exact match. Better to meet them now than for the first time at the exam computer.
- APK: the compulsory periodic safety inspection for cars. The English exam simply calls it APK.
- autoweg: a road marked by a white car on a blue sign, often an N road. Not the same as an autosnelweg (motorway).
- brommobiel: a small enclosed four-wheeler limited to 45 km/h. You’ll know one when you see one. There’s no everyday English word for it.
- erf: a residential or shopping area marked by the blue erf sign. Maximum speed is 15 km/h, and you can only park in marked bays.
- snorfiets: a two-wheeler limited to 25 km/h with a blue number plate. Not the same as a bromfiets, which is the faster moped category.
Some translations look familiar but mean something very specific. Rijverbod is translated as “forbidden to drive”, rijontzegging as “driving licence suspended”. Sounds like the same thing. Legally, it isn’t.
The English can trip you up on its own, too. You learn “hard shoulder” from a book, a quiz calls it “emergency lane” or “verge”, and your instructor calls it the vluchtstrook. You know exactly which bit of road it is. You’re just no longer sure everyone else does.
So we put together a Dutch driving theory glossary based on the vocabulary in the CBR exam plan. Search English to Dutch or the other way round. We wrote the definitions; the terms and translations come straight from the CBR’s own list.
Five terms stay Dutch in the English theory exam. Image: Theorio.
Why we wrote the course in English instead of translating it
Theorio started as a Dutch app for Dutch teenagers: short explanations, practice per topic, feedback after every answer and CBR-style mock exams once you’re ready.
For the English course, we didn’t want to hand you a Google Translate version of that. Nobody should have to decode a clunky sentence before they can even start on the traffic rule. So we wrote the videos, questions and explanations for people who don’t speak Dutch. That’s more than 1,700 practice questions and 35 CBR-style mock exams, with an explanation for every answer.
It also meant explaining the stuff Dutch kids pick up before they can walk. The shark teeth painted on the road. Priority from the right. What to watch for when you turn across a cycle lane (short version: a cyclist, and they are not going to brake). Plus those Dutch exam words, taught right next to the rule, so they don’t catch you off guard.
Not everyone needs a theory course first, though. If you can just exchange your licence, you shouldn’t have to pay for a subscription to find that out. That’s why the guide and the comparison are free. Figure out your route, get a feel for the cost, pick a school. Then decide if you want help with the exam.
The guide won’t take the exam for you (believe me, I asked). But it saves you a lot of guessing, and it beats picking an instructor based on whoever paid for the top Google ad.
If something in the guide is wrong, or your situation isn’t in there, tell me. The whole thing started because people asked us questions our app couldn’t answer, and every new question makes it better.
Now picture this. A grey Tuesday in November, rain doing its sideways thing, and you’re warm and dry in your own car with the radio on, passing the cyclists fighting that one-way headwind. You’ve earned it.
Succes! (That’s Dutch for good luck, not a typo.) See you on the road.