AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
The professional tier asks a harder question than the associate one. Instead of choosing a service that meets a requirement, you are given an organisation with existing commitments, half-migrated systems, regulatory constraints and a budget, and asked what to do about it.
Three hours, 75 questions, and long enough stems that reading speed becomes a real variable.
According to AWS, this exam version (SAP-C02) can be booked until 17 November 2026.
Exam facts
- Exam code
- SAP-C02
- Level
- Professional
- Field
- Cloud
- Duration
- 180 minutes
- Questions
- 75 questions (65 scored, 10 unscored), multiple choice and multiple response
- Passing score
- 750 of 1,000 (scaled)
- Languages
- English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese
- Price
- 300 USD (read 12 September 2026)
- Validity
- 3 years, renewable
- Exam delivery
- Pearson VUE (test centre or online proctored)
- Last exam day of this version
- 17 November 2026
Prerequisites: No required certification. AWS recommends two or more years of designing and operating cloud architectures on AWS; the Associate is the usual precursor.
Renewal: Pass the then-current version again (50 % voucher in your AWS certification account); a professional recertification also renews the Solutions Architect – Associate
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.
3. A practice test in the exam format
MeasureUp sells a practice test for SAP-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 SAP-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.
Why associate holders still fail this one
The associate exam has a correct answer. This one frequently has a least-bad one. Questions describe organisations that have already made decisions you would not have made, and the options trade cost against migration risk against operational burden against time. Candidates who prepared by memorising service limits find that almost nothing is asked directly; candidates who have argued about a migration plan in a real meeting recognise the shape immediately. Multi-account governance, hybrid connectivity and migration strategy carry more weight than the individual services people revise.
This version has an end date
SAP-C02 retires on 17 November 2026
Registration for the successor opens on 27 October 2026, and the successor's exam guide was not public when we last checked. That gives a short window where both exist. If you are prepared now, sit this one: a pass is a pass and the certificate does not name the version. If you are months away, prepare against the new guide once it appears rather than studying material that is about to be replaced.
The version banner is the one fact on this page most likely to change, and it is the one to check on the vendor's page before booking. The successor record on this site follows once its exam guide exists, and until then everything below describes the paper you can actually book.
| Aspect | Professional (SAP-C02) | Associate (SAA-C03) |
|---|---|---|
| Time | 180 minutes | 130 minutes |
| Questions | 75, of which 10 unscored | 65, of which 15 unscored |
| Pass mark | 750 of 1,000 | 720 of 1,000 |
| Fee | 300 USD | 150 USD |
| Validity | Three years | Three years |
| What renewing it does | Also renews the associate | Renews only itself |
Four domains, none of them small
- Design solutions for organisational complexity (26 %): many accounts, many teams, one bill and one set of guardrails.
- Design for new solutions (29 %): the largest share, and the closest to the associate exam in spirit, at twice the depth.
- Continuous improvement for existing solutions (25 %): the architecture is already there and somebody wants it cheaper, faster or safer without a rebuild.
- Accelerate workload migration and modernisation (20 %): what moves first, what moves last, and what never should.
Three hours, 75 questions, editions in English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese, and no German one. AWS requires no certificate first and recommends two or more years of designing and operating architectures on its platform; the associate is the usual precursor and the sensible one, because this paper assumes everything that one tests and asks instead what you would do about a situation nobody designed on purpose. Renewal is a resit of the then-current version with the half-price voucher, and there is nothing above it to climb to, so anyone who holds this long term will meet it again every three years.
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 company has three years left on a data-centre lease, a compliance requirement that certain records stay in one country, and a mandate to reduce operational headcount. Its main application is a monolith with a licensed database. Which migration approach best meets the constraints over the lease period?
There is no clean answer, which is the point. Rehosting is fast and saves no headcount; re-architecting saves the most and will not finish inside the lease; the licence and the residency rule each eliminate an otherwise sensible option. The exam is testing whether you can hold four constraints at once and accept a compromise, which is what the job is.
