Get grilled till you pass
Skip the S$540 CEI course.
Pass the CEI (KAH) exam on your first attempt.
On your first attempt the course is optional. But fail, and MOM makes it mandatory before you're allowed to re-sit.
Free EARF notes: no signup needed · Unlock: secure Stripe checkout · pass guarantee — fail and we extend your access 60 days free (conditions apply)
80
MCQs
2 hrs
Time limit
56 / 80
Common target (~70%)
56%
Is EARF + EFMA
Do the Math
Is the CEI course worth it?
One Redditor on r/singaporehappenings documented their whole CEI (KAH) journey below. Here are the costs they accumulated in the CEI course-first route.
CEI course-first route — a real Reddit account
They attended all 10 days of the course and still failed the first attempt. Even booking the exam was a struggle — slots were hard to secure, and the venue changed partway through.
Source: Reddit, r/singaporehappenings — thread “Is this still relevant? Employment Agency – CEI-KAH course?” (poster's own cost breakdown)
The CEI Grill route
Best valueThe only other cash is MOM's compulsory S$174.40 exam fee — you pay that on either route. The course is optional on your first attempt; MOM only makes it mandatory after a fail. Pass first time and the entire left-hand bill never happens.
Thinking of skipping prep entirely and testing your luck? If you fail, MOM makes the S$539.55 course compulsory before you can re-sit — so you still end up paying about S$900 in total. There's no shortcut around this except passing on the very first attempt. That's what CEI Grill's S$88 buys you.
Free · no card required
Checked against the law — sources included
Every figure links to the exact source
Most CEI prep is a static PDF of numbers you just have to trust. Here, every statutory figure is verified against MOM and Singapore Statutes Online — and linked to the exact section, so you can check it yourself. Kept current for 2026: the 1 Nov 2025 WICA compensation limits, the 2026 Employment Pass salary bands.
Tap any of these — each one opens the actual government source. Try getting that from your course notes PDF.
Four reasons this beats a course or a PDF
The exam rewards precision. So does this.
Know exactly what's on the exam
We map the real structure — 45 EARF+EFMA, 30 all-topics, 5 case studies — so you see where the marks sit: the EARF + EFMA pair is 56% of the paper. Spend your time where it counts.
Built to the official exam format
Every question mirrors the real paper — the same Section A/B/C structure, the same topic mix, the same trick questions. You sit a full 80-question mock under a real 2-hour clock, and you work through every case study yourself — not a PDF you skim once, or a video where someone else does the thinking for you.
Mnemonics, trick questions and a CEI Exam Cheat Sheet
You don't pass the exam by passively re-reading the notes five times, because the exam's tricks follow a pattern rereading won't catch: near-identical numbers, a deadline off by a day, the right rule filed under the wrong Act. Every mnemonic, every trick-question breakdown and every cheat-sheet entry is built to counter that pattern: each one carries why MOM actually wrote the rule, then a real case — an actual agency or worker this happened to. Once you understand the intent and can picture the consequence, the trick stops working on you, and the number stays with you instead of sitting there memorised and alone.
Checked against the law, not just a study guide
Every figure is cross-verified against Singapore Statutes Online, not copied from someone else's PDF or a course slide deck. When MOM raised WICA compensation limits on 1 Nov 2025, we caught it and updated the course. And every topic is checked to make sure it actually has practice questions — courses built from the same old material can skip one without anyone noticing, so you get complete, topic-by-topic confidence, not a gap you find out about on exam day.
Exam structure & study strategy
EARF + EFMA make up Section A — 56% of the whole paper.
Section A alone is 45 of 80 questions — more than half your marks in two topics. And they don't stop there: most of Section C's case studies test the same two topics again, so mastering them pays off beyond Section A alone. Master EARF licensing (demerit points, security deposits, the 3-year validity) and EFMA offences first, then lock in Section B to clear the bar.
- Tested in two sections: EARF, EFMA & the Employment Act each appear twice — the highest-leverage topics.
- Section B spreads across 9 topics: Contract Law, Competition Act, Employment Act, WICA, Immigration Act, CPF Act, TAFEP/FCF, PHTA and PDPA — thinner coverage each, but 30 questions altogether.
- Case studies (Section C): drawn from EFMA, Employment Act & EARF.
- The pattern: the exam tests exact numbers — days, dollars, months.
