AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Cloud Practitioner certifies that you can hold a conversation about AWS: what the services are for, roughly what they cost, and where the security responsibility sits between you and Amazon. It is not a builder's exam and does not pretend to be.
Ninety minutes, 65 questions, delivered by Pearson VUE, and no prerequisite of any kind.
Exam facts
- Exam code
- CLF-C02
- Level
- Foundational
- Field
- Cloud
- Duration
- 90 minutes
- Questions
- 65 questions (50 scored, 15 unscored), multiple choice and multiple response
- Passing score
- 700 of 1,000 (scaled)
- Languages
- English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, ArabicGerman and Italian editions are withdrawn after 31 December 2026. The badges group regional variants: Spanish (Spain and Latin America) and Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) count as one language here, so the vendor lists twelve exam editions where this page shows ten.
- Price
- 100 USD (read 12 September 2026)
- Validity
- 3 years, renewable
- Exam delivery
- Pearson VUE (test centre or online proctored)
Prerequisites: None. AWS recommends about six months of exposure to the AWS Cloud — in non-technical roles such as sales, procurement, project or management as much as in IT.
Renewal: Pass the current version again (50 % voucher in your AWS certification account), pass a higher-tier AWS exam, or complete the free game AWS Cloud Quest: Recertify Cloud Practitioner
Source: exam page at AWS · Price: AWS quotes exam prices in US dollars; Pearson VUE charges the local equivalent at booking using the rate AWS sets
How to prepare
1. The vendor's free learning path
AWS publishes the exam objectives and a learning path free of charge — the authoritative source for scope and weighting. Open the learning path (opens in a new tab)
2. Online courses
Courses and practice questions from the directory that target exactly this exam — details, price and the provider link (affiliate) are on the course page.
- Preparation courseAWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Complete Course
- Preparation courseAWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
- Practice testsAWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02): Practice Exams
- Practice tests2025 CLF-C02 AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam Practice Tests
- Practice testsAWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - Practice Exams 2025
3. A practice test in the exam format
MeasureUp sells a practice test for CLF-C02 with questions in the exam format, an explanation for every answer and a timed mode; the price shows in your currency on the shop page. Affiliate link.
Practice test for CLF-C02 at MeasureUp (opens in a new tab)Book the exam
Delivered by Pearson VUE (test centre or online proctored). Schedule with AWS (opens in a new tab)
Affiliate disclosure: the course and practice-test links above are affiliate links — buying through them may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. The vendor's learning path and booking links carry no commission.
The audience this exam was built for
Procurement officers approving cloud spend, account managers selling something they have to describe accurately, project managers costing a migration, and analysts whose reports suddenly live in someone else's data centre. For all of them the vocabulary genuinely is the job, and a weekend of structured reading converts confusion into competence. The certificate closes a real gap for these readers and it closes it quickly, which is the case for it.
Engineers are a different matter. If you write code or configure infrastructure, the material here is a subset of what an associate exam already expects, and sitting it first buys a rehearsal of the booking process rather than knowledge you will keep. AWS imposes no ladder, so there is nothing to unlock. The common reason people take it anyway is that an employer pays per certificate and counts them, which is a reason about the employer rather than about the exam.
Four domains, weighted toward services and security
| Domain | Share | The question underneath it |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud concepts | 24 % | Why anyone rents computing at all, and what changes when they do |
| Security and compliance | 30 % | Where the responsibility line sits between you and Amazon |
| Cloud technology and services | 34 % | What the main services are for, at the level of a sentence each |
| Billing, pricing and support | 12 % | How a bill is built and which support plan answers the phone |
Three ways to renew, one of them free
- Sit the current version again, using the half-price voucher AWS places in your certification account.
- Pass any higher AWS exam, which renews this one automatically.
- Complete AWS Cloud Quest: Recertify Cloud Practitioner, a free game-based route that no other AWS certificate offers.
- The cycle is three years either way, and once it lapses it is simply no longer current.
German and Italian editions end after 31 December 2026
AWS has announced the withdrawal, and after that date the exam continues in the remaining editions. If either is your language, book before the cut-off. The badge groups regional variants, so the vendor lists twelve editions where this page shows ten: Spanish for Spain and Latin America count as one, as do Simplified and Traditional Chinese.
