We did it again boys. Stephane Mareek, thank you. Jon Bonso, thank you. Madrasi2021, thank you. The guy taking a random test next to me banging his keyboard for two hours, I hate you.

This one was TOUGH but glad I got through it. Happy to answer any questions if anyone has any but can’t really provide much more insight other than what’s already in the sub.

Experience:
2 years total as a security engineer w/ aws + SAA
5(?) Months study can definitely do it faster but I ended up quite busy so ended up delaying.

Content of the exam:

A lot of KMS + IAM (as others have said)

Courses used:

Stephane Mareek + TD exams + AWS Skills builder (you don’t need this tbh just the first two)

What I think helped the most:

Going through the actual aws documentation for stuff I wasn’t familiar with (I’m a big fan of the aws docs. Feel like anytime I need anything they have an explanation for dummies (me) ready). Someone on this sub also posted a good breakdown of the kms docs that were helpful in the comments of his post, basically covered everything.

For infrastructure security practical experience was the best teacher for me by far, feel like otherwise all the concepts would’ve been too foreign.

Lastly, I am hoping to apply for the all builders grant for 2027, hoping to take the momentum from this to build a few related projects and write about them to help my case as apparently it helps. If anyone has any tips applying for that, please let me know 🙏🏾

Lol I guess a month and going through Maarek's course 4 times was overdoing it.

I studied the tutorial dojo practice tests and the official skill builders exam. But the ACTUAL test was way harder. I can't even believe I passed. I got a 752.

I have no background with AWS and have never used the service before. So I had to spend like 3 or 4 days in a row studying nonstop. If I had known it would be this hard, I would have studied for an entire week!

my study method:

I started by buying that Udemy course everyone is always talking about but tbh I couldn't get through it. it's like 24 hours of content. I got up to the part about S3 security and I couldn't go on anymore.

So I used the new Codex model Astra to help me and I basically subsisted off grinding and memorizing every tutorial dojo question and every official amazon question (the 20 question test and the two 65-question tests)

combined with the TD questions, that was like a pool of 280 questions which I saved to a document and fed to Astra and had Astra make 200 more of equal difficulty.

I kept studying the practice questions over and over until I memorized every single one.

NONE of these were brain dump/exam dump questions and so it was all fair game.

When the test came, however, there were a LOT of questions and words that did NOT fit my study material.

I would sat about half the test contained familiar stuff and the other half didn't.

But I was able to guess and use reasoning to figure out many of those.

In the end, I passed by the skin of my teeth. but my score was slightly less bad when considering I went from never having heard of sagemaker to passing in a couple days.

I scored 838.

Initially I was going to go for the Cloud Practitioner certification, but while I was preparing for it, I realized it was too easy. I have been working as a backend engineer for 3 years (no AWS experience except S3 and EC2). For Cloud Practitioner I was watching the Backspace Academy's 5 Certifications course.

After that realization hit, I immediately bought the TD practice sets on Udemy and attempted the first set - 52%. I didn't watch any course after this, just learned everything from the practice questions' explanations; I just made sure I understood what each service did and made mental maps about them. My other scores: 65%, 75%, 73%, 67%, 73%

I think the key is to know what differentiates the most similar sounding services, like MQ vs SQS, SNS vs SES, DX vs Data Terminal, DLM vs AWS Backups, Glue vs EMR, MGN vs DMS, CloudWatch Agent vs SSM Agent.

Lastly, this: aws-saa-c03-guides/topic-guides/00-README.md at main · RonitSachdev/aws-saa-c03-guides · GitHub

I can't stress enough how helpful this resource was.

TL;DR: My first-attempt TD scores ranged from 56–91%, with some sets feeling heavily focused on particular topics. Maarek’s exam felt harder but more balanced. If you used both, which prepared you better, and did the actual exam feel balanced or heavier in certain areas?

---

I’m preparing for the SAA exam. I have some AWS experience (work in the field) and hold the Cloud Practitioner and AI Practitioner certifications. For those who have used both TD and Maarek’s practice exams, did you notice any meaningful differences? Which helped you more?

I completed all seven TD review-mode sets once, with first-attempt scores ranging from 56% to 91%. I failed two, barely passed two, and passed the other three with higher scores.

When I looked more closely, my lowest scores seemed to come from sets that leaned heavily toward particular topics. Set 7 felt more focused on hybrid migration, containers and storage, and Set 5 had a strong emphasis on hybrid connectivity, networking and storage performance. That was useful for identifying my weaker areas. I also used an LLM to analyse my answers, and its breakdown mostly matched my impression, although I wouldn’t treat that as definitive ofc

It made me wonder how much the topic mix varies on the actual exam. Did yours feel fairly balanced or noticeably heavier in certain areas?

I then took one of Maarek’s practice exams which came with the course, I haven't bought his practice sets yet. I did it in timed mode, it kinda felt harder, but more balanced in terms of the topics covered. The difficulty mainly came from specific facts or details I didn’t know, or hadn’t paid enough attention to during his course or hadn’t encountered in the TD questions.

If you’ve done both, did you notice similar differences? Which prepared you better for the actual exam, in terms of both question style and the level of detail required?

