What this means if you’re an APRN
If you hold a multistate RN license, that license still covers your RN practice across compact states. But your APRN role — prescribing, advanced assessment, and the rest of your scope — is authorized separately by each state. So an APRN moving between states usually needs to obtain APRN authorization in the new state, even when the RN side is handled by the compact.
- Your RN license may travel under the compact.
- Your APRN authority generally does not — it is state by state.
- Scope of practice for APRNs also varies significantly between states.
Is there a separate APRN compact?
Yes — an APRN Compact exists, but it is a separate arrangement from the NLC and is not yet active. It requires seven states to enact it before it takes effect. We do not publish a count of how many have: our own state research turned up APRN compact law in Idaho and Iowa that the list we used to publish omitted, so we treat any figure — including one we arrived at ourselves — as unreliable. What is not in doubt is that the compact has not activated, so no APRN is practicing on an APRN multistate license yet. Bills have been introduced in several other states, and compact legislation moves state by state and can change each session, so don’t assume APRN multistate privileges exist anywhere — verify the current status with the NCSBN compacts page and the relevant board of nursing.
Which states have enacted the APRN Compact?
We can no longer put a confident number on this, and the honest reason is that our own research contradicted the figure we used to publish. What follows is split by evidence: jurisdictions whose own law we have read, and jurisdictions we are carrying from lists we could not verify. None of them issues an APRN multistate license today — the compact has not activated.
Confirmed from the jurisdiction’s own law:
- Delaware — Del. Code tit. 24, ch. 19B (Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Compact), read off the jurisdiction’s own code. The chapter heading in Delaware’s own code reads “[Effective upon fulfillment of 83 Del. Laws, c. 110, § 2]” — enacted and conditional in the same line.
- Idaho — Idaho Code § 54-1419 (Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Compact), read off the jurisdiction’s own code. Sits immediately after Idaho’s Nurse Licensure Compact at § 54-1418.
- Iowa — Iowa Code ch. 152E (Nurse Licensure Compacts), read off the jurisdiction’s own code. Iowa titles the chapter in the PLURAL because it carries the APRN compact alongside the RN/LPN one in the same place.
- North Dakota — N.D. Cent. Code ch. 43-12.5 (Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Licensure Compact), § 43-12.5-01, read off the jurisdiction’s own code. North Dakota puts the ENTIRE compact in a single section, 43-12.5-01, while giving the Nurse Licensure Compact a whole chapter next door at 43-12.4. Chapter title read off the state’s own title 43 index, which names 43-12.4 “Nurse Licensure Compact” and 43-12.5 “Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Licensure Compact” on adjacent rows — the clearest side-by-side either compact gets in any code.
- South Dakota — S.D. Codified Laws ch. 36-9D (Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Compact), § 36-9D-1, read off the jurisdiction’s own code. One section carrying the whole compact, the same shape North Dakota uses — and unlike South Dakota’s NLC, which got no chapter at all and sits as two sections at the end of ch. 36-9. So the state gave the APRN compact its own chapter and the compact actually in force a pair of trailing sections.
- Utah — Utah Code tit. 58, ch. 31d (Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Compact), § 58-31d-101, read off the jurisdiction’s own code. Effective 4 May 2022. The section opens “The Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Compact is hereby enacted and entered into with all other jurisdictions that legally join in the compact”. Worth reading alongside Utah’s NLC trap: the nursing chapters run 31b (Nurse Practice Act), 31c (the PRIOR nurse licensure compact, superseded), 31d (this), 31e (the current NLC). Three of those four are compacts and only one of them is the NLC in force, so a citation one letter out lands on the wrong instrument entirely.
- Wyoming — W.S. §§ 33-21-301 to 33-21-302 (Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Compact), read off the jurisdiction’s own code. § 33-21-301 is the short title: “This article shall be known and may be cited as the ‘Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Compact.’”
There is no APRN compact map to consult the way there is for the RN/LPN compact, because the APRN Compact is not operational — a list of enacted states is not a list of states where APRN privilege works. Enacting is only the first step; the compact must reach seven states and then be implemented. Because bills move each legislative session, confirm the current count on the NCSBN compacts page rather than relying on any fixed list, including this one.
Be sceptical of any APRN Compact list you find, including ours. When we re-checked in August 2026, published sources disagreed with each other on both how many states have enacted it and how many are needed to activate it — we have seen the threshold given as both seven and ten, and member counts of four and five. We could not settle it from a primary source, because the official APRN Compact site does not publish the member list or the threshold as plain text. We are telling you that rather than picking whichever figure looked most confident. One entry has since been settled: Wyoming’s compiled statutes carry an article headed “This article shall be known and may be cited as the ‘Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Compact’”, so that one is the state’s own law rather than a list we copied. Delaware is settled too, and its statute makes the point better than we can: the chapter is headed “Effective upon fulfillment” of a condition, which is enactment and non-operation written into the same line. The threshold question is untouched — we would rather show you which parts we have checked than average our confidence across all of them. Our own dossiers then turned up Iowa and Idaho, neither of which was on the list we had published; reading North Dakota’s and Utah’s codes later added those two as well. Every one of those four came from reading law we could reach, not from finding a better external list — which is the clearest evidence available that a count here is not something we should be asserting. The list above is now generated from those citations rather than typed, because this page had already been wrong in exactly that way twice. If this decision matters to you, ask the board of nursing in the state you care about, and treat every third-party list — this page included — as a starting point rather than an answer. For the RN and LPN/VN side, see the compact states map.
How to confirm your APRN requirements
Check the board of nursing in the state where you want to practice as an APRN, and verify your current licenses in Nursys. Use the compact state checker for the RN-license side of the question, then confirm APRN authorization separately.