The most comprehensive, community-maintained AWS certification study guide. Every resource listed here is free or has a free tier. No affiliate links, no paywalls on essential content.
- How to Use This Guide
- Certification Map
- Foundational
- Associate
- Professional
- Specialty
- Study Strategies That Work
- Free Practice Exam Sources
- Free Labs and Hands-On Practice
- Structured Learning Paths
- Community Resources
- Contributing
- License
- Pick your target cert based on your experience level and career goals.
- Follow the study timeline suggested for each cert.
- Use the official exam guide first -- it tells you exactly what AWS tests.
- Do hands-on labs -- reading alone will not pass you.
- Take practice exams at least two weeks before your test date to identify gaps.
For structured, instructor-guided versions of these study paths with hands-on projects and career support, check out the free cloud courses at Citadel Cloud Management.
+---------------------------+
| Cloud Practitioner |
| (CLF-C02) |
+---------------------------+
|
+------------------+------------------+
| | |
+--------v-------+ +-------v--------+ +-------v--------+
| Solutions Arch | | Developer | | SysOps |
| Associate | | Associate | | Associate |
| (SAA-C03) | | (DVA-C02) | | (SOA-C02) |
+--------+-------+ +-------+--------+ +-------+--------+
| | |
+--------v-------+ +-------v--------+ |
| Solutions Arch | | DevOps |<--------+
| Professional | | Professional |
| (SAP-C02) | | (DOP-C02) |
+----------------+ +----------------+
Exam Code: CLF-C02 Cost: $100 USD Duration: 90 minutes | 65 questions Passing Score: 700/1000 Recommended Study Time: 4-6 weeks
Who should take this: Anyone new to AWS or cloud computing. Business professionals, project managers, sales teams, and technical beginners. This cert validates broad understanding of AWS Cloud concepts, not deep technical skill.
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam Guide -- Read this first. Every question maps to the domains listed here.
- AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials (Free Digital Training) -- 6-hour official course.
- AWS Well-Architected Framework Whitepaper -- Foundational reading for every AWS cert.
- AWS Shared Responsibility Model -- Expect 5-8 questions on this topic alone.
- freeCodeCamp Cloud Practitioner Course (YouTube) -- 14-hour video course, updated for CLF-C02.
- Tutorials Dojo CLF-C02 Cheat Sheets -- Condensed notes organized by exam domain.
- AWS Skill Builder Free Practice Questions -- 20 official sample questions per exam.
| Week | Focus Area | Key Services |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cloud Concepts & Value Proposition | AWS pricing models, Well-Architected |
| 2 | Security & Compliance | IAM, Shared Responsibility, encryption |
| 3 | Core Services: Compute & Storage | EC2, Lambda, S3, EBS |
| 4 | Core Services: Networking & Database | VPC, CloudFront, RDS, DynamoDB |
| 5 | Billing, Pricing & Support | Cost Explorer, Budgets, Support Plans |
| 6 | Review & Practice Exams | Full practice tests, review weak areas |
- This exam is wide but shallow. Know what each service does, not how to configure it.
- Memorize the support plan tiers and what each includes.
- Understand the difference between Reserved, On-Demand, and Spot pricing.
- Read every word in multi-select questions -- "MOST cost-effective" vs. "MOST reliable" changes the answer.
Exam Code: AIF-C01 Cost: $100 USD Duration: 90 minutes | 65 questions Passing Score: 700/1000 Recommended Study Time: 3-4 weeks
Who should take this: Professionals who want to demonstrate understanding of AI/ML concepts and how they apply on AWS. Does not require coding or model-building experience.
- AWS Certified AI Practitioner Exam Guide
- Generative AI for Decision Makers (AWS Skill Builder) -- Free foundational course on GenAI concepts.
- AWS AI/ML Service Documentation -- Focus on SageMaker, Bedrock, Rekognition, Comprehend, and Transcribe.
- Understand the difference between supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning at a conceptual level.
- Know what Amazon Bedrock does and which foundation models it supports.
- Study responsible AI principles -- bias detection, explainability, and governance.
Exam Code: SAA-C03 Cost: $150 USD Duration: 130 minutes | 65 questions Passing Score: 720/1000 Recommended Study Time: 8-12 weeks
Who should take this: Developers, system administrators, and anyone designing workloads on AWS. This is the most popular AWS certification and the standard entry point for cloud architects.
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam Guide
- AWS Architecture Center -- Reference architectures for common workloads.
- AWS Well-Architected Labs -- Hands-on labs organized by pillar.
- Stephane Maarek SAA-C03 Cheat Sheets -- GitHub notes companion to paid course (free notes).
- Tutorials Dojo SAA-C03 Study Guide -- Free cheat sheets by service.
