What Relias Training Actually Is
Relias is a continuing education platform used across healthcare, behavioral health, and professional licensing fields. You pay a subscription or your employer pays it, you complete required courses, you get certificates. That part is straightforward. The harder part is figuring out whether those certificates actually satisfy your state licensing board's CEU requirements. I've dealt with this question enough times now that I can say with reasonable certainty: it depends entirely on what license you hold, which state issued it, and what category of CEU you need. The platform itself doesn't control acceptance. The boards do.
Does Relias Training Count As Ceu
The short answer is yes, for many licenses, but not all. Relias courses are generally accredited through major provider organizations like ANCC, ACHP, ACEN, and others depending on the specific course catalog. When a course carries an accreditation from a recognized body, your licensing board will typically accept it. The trick is verifying that the specific course you completed matches the type and number of hours your board requires. Here is where people mess up. They finish a Relias course and assume acceptance without checking the accreditation details listed on the certificate. I had a case once where a counselor in Texas completed a Relias course that said it was approved for 3 CEUs, but the certificate listed ANCC accreditation. Her board required ASWB-approved hours for her license renewal, and she nearly got her application rejected because she hadn't matched the accrediting body to the acceptance criteria. The workaround was simple but time-consuming. She contacted Relias support and pulled a provider verification document showing the ANCC approval was valid for that specific course, then submitted it alongside her application with a cover letter explaining the cross-accreditation. The board accepted it eventually, but it added three weeks of processing time and a fair amount of stress.
How to Verify Before You Waste Time
Don't just click through and hope. Before you invest any hours into a Relias course for CEU purposes, do these three checks: Check the course accreditation page. Every Relias course has a detailed description section. Scroll down to where it lists accreditation approvals. Note which organization granted it, the number of contact hours, and the expiration date of that approval. Accreditations get renewed or revoked, and an expired approval means the certificate may not be honored retroactively. Cross-reference with your licensing board's approved provider list. Most boards publish a list or a search tool. Some use the same accreditation bodies Relias does. Others have their own internal approval process. If your board requires pre-approval for out-of-state providers, Relias might not qualify even if the course looks legitimate on paper.
Get the Full Details
Download and save the completion certificate immediately. Relias certificates are available as PDFs. Some people wait until renewal season to pull them all, and then they discover the portal has changed its interface or a course is no longer listed. I recommend saving every certificate to a dedicated folder as soon as you complete each course, along with the accreditation details page. You will thank yourself later.
Where Relias Falls Short
Let me be blunt about the limitations. Not every Relias course is designed for every license. The platform serves multiple professions, and the course catalog reflects that. A course marked as acceptable for social workers may not satisfy nursing requirements even if the hour count is identical. The subject matter alignment matters to some boards, not just the number of credits. There is also the issue of live versus self-paced. Certain boards require a minimum number of hours from live instruction or interactive coursework. Relias offers some live webinars, but the majority of the catalog is self-paced. If your board requires even one hour of live participation, you need to filter the catalog carefully and confirm the course format before enrolling. Another practical problem: some states have strict rules about ethics and law courses. Not every state allows those hours to come from general providers. California, for example, has very specific requirements for its ethics CEUs and maintains a fairly narrow list of acceptable course types. Relias has ethics courses, but whether they meet California's particular standards is something you need to verify independently, not assume.
When Relias Isn't the Right Tool
There are scenarios where Relias simply won't work for your CEU needs. If you hold a license in a state with highly restrictive continuing education rules, like Florida for certain counseling licenses, you may find that a significant portion of the Relias catalog doesn't align with board-specific requirements. In those cases, you are better off using a provider that specializes in your exact discipline and state. CEU Fast, for instance, focuses heavily on social work and counseling with state-specific course alignment. For nursing, platforms like Clinical Nursing Educators tend to have stronger state-by-state granularity. I learned this the hard way when a colleague of mine, licensed in New York as an alcohol and substance abuse counselor, completed eight hours through Relias thinking they would count toward her renewal. New York requires those specific CEUs to cover particular topics at a defined depth, and several of the Relias courses she chose were too general to satisfy the board's content requirements. She had to retake two courses from a NY-specific provider, costing extra time and money she didn't have to spend if she had checked first.
Practical Workflow for Using Relias Efficiently
If you decide Relias is appropriate for your situation, here is how I handle it without second-guessing myself later. First, I pull my board's CEU requirements and write them down as a checklist: total hours needed, categories required, any format restrictions, and expiration dates for course approvals. Second, I search Relias using filters that match those categories. Third, I open each candidate course and verify the accreditation details against my checklist before enrolling. Fourth, I complete the course and download the certificate immediately, saving it with a naming convention that includes the date, course title, and accreditation body. Fifth, I log everything in a spreadsheet tracking course name, date completed, hours earned, accreditation type, and the board requirement it satisfies. This process takes about twenty minutes per course initially, but it prevents the kind of scrambling that happens when renewal deadline approaches and you realize five of your eight courses don't actually count for your specific license type. The bottom line is that Relias can absolutely count toward your CEU requirements, but the platform is a generalist tool serving multiple professions. It works well when your board's requirements align with standard national accreditations. It breaks down when your board has niche, state-specific, or format-restricted rules. Checking before you click is always cheaper than fixing a mistake after submission.
