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In recent years, an increase in the number of studies on proof both in the country and abroad has been a sign that the significance and the importance of the proof in mathematics education has increased. The studies show that students at all levels of education are in trouble to prove, think that they can not be successful, they believe they can not succeed. The aim of the present study is to compare proof levels of both senior mathematics students and senior mathematics education students and determine their explanations whether a proof is necessary or not when the conditions of the proof of a theorem is changed. The research group for this study were 113 (53 mathematics students and 60 mathematics education students) senior students at Afyon Kocatepe University in Turkey in 2017. To determine the participants' proof level, a written questionnaire consisting of five open- ended questions was developed. The first question in the questionnaire was about "prove the following theorem: if p and q are any two odd numbers, (p+q)x(p-q) is always a multiple of 4". Moreover, the other questions were about whether a proof is necessary or not when the conditions of the proof of the theorem are changed. The result of the study shows that pre-service mathematics teachers had higher proof levels than mathematics students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]