Ninety minutes for 65 questions, fifteen of them unscored trial items, with 700 of 1,000 to pass and Pearson VUE delivering. AWS suggests roughly half a year of contact with its cloud and says explicitly that sales, procurement, project and management roles qualify as fully as technical ones. The part that catches candidates out is not the technology but the billing and support domain: the smallest share, and the one nobody studies because it sounds administrative. It is examined precisely, and it is the domain a non-technical reader will use most once the certificate is on the wall.
What a question looks like
Written by us in the exam's style. It is not a real question from any question bank, and we do not publish those.
A finance team wants to reduce the monthly bill for a workload that runs continuously and has done for two years, with no expected change. Which purchasing approach fits the situation best?
Nothing here is technical, and that is the point. The question turns on recognising that steady, predictable, long-running usage is exactly the profile a commitment-based purchase is designed for, and that the flexible option costing more per hour exists to buy optionality this workload does not need. Candidates who study services rather than billing models find this harder than the architecture questions.
What it costs to get and to keep
| Item | Amount | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Exam fee | 100 USD | priced in US dollars; Pearson VUE converts at booking, so local tax and the exchange rate decide what you actually pay (read 12 September 2026) |
| Retake | 100 USD | the fee again after the waiting period; promotional free retakes appear periodically and are worth checking before you book (read 12 September 2026) |
| Recertification every 3 years | not published | unusually, this one has a free route: AWS offers a Cloud Quest recertification activity, and passing any higher exam also renews it. A paid resit carries a half-price voucher (read 12 September 2026) |
How much preparation, from where you are
- You work near cloud decisions without making them
- This is the intended reader. The material is largely vocabulary and billing logic, both of which respond well to reading rather than practice, and you will recognise most of the business scenarios from meetings you have sat in.
- You already build on the platform
- Your gap is not knowledge but exam surface: pricing models, support plans and the compliance programmes nobody touches day to day. If you sit it at all, study only those.
What passing this does not prove
- Any ability to configure, deploy or troubleshoot. Nothing in the exam requires you to have opened the console.
- Cost management as practised. Recognising a pricing model is not the same as catching a runaway bill.
- Security beyond the shared responsibility diagram and the names of the relevant services.
- Whether you can tell a good architecture from a bad one, which is the associate tier's job.
Against the alternatives
- SAA-C03 — AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
- For anyone technical this is the exam to book instead. It costs more and proves something an employer can act on, and nothing requires you to pass this one first.
- AZ-900 — Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals
- The Microsoft equivalent, near-identical in ambition and audience. Pick by the platform in use around you; the concepts carry over and none of the service names do.
- AIF-C01 — AWS Certified AI Practitioner
- The same tier aimed at AI vocabulary rather than cloud vocabulary. If your reason for certifying is a conversation you keep failing to follow, choose whichever conversation that is.
CLF-C02 — quick answers
Is it worth paying for myself?
If you are non-technical and cloud decisions keep landing near you, yes, and the free renewal route makes it cheaper to hold over time than almost anything else here. If you are technical and paying your own way, put the money toward an associate exam instead.
Does it unlock anything?
No. AWS has no prerequisite structure, so an associate or professional exam can be booked cold. The only thing a foundational pass changes is that a higher exam later will renew it automatically.
How long should preparation take?
Less than people expect, because the material covers a great deal of ground without going far into any of it. The vendor's own free digital course covers most of it, and the part that catches candidates out is the billing and support material rather than anything technical.
What is the game-based renewal?
AWS Cloud Quest has a recertification edition for this certificate, and completing it renews the credential at no cost. It is the only free renewal route in the AWS programme and the only one that is not an exam, which is a large part of why this paper is cheap to hold for a decade.
Which domain do non-technical candidates fail?
Security and compliance, most often. The shared-responsibility idea, who patches what and who is accountable when something leaks, is examined more precisely than the service catalogue is, and it is the domain where a plausible-sounding answer is most likely to be wrong.
What comes next
Concepts this exam draws on
Glossary entries with the reason each one matters for CLF-C02.
- Cloud Hosting
The Cloud Practitioner starts with what the cloud model is and why AWS prices it by use.
- IaaS
EC2 and the shared-responsibility line are the exam's picture of infrastructure as a service.
- PaaS
Elastic Beanstalk and managed databases illustrate the platform layer AWS abstracts for you.
- Object Storage
S3 storage classes and durability are among the most reliably asked facts.
- IAM
The platform's identity service and the shared-responsibility model are core vocabulary.
Last reviewed 12 September 2026 · Getting Digital