Is ACA or ACCA more difficult?

📚 ACA vs ACCA: Quick Overview

People often ask, which qualification is more difficult?? The answer isn’t straight forward and it depends on your personal circumstances, training environment and more.

ACA can feel more challenging because you're doing a lot at once.

A trainee might be working a full-time job in an accountancy firm, studying evenings/weekends, and then sitting several exams within a relatively compressed period. The combination of work + study + exam pressure is a major part of the challenge.

ACCA gives you more control over the pace, so someone can spread their exams out and potentially make the experience considerably more manageable.

But that doesn't mean ACCA is easy. Some ACCA papers — particularly Strategic Professional papers — can be very difficult.

For a trainee who struggles with exam anxiety, balancing work and study, or failing/resitting exams, the difference in structure can actually be more important than the academic difficulty.

Having said that, ACA isn't necessarily more intellectually difficult than ACCA — it can simply be a more intense way of getting through the qualification.

For more detail about each of the qualifications and the exams, check out our exam pages.