California · three BBS licenses · rules checked 28 August 2026
Three licenses. One question: what kind of work do you want the degree to open?
LMFT, LCSW, and LPCC share a 3,000-hour, 104-week spine. The degree, clinical categories, trainee-hour treatment, and national or state clinical exam are where the paths part.
Compare →Choose the work, then the initials
The overlap is real. So are the differences.
AMFT → LMFT
Qualifying marriage and family therapy degree
1,750 direct-clinical minimum; 500 hours couples, families, and children.
Clinical exam: California LMFT Clinical Examination.
ASW → LCSW
Master of Social Work from a qualifying program
2,000 direct-clinical minimum; 750 hours face-to-face individual or group psychotherapy; 1700 hours hours supervised by an lcsw; 13 weeks individual/triadic weeks supervised by an lcsw.
Clinical exam: ASWB Clinical Examination.
APCC → LPCC
Qualifying professional clinical counseling degree
1,750 direct-clinical minimum; no additional category minimum in the current breakdown.
Clinical exam: National Clinical Mental Health Counselor Examination (NCMHCE).
| Path | Qualifying degree | Direct clinical floor | Pre-degree work counts? | Clinical exam |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMFT → LMFT | Qualifying marriage and family therapy degree | 1,750 hours | Yes, up to 1,300 | California LMFT Clinical Examination |
| ASW → LCSW | Master of Social Work from a qualifying program | 2,000 hours | No | ASWB Clinical Examination |
| APCC → LPCC | Qualifying professional clinical counseling degree | 1,750 hours | No | National Clinical Mental Health Counselor Examination (NCMHCE) |
Use your own license path. AMFT, ASW and APCC requirements are not interchangeable. Choose the route that matches your registration, then check its experience categories and controlling BBS sources before planning hours.
Private planning tool
Which requirement is actually holding up your application?
This is a planning estimate, not a substitute for signed weekly logs or a BBS audit. Nothing entered here is transmitted or stored.
AMFT path
Progress toward LMFT
Planning floor: 156 weeks at the entered pace.
Path-specific checks
Clinical exam after BBS approval: .
What the three paths lead to
The jobs and the pay, from the state and federal files.
How many positions California expects to add for each occupation to 2034, and the ten-year openings by area, are on the job outlook page from EDD’s projections; what employed MFTs, counselors, social workers and psychologists earn in each metro is on the wages page from BLS. Neither counts a private practice, and both say so.
Controlling sources
The comparison is generated from a public rules record.
The page reads the same versioned JSON file used by its planner. Current figures were checked against the BBS LMFT, LCSW, and LPCC handbooks and the Board's license-management page on 28 August 2026.
