# AWS Certification Tracks

Five AWS certification preparation courses — Cloud Practitioner, Solutions Architect – Associate, CloudOps Engineer – Associate, Developer – Associate and AI Practitioner — with blueprints, exam facts, a recommended order and a shared 80-item practice exam.

import { Card, CardGrid, Badge } from '@prosefly/astro-components';

<Badge color="accent" variant="soft">5 tracks</Badge> <Badge color="info" variant="soft">24 note pages</Badge> <Badge color="success" variant="soft">80-item practice exam</Badge> <Badge color="neutral" variant="soft">73-term services glossary</Badge>

**Five AWS certifications, one study system.** Two foundational credentials that need no prior cloud experience, and three associate credentials that assume about a year of hands-on AWS. Each track is a set of exam-oriented note pages built on the services and distinctions the items are actually written around, and all five share one [practice exam](/aws/practice-exam/) and one [services glossary](/aws/services-glossary/).

:::caution[Unofficial preparation]
This is independent study material. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by AWS, and it contains no official exam questions. Exam codes, durations, prices and domain weightings move — the figures here were taken from the AWS exam guides and certification pages and must be re-checked against the [official exam guides](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/aws-certification/latest/examguides/aws-certification-exam-guides.html) before you book.
:::

## The five tracks

<CardGrid>
  <Card title="Cloud Practitioner" href="/aws/cloud-practitioner/" icon="lucide:cloud">
    **Foundational · CLF-C02.** Cloud concepts, the core service catalogue, security and compliance, billing and support. No prior IT experience assumed.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Solutions Architect – Associate" href="/aws/solutions-architect/" icon="lucide:drafting-compass">
    **Associate · SAA-C03.** Designing secure, resilient, high-performing and cost-optimised architectures. The most-taken associate exam.
  </Card>
  <Card title="CloudOps Engineer – Associate" href="/aws/sysops-associate/" icon="lucide:activity">
    **Associate · SOA-C03.** Formerly SysOps Administrator. Monitoring, remediation, reliability, deployment automation, security and networking operations.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Developer – Associate" href="/aws/developer-associate/" icon="lucide:code-2">
    **Associate · DVA-C02.** Building, deploying, securing and debugging applications on AWS services. Being replaced by DVA-C03 — see the dates below.
  </Card>
  <Card title="AI Practitioner" href="/aws/ai-practitioner/" icon="lucide:brain-circuit">
    **Foundational · AIF-C01.** AI, ML and generative-AI concepts *and* the AWS AI services — Bedrock, SageMaker, the pre-trained services — plus responsible AI.
  </Card>
  <Card title="AI Business Strategist" href="/aws/aib-c01/" icon="lucide:line-chart">
    **Business · AIB-C01 (beta).** The business-judgment credential. Deliberately assesses **no** AWS services — see how it differs from AI Practitioner below.
  </Card>
</CardGrid>

## Exam facts at a glance

| Certification | Code | Level | Items | Time | Pass | Price |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Cloud Practitioner](/aws/cloud-practitioner/) | CLF-C02 | Foundational | 65 (50 scored) | 90 min | 700/1000 | $100 |
| [Solutions Architect – Associate](/aws/solutions-architect/) | SAA-C03 | Associate | 65 (50 scored) | 130 min | 720/1000 | $150 |
| [CloudOps Engineer – Associate](/aws/sysops-associate/) | SOA-C03 | Associate | 65 (50 scored) | 130 min | 720/1000 | $150 |
| [Developer – Associate](/aws/developer-associate/) | DVA-C02 | Associate | 65 (50 scored) | 130 min | 720/1000 | $150 |
| [AI Practitioner](/aws/ai-practitioner/) | AIF-C01 | Foundational | 65 (50 scored) | 90 min | 700/1000 | $100 |

Every one of these uses the same machinery: a scaled 100–1,000 score, a **compensatory model** (you pass the exam as a whole, not each domain), 15 unscored pretest items mixed in unmarked, and **no penalty for guessing** — an unanswered item is simply wrong, so never leave one blank.

:::note[Exam versions in motion]
Two of these are mid-transition. **SysOps Administrator – Associate became CloudOps Engineer – Associate with SOA-C03**; the new name applies only to people who pass the latest version. **Developer – Associate is being refreshed to DVA-C03**: registration opens 27 October 2026 and DVA-C02 can be taken until 1 December 2026. If you are booking a Developer exam, decide deliberately which version you are sitting.
:::

## Where the marks are

Blueprint weightings, straight from the current exam guides. Study time should follow these numbers, not your comfort.

### CLF-C02 · Cloud Practitioner

| # | Domain | Weight |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Cloud Concepts | 24% |
| 2 | Security and Compliance | 30% |
| 3 | Cloud Technology and Services | **34%** |
| 4 | Billing, Pricing, and Support | 12% |

### SAA-C03 · Solutions Architect – Associate

| # | Domain | Weight |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Design Secure Architectures | **30%** |
| 2 | Design Resilient Architectures | 26% |
| 3 | Design High-Performing Architectures | 24% |
| 4 | Design Cost-Optimized Architectures | 20% |

### SOA-C03 · CloudOps Engineer – Associate

| # | Domain | Weight |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Monitoring, Logging, Analysis, Remediation, and Performance Optimization | 22% |
| 2 | Reliability and Business Continuity | 22% |
| 3 | Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation | 22% |
| 4 | Security and Compliance | 16% |
| 5 | Networking and Content Delivery | 18% |

The flattest associate blueprint on this page — three domains tied at 22% and nothing below 16%. There is no domain you can trade away.