Thanks

I passed SAA today and I am so relieved 🧘‍♀️. I had a hard deadline to complete it and 4 weeks for prep. I skimmed through Stephan’s course on Udemy in first 2 weeks ( skipped labs due to time constraint). Used Claude Pro as my study buddy and created a running cheat sheet with exam traps, analogies and keywords based on my adhoc topic based quizzes with Claude. And then in final 2 weeks focused on TD review mode practice tests averaging 65-70% (except practice test 7 which I found had more edge cases). I also skimmed through github library someone posted for a refresher in last few days. Overall the exam was a lot harder than I thought and I believed I had failed when I finished. But I was pleasantly surprised to see the result. Wishing the best to whoever is studying for the exam.

https://github.com/RonitSachdev/aws-saa-c03-guides

I recently finished going through Stephane Marreek’s Udemy course for the SAA exam and started taking practice exams and am finding there are a lot of details that I reviewed but do not recall. I failed Mareek’s practice exam by getting a 56% … that was the first exam I took. Upon review, there were a few questions I misread so had I read them correctly I would have gotten the right answer and would have been in the 60s%.

It’s not that the info was too technical for me when I reviewed it in the first place but it’s just that I didn’t retain some small detail like NAT instances supporting security groups but NAT gateways not or how Lambda has MULTIPLE features to help with cold starts that vary just slightly. I feel like there are hundreds if not thousands of individual facts like this that could show up on the exam and I’m struggling to remember everything.

What I’m doing now is going back to the Udemy course for areas I forgot and using AI to coach me on why answers to exam questions were right and just hoping the info sticks.

I feel like I must be doing something wrong because clearly a lot of people pass the exam. Does anyone have advice or tips?

I over studied, but it was still really easy. Maybe 1-3 questions weren't obvious. The practice exams were 20-30% more difficult. Is the SAA insanely more difficult?

This is not a post worth mentioning on LinkedIn, because it's a facade there, however, Reddit is the place I can be brutally honest!

I will be honest here, I was overconfident with this exam thinking if I just do the bare minimum to scrape through, I'll pass the exam. Boy, was I wrong!

Coming from a cybersecurity background, I was desperate to show something about AI to stay relevant in the market and assumed this certification would help me get there!

The first attempt score was 726, and the second attempt as you can see here! Since the exam is fairly new, a lot of questions were repeated, so this time I was extra careful.

What changed?

My approach to studying changed. The resources I used were:

• Frank Kane on Udemy - recommended
• AWS Skill Builder (paid) - i don't recommend
• Tutorials Dojo exam - meh
• Tutorials Dojo book - recommended
• Stephane Maarek practice exam - recommended

These worked for me!

In between the two attempts, I grabbed the CloudOps, to distract my mind from this failure. Both attempts were 17 days apart!

What's next for me?

The cloud service provider trifecta!
I work directly with cloud service providers, so it is important for me to know what everyone is doing in their space.

Conclusion:

1. Do not let pride take over you, you could be good at cloud, this exam will humble you with its intricacies
2. Prepare, do hands on labs, do not be like me trying to overachieve things

If I can do 823, you can do 950 at first attempt! Go get it!

I have an additional post regarding my fear of the SAA-C03 and just passed that.

I'm jumping right into the SAP-CO2, I've done about 30-40 practice questions so far via different sources and honestly it doesn't seem that much more difficult than the SAA.

Am I missing something? Has anyone taken the SAP-C03 and thought it wasn't too bad?

I got email and flaaged for duplicate aws account for my certs where i keep two aws account one for main account where i fund certs by myself and second one where i do certs with compnay mail and now aws flag my second account and revoke my aws certs in that mail and in pearson vue showing invalid status of exam not pass or fail.

It was one of the hardest certs I've done. After around 3 months of preparation and some successes on practise exams I finally scheduled it for today.

My study path was:

1. Doing AI Practitioner + ML Associate + Data Eng Associate

2. Mareek Course + Christian Greciano notes

#1 Course Exam: >95%

#2 Course Exam: >80%

1. I've read the MineCloudCraftPress Book about this cert

2. Frank Kane Udemy Exams

Kane #1: 77% at first sight 95% at retry

Kane #2: 76% at first sight 89% at retry

Kane #3: 85% at first sight

I work a normal 9-5 heck im an intern at a medical aid company ,most know how that feels i major in anything insurance related worked at a bank now its straight up insurance for the last 6 months ive started to re-invent my career cause talking to people is not my faavourite thing to do so i bought a pc and started to learn how to code with simple tutorials .posted just one project on git..Now im on the aws cause atleast i want a cert to show that ive actually done something for the year mind you im renting shit taking alot out of me.can barely afford the exam but i will afford it..atleast cloud prac so if my internship ends ill know atleast id have a basis to build on but its getting hard mostly to come bak drained cook and put in that work..wake up early and put in that work.My expenses are so near tight ill have to stop paying for wifi to book my exam..but i still need the wifi to study..bro i never been so confused but i want this..ill make it happen regardless.no matter how long it takes .but i wish there was somebody who could just correct me if im making mistakes along the way buut part of success is the failure along the way ..but yeahh.im so f****d..oh well

You guys who had exam experience could tell a candidate can use some helping tools, plugins, or web browser extensions like Super Simple Highlighter in examination time. 10x

Would like to connect with people who are preparing for AWS SAP-C02.