EARF splits into 3: licensing & personnel, fees & practices, MDW rules · plus EFMA
Contract Law, Competition Act, Employment Act, WICA, Immigration Act, CPF Act, TAFEP / Fair Consideration Framework, PHTA, PDPA
EFMA, Employment Act, EARF
Master Section A first — it pays off again in Section C.
Then secure Section B — you can't pass on Section A alone.
Section C — the part others skip
Practise CEI exam-style case studies
The real paper ends with 5 case-study questions — a prose scenario hiding several breaches across EARF, EFMA and the Employment Act. Most tools give you random MCQs and never touch it. We built realistic, multi-issue case studies for exactly this section, with each question tied back to the passage.
Case study
An employment agency lodges a Work Permit application for a worker already in Singapore on a Social Visit Pass, without ever verifying how he entered. His contract offers $2,000 a month and 5 days' annual leave. Months in, he's sent to work at a second company — and the salary declared to MOM turns out higher than what he's actually paid…
→ 5 linked questions test whether you spot the unlicensed-agency, illegal-deployment, false-declaration and below-minimum-leave traps — and who's liable for each. Exactly how Section C is set.
Four steps. One pass.
Learn — course notes, weighted by what's tested
13 topics ranked by real exam share, every statutory fact sourced straight to MOM/SSO — study the highest-yield material first, not the whole syllabus blind.
Grill — adaptive MCQ trap simulator
Every question is drawn straight from MOM/SSO statutes and built around the exam's own trap patterns — not generic filler. The 280-question bank includes 6 grouped case studies — a shared passage with its own set of questions — mirroring the real exam's Section C format.
Prove — full 2-hour mock exam
80 questions in the real 45/30/5 format, auto-graded and timed like the real thing — so exam day is the second time you've sat this test, not the first.
Retain — CEI Exam Cheat Sheet
Every must-memorise number, fee cap and clock on one page — built for the week before your attempt, when there's no time left to re-read notes.
See how the grilling works
Not just the answer — what the traps are
A CEI Exam practice question. This is what you get after every answer — in plain English.
A Part IV employee works overtime. What is the minimum overtime pay rate, the maximum overtime hours per month (without exemption), and the deadline to pay overtime?
Why this trips you up
Overtime is paid at least 1.5× the hourly basic rate, capped at 72 hours/month (an exemption is needed for more), and paid within 14 days of the salary period. The 44 in C is the normal weekly-hours figure, not an OT cap — a classic mix-up. B inflates the rate; D removes the cap.
Reference: Employment Act 1968, s 38 — Singapore Statutes Online ↗
CEI Exam Cheat Sheet
Built the way top students build revision notes
We studied how top law students compress a whole syllabus onto one sheet — and applied it to the CEI. Every either/or the exam loves is laid out side-by-side, so you see both options at a glance. Every figure is number-first, so you cover a column with your hand and self-quiz. And because the exam's favourite trick is swapping neighbouring figures, the sheet ends with two walls — every deadline and every fine, lined up in order — so the near-misses can't fool you.
3 years
EA licence validity (not 2!)
3 working days
De-register personnel (not 14!)
$60,000
CL 1st-year security deposit
72 hrs/mo
Max overtime (Employment Act)
14 days
Appeal a licence suspension
$91k–$269k
WICA death compensation range
1 mth / yr
Worker fee cap (max 2 months)
$5,000/worker
Unlicensed agent fine — per worker, not a flat sum
Mnemonics & traps
- CPN-AAPR-TODThe 10 PDPA obligations, in order.
- O-A-CA valid contract: Offer, Acceptance, Consideration.
- 4 → 8 → 12 → 18 → 24The demerit-point ladder. At 12, KAHs re-sit the CEI.
- Act + Means + PurposeAll 3 needed to prove human trafficking — miss one and it's a lesser, different charge.
- Own car = not liableWICA: company transport is liable, your own commute isn't.
- Phantom workers = caningThe one EFMA offence that can mean caning, not just a fine (6+ charges).
The full sheet
135 numbers memorised exactly — so you don't lose marks mixing up similar ones
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Why I built this
A few people have been curious how I passed the CEI Exam on my first attempt.
This initially started as my own CEI Exam prep.
Because I didn't sign up for any course prior, the panic set in once I registered for the CEI (KAH) exam on 29 June 2026.
I had to manually go through every single PDF, and it was a huge headache: PDF after PDF, some so dense there was no way to tell what was worth remembering and what was actually critical for the exam.
I couldn't even figure out where to start. Every hour I spent working out what to study was an hour I wasn't actually studying, and the exam date wasn't moving.
