North Carolina's course pricing has a wrinkle no other state on this site has: the price depends on your county, because the required course does.
Wake and Guilford counties mandate a 4-hour course. Every other North Carolina county requires 8 hours. Providers price the two formats differently, so the first question isn't which school, it's which county your case sits in. As of August 2026, iDriveSafely's 8-hour course, the version most counties need, runs $59, and Improv lists at $27.95. Prices move; treat these as a snapshot, and confirm the course length your court or the DMV expects before paying for either, because the wrong format is $30 to $60 spent on nothing.
Stack the rest of the costs by path. If a court has agreed to dismiss or reduce your ticket for a course, your cost is the tuition plus whatever the court's own process charges, which varies. If you're using the DMV's point-reduction route, add a $40 eligibility hearing fee to the tuition, and remember that path only exists for drivers with 7 or more points, once every five years. And if you're pursuing the mechanism that actually protects most first-time NC drivers, the Prayer for Judgment Continued, the course costs you nothing because it isn't a course; it's a request to the judge, and its price is showing up to court instead of paying online.
That last option frames the money properly. A typical 10-over North Carolina ticket runs a $203 fine and roughly $3,735 in three-year insurance exposure in our data as a ceiling estimate, and North Carolina mandates no insurance discount for course completion. A $59 course, on its own, prevents none of that. Spend on the course when a court or the DMV has told you it buys something specific. Spend your effort on the courtroom either way.
Current prices for the schools we track are on the North Carolina page, and the full strategy picture is on our points page.