- Open Guide to AWS -- Community-maintained deep reference on every AWS service.
| Week | Focus Area | Key Services |
|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | Compute & Networking | EC2, ELB, Auto Scaling, VPC, Route 53 |
| 3-4 | Storage & Databases | S3, EFS, RDS, DynamoDB, Aurora, ElastiCache |
| 5 | Security & Identity | IAM, KMS, ACM, WAF, Shield |
| 6 | Application Integration | SQS, SNS, EventBridge, Step Functions |
| 7 | Serverless & Containers | Lambda, API Gateway, ECS, EKS, Fargate |
| 8 | Monitoring & Cost Optimization | CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Cost Explorer, Trusted Advisor |
| 9-10 | Review & Practice Exams | Minimum 3 full practice tests |
- This exam loves scenario questions. Read the full scenario before looking at answers.
- When two answers seem correct, pick the one that is more "AWS-native" (managed service over self-hosted).
- Know when to use SQS vs. SNS vs. EventBridge -- this comes up repeatedly.
- Understand S3 storage classes and lifecycle policies cold.
For architecture blueprints that demonstrate real-world AWS design patterns, see the Architecture Blueprints collection on Citadel Cloud Management.
Exam Code: DVA-C02 Cost: $150 USD Duration: 130 minutes | 65 questions Passing Score: 720/1000 Recommended Study Time: 8-10 weeks
Who should take this: Software developers building applications on AWS. Requires hands-on coding experience with at least one programming language.
- AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam Guide
- AWS SDK Documentation -- Focus on the SDK for your primary language.
- AWS Serverless Developer Guide
- Lambda deep dive: cold starts, concurrency, layers, environment variables, error handling
- DynamoDB: partition keys, sort keys, GSIs, LSIs, query vs. scan, DynamoDB Streams
- API Gateway: REST vs. HTTP APIs, authorizers, stages, throttling
- CI/CD: CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline
- X-Ray: tracing, segments, subsegments, annotations vs. metadata
- Cognito: user pools vs. identity pools, OAuth 2.0 flows
- Know the X-Ray SDK integration patterns -- the exam tests this heavily.
- Understand DynamoDB read/write capacity units and how to calculate them.
- Be comfortable with IAM roles for Lambda functions (execution roles vs. resource policies).
- Study CloudFormation basics:
!Ref,!Sub,!GetAtt, intrinsic functions.
Exam Code: SOA-C02 Cost: $150 USD Duration: 180 minutes | 65 questions + 3 exam labs Passing Score: 720/1000 Recommended Study Time: 8-10 weeks
Who should take this: System administrators and operations engineers who manage AWS environments. This exam includes hands-on labs in the AWS console.
- AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate Exam Guide
- AWS Systems Manager Documentation
- AWS Config Rules Documentation
- CloudWatch: alarms, metrics, dashboards, Logs Insights, anomaly detection
- Systems Manager: SSM Agent, Parameter Store, Session Manager, Patch Manager, Run Command
- Config and compliance: AWS Config rules, conformance packs, remediation actions
- High availability: Multi-AZ deployments, Auto Scaling policies, ELB health checks
- Exam labs: Practice creating VPCs, configuring S3 bucket policies, and setting up CloudWatch alarms in the console
- The exam labs are real AWS console tasks -- practice doing things by hand, not just with CloudFormation.
- Memorize CloudWatch metric namespaces for EC2, ELB, and RDS.
- Understand the difference between CloudWatch alarms and EventBridge rules.
- Know SSM Parameter Store vs. Secrets Manager and when to use each.
Exam Code: DEA-C01 Cost: $150 USD Duration: 130 minutes | 65 questions Passing Score: 720/1000 Recommended Study Time: 8-10 weeks
Who should take this: Data engineers who build and manage data pipelines on AWS.
- Glue: ETL jobs, crawlers, data catalog, Spark
- Redshift: distribution styles, sort keys, Spectrum, Redshift Serverless
- Kinesis: Data Streams, Data Firehose, Data Analytics
- Athena: partitioning, CTAS, query optimization
- Lake Formation: permissions, data sharing, governed tables
- EMR: cluster types, HDFS vs. EMRFS, instance fleets
Exam Code: MLA-C01 Cost: $150 USD Duration: 130 minutes | 65 questions Passing Score: 720/1000 Recommended Study Time: 10-12 weeks
Who should take this: Engineers who build, deploy, and maintain ML solutions on AWS. Requires understanding of ML workflows, not just AWS services.
- SageMaker: training jobs, endpoints, pipelines, model registry, feature store
- Bedrock: foundation models, fine-tuning, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
- Data preparation: SageMaker Data Wrangler, Processing Jobs, Feature Store
- MLOps: SageMaker Pipelines, Model Monitor, A/B testing endpoints
- Evaluation: precision, recall, F1, AUC-ROC, confusion matrix
Exam Code: SAP-C02 Cost: $300 USD Duration: 180 minutes | 75 questions Passing Score: 750/1000 Recommended Study Time: 12-16 weeks
Who should take this: Experienced cloud architects with 2+ years of hands-on AWS experience. Considered one of the hardest IT certifications.