What it costs to get and to keep
| Item | Amount | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Exam fee | 300 USD | the most expensive single sitting on this site outside the security bodies, quoted in US dollars and converted at booking (read 12 September 2026) |
| Retake | 300 USD | full price again after the waiting period, which makes an unprepared attempt an expensive way to see the format (read 12 September 2026) |
| Recertification every 3 years | not published | by examination, and at this tier there is nothing higher to pass instead, so the renewal is always a resit of the current version (read 12 September 2026) |
How much preparation, from where you are
- You hold the associate and design on AWS daily
- The gap is organisational rather than technical: accounts, landing zones, shared networking, and the migration vocabulary. If you have only ever worked inside one account, that is the study plan.
- You have led a migration, on any platform
- You already own the reasoning the exam rewards, and the work is learning how AWS names the things you have done. This is the most transferable experience for this particular exam.
- You passed the associate recently and want to continue
- Give it longer than the gap between the two tiers suggests. The associate rewards knowing services; this rewards having lived with consequences, and there is no shortcut that manufactures that.
What passing this does not prove
- Implementation. Nothing asks you to build, script or configure anything.
- Whether your recommended migration would actually finish, which is the part that decides real careers.
- Cost negotiation, licensing agreements or vendor management, all of which shape these decisions in practice.
- Leadership. The exam gives you the authority to choose; the job rarely does.
Against the alternatives
- SAA-C03 — AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
- A genuine prerequisite in substance if not in rules. Passing this renews that one, so holders climbing the ladder get the lower certificate extended without a separate sitting.
- AZ-305 — Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
- Microsoft's architect exam sits closer to the associate tier in difficulty and expects an administrator's background. Do not read the two as equivalent on a CV.
- PCA — Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect
- Google's professional architect carries a shorter validity and a case-study format. If you are choosing a professional certificate on merit rather than employer, the format difference matters more than the syllabus.
SAP-C02 — quick answers
Should I sit SAP-C02 before it retires?
If you are ready within the window, yes. What you hold names the certification and not the paper behind it, so a pass is not devalued by the successor arriving, and you would otherwise be studying against a guide that does not exist yet. If you are not ready, do not rush a three-hour professional exam to beat a deadline.
Is the associate exam required first?
Not by rule. AWS removed prerequisites some years ago, so this can be booked cold. In practice very few people pass it without the experience the associate tier assumes, and the fee makes experimentation costly.
What makes the time limit tight?
Not the thinking, the reading. Stems run to several paragraphs and answers are long enough that comparing them takes real time. Candidates who run out of time usually did so by re-reading, which is why working through full-length practice under the clock is worth more here than at any other tier.
Does it expire differently from the associate exams?
No, three years like the rest, but with one practical difference: there is no higher AWS exam to pass instead, so renewal always means sitting this again. Factor that into whether you want to hold it long term or let it lapse once it has done its job.
What changes when the successor arrives?
The exam guide, and therefore the emphasis. The certificate name and the credential you hold do not change. Once the new guide is public we will add a record for it and note here what moved; until then the safe assumption is that the four domains stay recognisable and the service coverage updates.
What comes next
Concepts this exam draws on
Glossary entries with the reason each one matters for SAP-C02.
- Cloud Hosting
Professional level: multi-account, multi-region architectures across compute models.
- Load Balancing
Global and regional traffic management, failover and Route 53 routing policies.
- CDN
CloudFront designs for latency, security and cost are professional-level scenario material.
- Uptime & SLA
Designing to a stated availability target is the framing of most SAP-C02 scenarios.
- Object Storage
Cross-region replication, lifecycle and governance of S3 at scale.
- Subnetting
Multi-account address planning at organisational scale.
- VPN
Hybrid connectivity, site-to-site tunnels and their alternatives carry real weight.
- Routing
Transit routing across many virtual networks and on-premises links.
Last reviewed 12 September 2026 · Getting Digital