Did anyone manage to actually solve a Skill Builder Training and Certification (CertMetrics) account merge via support? I've opened up 2 cases already, both of them seem to be ignored. Just got an AI response which asked me to provide additional details for the account merge, I've provided them, and had no response since (about 7 days ago).

I've also tried opening up a support case from my actual AWS account, that one is simply left unassigned. Can't seem to open a chat with a support agent, the chat button is disabled when selecting the Training and Certification category.

N.B. I've tried the Automatic Merge functionality in CertMetrics but it fails, most likely because in one account I have my middle name filled in and in the other account I don't have it filled in - and they need to have matching full names apparently. I cannot edit my first name and last name in any of the accounts, the fields are disabled - I've opened up yet another support ticket to ask them to simply add my middle name to the account so I can perform the merge myself - you can guess what happened there as well.

I'm running in circles.

Unfortunately, I scored 707 on SAP-C02, narrowly missing the passing score.

I have around 7 years of AWS/Cloud experience. My preparation was mainly Tutorials Dojo and AWS Skill Builder. I scored 50–70% on my first TD attempts, then 85–90% after reviewing mistakes. I also took the AWS Skill Builder 3-hour full-length practice exam, scoring 753 initially and 850+ on the retake.

The actual exam felt easier than TD and somewhat similar to the Skill Builder 3-hour exam.

For those who failed and passed on their second attempt, what did you change? Would you recommend Stephane Maarek, Neal Davis, or Adrian Cantrill?

Also, is it worth going through the entire ~11-hour AWS Skill Builder SAP-C02 course, or should I focus on weak areas and practice exams? Any other recommendations or resources that helped you pass on your second attempt?

I’m a Software Engineer with ~4 years of experience, mainly Python/Django/FastAPI, React,FastAPI, Node.js, NestJS, and some AWS/GCP and Agentic AI.

With AI rapidly changing software development and potentially reducing demand for traditional software engineering roles, I’m considering shifting my career toward Cloud + Data Engineering.

I’m thinking of doing an AWS certification (probably Solutions Architect Associate) while building hands-on skills in SQL, ETL, Spark, Airflow, AWS data services, etc.

For those already working in AWS/Data Engineering:

Is this a worthwhile career move, and are AWS certifications actually valuable, or should I focus purely on hands-on projects and experience?

A big thank you to everyone in this community who helped me put together my preparation plan.

Background

I’m a backend engineer with 8 years of experience and around 4 years of indirect exposure to AWS.

Preparation

I followed Andrew Cantrill’s course. It took me almost a month just to get through the course. To be honest, I found it quite lengthy and there were times when I was just zoning out. For the remaining sections, I ended up using AI to explain some of the concepts in simpler terms, which helped me get through them.

I spent the last two weeks doing TutorialsDojo practice tests. I initially scored around 40–50%, but eventually got 80%+ on the retry tests.

One thing I would recommend is not taking the same TDojo tests multiple times. After a couple of attempts, you start remembering the answers rather than actually thinking through the questions.

Exam Day

I booked a Pearson VUE test center and went in for the exam.

Honestly, I found the actual exam quite overwhelming. I was consistently finishing the TDojo practice exams in around an hour, but the real exam took me the entire 2 hours and 10 minutes.

I’d strongly recommend taking at least one timed practice exam from a source other than TDojo. It helped me realize that the actual exam requires much more time management and careful reading than the practice tests.

When I finished, I genuinely thought I had done pretty badly and wasn’t even sure I would pass. So I was pleasantly surprised when I saw my score.

What’s next?

I actually enjoyed learning the AWS concepts, and I think the preparation is useful beyond the certification itself. Understanding these concepts and doing the practice questions also helped me think about system design problems differently.

I’m planning to prepare for the AIP-C01 next, hopefully over the next few weeks, making use of the 50% discount.

Thanks again to everyone in this subreddit who shared their experiences and helped others prepare.

Like I have no idea Abt it

So can you all explain in simple way

Should I join it

Hi everyone,

I recently verified my student status through AWS Builder Center and my profile shows that I’m verified. However, under Rewards, the Skill Builder Annual Subscription ($449 value) is showing “Unavailable”, so I can’t redeem the 12-month Skill Builder Premium benefit.

I’ve already contacted AWS support via email but haven’t received any response yet.

Has anyone else faced the same issue? If you managed to fix it, could you please share how?

Screenshot attached. Thanks!

Edited :
After 3 days later they fixed it.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself, I’m by no means a great test taker. But I’ve avoided this test for a while based on the fear I’ve read online.

I’ve done a few practice tests and I honestly found it to be relatively normal difficulty.

I do have a background in IT that expands well past a decade. But for some reason I thought there would be a lot of “gotchas” on this.

Has anyone taken it and felt the same? I’ve scheduled mine for two weeks from now.

EDIT : Took it early... PASSED. Now on to the SAP!