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional Exam Guide
- AWS This Is My Architecture (YouTube) -- Real-world architecture walkthroughs from AWS customers.
- AWS re:Invent Architecture Sessions (YouTube) -- Search for "ARC" session codes.
- Multi-account strategies: AWS Organizations, SCPs, Control Tower, landing zones
- Hybrid connectivity: Direct Connect, Site-to-Site VPN, Transit Gateway, hub-and-spoke
- Migration strategies: 7 Rs (Rehost, Replatform, Refactor, Repurchase, Retire, Retain, Relocate), Migration Hub, Application Discovery Service
- Cost governance at scale: Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, Compute Optimizer, Cost Anomaly Detection
- Disaster recovery: pilot light, warm standby, multi-site active-active
- Questions are long (4-5 sentences per scenario). Practice reading comprehension under time pressure.
- "Best" answer often means "most cost-effective that meets ALL requirements."
- Know Transit Gateway vs. VPC Peering vs. PrivateLink decision matrix.
- Study cross-region replication patterns for every data service (S3, DynamoDB, Aurora, EFS).
For deep-dive architecture patterns and real-world reference designs, see Citadel's Architecture Blueprints.
Exam Code: DOP-C02 Cost: $300 USD Duration: 180 minutes | 75 questions Passing Score: 750/1000 Recommended Study Time: 12-16 weeks
Who should take this: DevOps engineers and SREs with 2+ years of AWS operations experience.
- CI/CD deep dive: CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy deployment strategies (blue/green, canary, rolling)
- Infrastructure as Code: CloudFormation (nested stacks, custom resources, drift detection), CDK, Terraform on AWS
- Monitoring at scale: CloudWatch composite alarms, Container Insights, Lambda Insights, X-Ray service maps
- Incident management: Systems Manager Incident Manager, OpsCenter, runbooks
- Compliance automation: Config rules, conformance packs, auto-remediation with Lambda
- Know CloudFormation inside-out --
DependsOn,Conditions,UpdatePolicy, stack sets. - Understand blue/green deployments across EC2, ECS, Lambda, and Elastic Beanstalk.
- Study ECS vs. EKS decision factors and deployment strategies for each.
Exam Code: ANS-C01 | Cost: $300 USD | Duration: 170 minutes | Passing Score: 750/1000
Key Services: VPC (subnets, NACLs, security groups, flow logs), Direct Connect (virtual interfaces, LAGs, resiliency), Transit Gateway, Route 53 (routing policies, DNSSEC, health checks), CloudFront (origins, behaviors, Lambda@Edge), Global Accelerator, Network Firewall, PrivateLink.
Study Time: 10-14 weeks. Deep networking experience required.
Exam Code: SCS-C02 | Cost: $300 USD | Duration: 170 minutes | Passing Score: 750/1000
Key Services: IAM (policies, roles, federation, ABAC), KMS (key policies, grants, CMKs), CloudTrail (organization trail, log validation), GuardDuty, Security Hub, Detective, Macie, WAF, Shield Advanced, Secrets Manager, Certificate Manager.
Study Time: 10-14 weeks. Security experience highly recommended.
Exam Code: MLS-C01 | Cost: $300 USD | Duration: 180 minutes | Passing Score: 750/1000
Key Services: SageMaker (full lifecycle), Comprehend, Rekognition, Translate, Polly, Lex, Forecast, Personalize, Textract, Kendra. Also requires understanding of core ML math (linear algebra, statistics, optimization).
Study Time: 12-16 weeks. Requires ML fundamentals beyond just AWS services.
Exam Code: DBS-C01 | Cost: $300 USD | Duration: 180 minutes | Passing Score: 750/1000
Key Services: RDS (all engines, Multi-AZ, Read Replicas), Aurora (Serverless, Global Database), DynamoDB (advanced patterns, DAX, Streams, Global Tables), ElastiCache, Neptune, DocumentDB, Keyspaces, QLDB, Timestream, MemoryDB.
Study Time: 10-14 weeks. Deep database administration experience recommended.
Exam Code: PAS-C01 | Cost: $300 USD | Duration: 170 minutes | Passing Score: 750/1000
Key Focus: Running SAP HANA and SAP NetWeaver on AWS. Migration planning, high availability with SAP-specific clustering, backup/recovery, and performance optimization. Requires SAP Basis knowledge.
Study Time: 10-14 weeks. Prior SAP administration experience required.
- 70% hands-on practice: Build things in AWS. Break things. Fix them.
- 20% structured study: Watch videos, read whitepapers, take notes.