### DVA-C02 · Developer – Associate

| # | Domain | Weight |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Development with AWS Services | **32%** |
| 2 | Security | 26% |
| 3 | Deployment | 24% |
| 4 | Troubleshooting and Optimization | 18% |

### AIF-C01 · AI Practitioner

| # | Domain | Weight |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Fundamentals of AI and ML | 20% |
| 2 | Fundamentals of GenAI | 24% |
| 3 | Applications of Foundation Models | **28%** |
| 4 | Guidelines for Responsible AI | 14% |
| 5 | Security, Compliance, and Governance for AI Solutions | 14% |

AIF-C01 also uses **ordering** and **matching** item types alongside multiple choice and multiple response — the only exam on this page that does. All-or-nothing credit applies: a partly correct ordering scores zero.

## Which one first

There are no hard prerequisites on any of these — you can book an associate exam without holding Cloud Practitioner. What follows is about efficiency, not gatekeeping.

| If you are… | Start with | Then |
| --- | --- | --- |
| New to cloud entirely | Cloud Practitioner | Solutions Architect – Associate |
| An engineer with AWS exposure | Solutions Architect – Associate | CloudOps or Developer, whichever matches your job |
| On call for AWS workloads | CloudOps Engineer – Associate | Solutions Architect – Associate for the design half |
| Shipping code onto AWS | Developer – Associate | Solutions Architect – Associate |
| Working on or around AI | AI Practitioner | Cloud Practitioner if the AWS services were the hard part |
| Leading AI investment decisions | [AI Business Strategist](/aws/aib-c01/) | AI Practitioner if you also need service fluency |

**Solutions Architect – Associate is the highest-leverage single exam** if you only sit one. Its service coverage overlaps heavily with CloudOps and Developer, so the second associate exam costs far less study time than the first.

## AI Practitioner versus AI Business Strategist

These two are easy to confuse and prepare for wrongly, because only one of them tests AWS services.

| | **AI Practitioner (AIF-C01)** | **AI Business Strategist (AIB-C01)** |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Category | Foundational | Business |
| Assesses AWS services? | **Yes** — Bedrock, SageMaker AI, the pre-trained AI services | **No** — strategic familiarity only |
| Validates | Foundational AI/ML and GenAI concepts applied on AWS | Investment judgment, business cases, governance, scaling |
| Typical candidate | Anyone needing AI fluency on AWS, technical staff included | Product and program managers, consultants, line-of-business leaders |
| Items · time · pass | 65 · 90 min · 700 | 85 · 170 min · 700 (beta) |
| Course here | [AI Practitioner track](/aws/ai-practitioner/) | [AIB-C01 course](/aws/aib-c01/) |

If you want to *talk about* AI investments, AIB-C01. If you want to *name the service* that solves a problem, AIF-C01. Holding both is coherent, and AWS suggests AI Practitioner as a follow-on from AIB-C01.

## How to use these courses

<CardGrid>
  <Card title="Read the notes in order" icon="lucide:list-ordered">
    Each track's note pages are sequenced. First pass, read straight through; second pass, cover the page and try to reconstruct each point before reading it.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Sit the practice exam early" href="/aws/practice-exam/" icon="lucide:clipboard-check">
    80 items across eight service domains, timed or untimed. Sit it as a **diagnostic** before you have finished studying — the weak domains tell you where the next ten hours go.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Close gaps with the glossary" href="/aws/services-glossary/" icon="lucide:book-a">
    73 services and operational terms, A–Z. Any service you cannot define in one sentence is a service that will cost you an item.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Use the appendix for reference" href="/appendix/aws/service-landscape/" icon="lucide:library">
    Frameworks, the service landscape, pricing and ROI, KPI library and study plans — the material you should not have to re-derive.
  </Card>
</CardGrid>

## What the AWS exams reward

Across all five, correct answers cluster around the same handful of instincts:

- **Managed over self-managed.** If AWS operates it for you and the requirement does not forbid it, that is usually the answer.
- **Least privilege, always.** Roles over keys, temporary credentials over long-lived ones, explicit deny beats any allow.
- **Multi-AZ for availability, multi-Region for disaster recovery.** Mixing these up is the single most common architecture error on the associate exams.
- **Decouple before you scale.** A queue or a topic between two components beats a bigger instance.
- **The cheapest option that meets the stated requirement** — not the cheapest option, and not the most capable one.
- **Read the qualifier.** MOST cost-effective, LEAST operational overhead and FASTEST select different correct answers from the same four options.

Wrong answers tend to: solve the problem with a bigger instance, use long-lived access keys, put a read replica where a Multi-AZ standby belongs, reach for a custom build where a managed service exists, and ignore the constraint the stem spent a whole sentence establishing.