SAA-C03 · AWS
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate
The most widely held AWS certification, and a design exam rather than an operations one.
The most widely held AWS certification, and a design exam rather than an operations one. You are not asked to recall what a service does; you are asked which of several services that would all technically work is the right one given the constraints the question actually stated. That is the part people underestimate coming from CLF-C02. Two answers are usually defensible and only one fits the budget, the availability requirement or the latency ceiling in the scenario. Reading the constraint carefully is most of the skill being tested, and it is a skill that only comes from doing a volume of these. Four domains, a 72% pass mark, and a $150 exam fee - $300 if you sit it twice. The free sample is twenty questions with full explanations, which is enough to find out whether the scenarios here read like the real thing before you pay anything.
Who sits this exam
Engineers who choose between services rather than just use the one they were handed. Expect genuine trade-off questions — two workable answers where one is cheaper or more available than the other.
What it covers
Each domain below is weighted the way the real exam weights it, and scored separately, so you can see which one is holding the total down.
- 01Design Secure Architectures
- 02Design Resilient Architectures
- 03Design High-Performing Architectures
- 04Design Cost-Optimized Architectures
How you will practise
- Review
- Practice with answers explained immediately.
- Section
- Review one domain at a time.
- Timed
- A timed set with results at the end.
- Final
- The full exam simulation — every question, timed.
What passing proves
That you can design a multi-tier system on AWS that survives an availability-zone failure, scales without manual intervention, and does not quietly cost more than it needs to.