- 10% practice exams: Identify gaps, learn the exam style.
Do not re-read notes. Instead:
- Read a topic once.
- Close the material.
- Write down everything you remember.
- Check what you missed.
- Repeat for missed items.
Use Anki or any spaced repetition tool for:
- Service names and their primary use cases
- Port numbers and protocols
- AWS limits and quotas (the non-obvious ones)
- Decision trees: "When do you use X vs. Y?"
If you cannot score 75%+ on practice exams two weeks before your test date, postpone. The money saved on a retake is worth it.
| Source | Questions | Format | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Skill Builder Official Questions | 20 per cert | Closest to real exam | Free |
| Tutorials Dojo Free Sampler | 10-15 per cert | Timed, with explanations | Free |
| Whizlabs Free Tests | 25 per cert | Good explanations | Free |
| ExamTopics Community | Varies | Community-validated | Free (with ads) |
| DigitalCloud Free Practice | 10-20 per cert | Scenario-based | Free |
Warning: Never use braindumps. AWS actively changes questions, and memorizing answers without understanding will fail you. More importantly, it violates the AWS certification agreement.
Your most powerful study tool. 12 months of free tier gives you:
- 750 hours/month of t2.micro or t3.micro EC2
- 5GB S3 storage
- 25GB DynamoDB storage
- 1 million Lambda requests/month
- And more: Full free tier details
Pro tip: Set a billing alarm at $5 on day one. Free tier accidents happen.
- AWS Well-Architected Labs -- Official, free, organized by pillar
- AWS Workshops -- Hundreds of guided workshops
- AWS Samples on GitHub -- Real code samples for every service
- Qwiklabs Free Labs -- Some free labs available with Google account
- KodeKloud Free Tier -- Limited free labs for DevOps/Cloud
Month 1-2: Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02)
Month 3-6: Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03)
Month 1-2: Cloud Practitioner
Month 3-6: Developer Associate (DVA-C02)
Month 7-10: SysOps Administrator Associate (SOA-C02)
Month 11-16: DevOps Engineer Professional (DOP-C02)
Month 1-2: Cloud Practitioner
Month 3-6: Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03)
Month 7-10: Developer or SysOps Associate
Month 11-16: Solutions Architect Professional (SAP-C02)
Month 1-2: Cloud Practitioner + AI Practitioner
Month 3-6: Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03)
Month 7-10: Data Engineer Associate (DEA-C01)
Month 11-16: ML Engineer Associate or ML Specialty
For structured learning paths with mentorship and career guidance, Citadel Cloud Management offers free cloud courses covering AWS, Azure, GCP, and DevOps fundamentals.
- r/AWSCertifications -- Study tips, exam reports, resource sharing
- r/aws -- General AWS discussion
- r/devops -- DevOps career and tooling
- AWS Community Discord -- Official
- Cloud Study Network -- Study groups organized by cert
- Stephane Maarek -- The gold standard for AWS cert prep
- Adrian Cantrill -- Deep, thorough explanations
- freeCodeCamp -- Full free cert courses
- Be A Better Dev -- Short, focused AWS tutorials
- Digital Cloud Training -- Neal Davis cert prep
- AWS Official Blog
- Last Week in AWS -- Corey Quinn's AWS news and commentary
- Tutorials Dojo Blog -- Cert-focused content
- AWS in Plain English -- Simple explanations of every service
- Government-issued photo ID (name must match exactly)
- Testing center address or online proctoring software installed
- Stable internet connection (for online exams: 15 Mbps minimum)
- Clean desk, no second monitors (online proctoring)
- Arrive 15 minutes early (testing center) or 30 minutes early (online)
- Flag difficult questions and come back -- do not get stuck
- Use the full time -- there is no bonus for finishing early
This guide is maintained by the community. Contributions are welcome.
- Fork this repository
- Create a feature branch (
git checkout -b add-new-resource) - Add your resource with a brief description of why it is helpful
- Submit a pull request
- Only add free resources (or resources with meaningful free tiers)
- No affiliate links
- Include a brief description of why the resource is useful, not just a URL
- Verify links are working before submitting
- Keep formatting consistent with existing entries
- Updated practice question counts for each cert
- Exam experience reports with study timelines
- Country-specific exam tips (testing center vs. online proctoring)
- Non-English study resources (translations welcome)
- Free lab suggestions for specific cert domains
This guide is released under the MIT License.
You are free to share, copy, modify, and distribute this guide. Attribution is appreciated but not required.
This guide is compiled from public resources, community contributions, and the collective study experiences of thousands of AWS certification candidates. AWS, Amazon Web Services, and all related certification names are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc.
Built with input from the cloud education team at Citadel Cloud Management, which offers free cloud certification prep courses and career guidance for aspiring cloud professionals.
Stars are appreciated -- they help others find this resource.
Last updated: May 2026