I could have just ground through it page by page and hoped I picked up the right things, but that's genuinely not how I study, and honestly, I was too lazy to spend weeks sorting it all out myself.
So instead of grinding through it, I did what I always do when something feels unmanageable: I built a system to make it manageable.
Here's what I built, and why the original course notes alone weren't enough.
The problem with studying from the course notes directly
The notes aren't organised by what the exam tests. They're organised by chapter. That's a different thing.
The real distribution looks like this:
- Section A (EARF and EFMA): 56% of the marks
- Section B (nine other topics): 38% of the marks
- Section C (case studies): 6% of the marks
If you study chapter by chapter, you're leaving your mark allocation to chance. A topic worth 2% of the paper gets the same attention as one worth 20%, because they happen to be the same length in the notes.
CEI Grill reorganises everything around the actual exam weightings. Every topic is prioritised by how much it's worth on the real paper.
Astonishingly, some pages on the course notes also contain errors.
In the system I had built, I ran every statutory figure against official MOM sources and Singapore Statutes Online directly. That caught errors like outdated WICA compensation limits, incorrect fee calculations, and one error serious enough to flag on its own.
For example, the notes listed three licence tiers: Comprehensive, Select, and Basic. The actual MOM framework only recognises two: Comprehensive and Select. "Basic" doesn't exist. If you'd taken the material at face value, which is how most people study, it would have shaped how you answered real questions on the actual exam.
The mock exam is also built so no topic can disappear
Standard random selection means a short topic can get skipped from a mock entirely, just by chance. I rewrote the sampling so every topic present in a section is guaranteed to appear at least once. You won't finish a mock and realise you never saw a question on a topic that shows up on the real paper.
What's included
- Full notes broken down and de-jargoned into digestible pieces, organised by exam weightings
- Mnemonic devices and real case scenarios that explain the consequence, not just the rule
- A cheat sheet built for last-minute revision
- A full mock exam with guaranteed topic coverage
- Every statutory figure verified against MOM and Singapore Statutes Online
How I used it
I'll be honest. I didn't purchase the course. I only spent 4 days on CEI Grill's notes. 5th day on the Grill questions and one mock exam. Sat the real exam on 13 July 2026.
The results came in.
60 out of 80. First attempt.
Passed in five days — just 14 hours of actual study across the board.
I was too lazy to sort through PDFs for weeks, so I built something that did the hard work once, correctly.
14 hrs
Total hours of study
5 days
Start to exam-ready
60/80 (75%)
Scored on the real exam
One real result, not a guarantee. Results vary. Full breakdown of the hours below.
Not another 60-day slog
How long will this actually take?
The 60 days of access is your safety buffer — exam dates slip, life happens. It’s not how long studying takes. Here’s the real breakdown.
total, typically spread over 4–7 days
One real result (not a guarantee — results vary): 4 days of course notes, 3 hours a day, then Grill and one mock exam on a 5th day — 5 days, about 14 hours total — scored 60/80 (75%) on the actual CEI (KAH) exam. (Grill that day took about 1.5 hrs on an earlier, smaller question bank — the bank has since grown, so budget a bit more today.)
Everything, unlocked for 60 days
- Learn — course notes: 13 topics weighted by exam share, every statutory fact sourcedS$89
- Grill — 280 exam-style trap questions, each with a plain-English breakdown; wrong answers auto-return until you beat themS$189
- Prove — full 2-hour mock: 80 Qs in the real 45/30/5 format, auto-gradedS$129
- Retain — CEI Exam Cheat Sheet: 135 must-memorise numbers + mnemonicsS$49
Pass first time and keep the S$539.55 CEI course fee for your EA licence application — not a re-course.
One-time S$88 · Secure Stripe checkout · No auto-renewal · Pass guarantee — fail and we extend your access 60 days (conditions apply)
Not ready? Try the free 15-question grill first
Frequently asked questions
The Certificate of Employment Intermediaries exam for Key Appointment Holders. It's 80 MCQs over 2 hours — 45 on EARF+EFMA, 30 across all topics, 5 case studies. MOM doesn't publish a fixed pass mark, but ~70% (56 out of 80) is the widely-cited target — treat it as a floor and aim higher.
Try a few of our questions
Start the free 15-question diagnostic and see the exact traps that catch most candidates — no card required.
Start the free grill →Study content derived from the CEI KAH study guide — verify all statutory figures against current MOM sources.