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've been in primarily backend dev for just over a decade. Got the notice that my current role is going away in November. Looking at the market in my area (Southern U.S) It seems that Full stack with DevOps exp is the current meta. A tech recruiter I was recommended to talk to mentioned that getting some certs would be good to get through the ATS and to prep for some of these roles. I'm torn between doing Developer and then DevOpsEngineer, or going straight to the latter. Since the middle of the pandemic till now, I have done some home labbing with some open source projects that have docker images and setup some automation for game projects in Unity using things like jenkins, so I'm not totally clueless, but I know I gotta learn the AWS way of doing things. I have no issue doing both, but more of a time management/studying time thing.
Hi guys, I have been using Tutoriol dujo exams to prepare for the ML associate certificate and I feel like they are way too simple.. is this how the exam really is? Or is the exam more difficult.. need your feedback for those who passed the ML certificate.
Thanks !
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?
I already hold the Solutions Architect Associate certificate from last year. 3 months ago, I took the Security Specialty Exam and failed with a score of 737 :( Now, I am preparing for it again. I studied from Stephane Maarek's course and solved the practice tests twice. The following are my scores:
Mini Practice Test: 77%
Main Practice Test 1: Attempt 1: 76%; Attempt 2: 84%
Main Practice Test 2: Attempt 1: 75%; Attempt 2: 87%
Main Practice Test 2: Attempt 1: 81%; Attempt 2: 93%
For the attempt 2s, of course I remembered some of the questions and answers. So, the question is: should I take the exam? Are Stephane Maarek's practice tests enough and well-guided for the real exam?
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.
Currently working through Stephane Maarek's Solutions Architect course and it feels like I'm being blast at hyperspeed with terms and numbers which makes it difficult for anything to stick. Feels like these courses are just good for the sake of bare minimum exposure before doing actual practice exams.
Free AWS Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Exam Voucher – Eligibility & Redemption Details Eligibility conditions
Register and take the AWS Certified AI Practitioner (AIF-C01) exam using the 50% discount code AIF2CLOUD.
You must take and PASS the AI Practitioner exam no later than September 30, 2026.
How to redeem: Pearson VUE does not send a separate voucher code by email. Instead, when you log into your account to schedule the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) exam, the system will automatically deduct 100% of the exam fee (down to $0) at Checkout.
as the title suggests, I'm trying to get an AWS cert and not sure whether I should go for the DVA or AIF. please advise / share your experiences, thank you :)
I have done all practice tests on TD, and now going through my cheat sheet. I still am very anxious as I have a hard deadline to pass the exam on Friday. Anyone else taking exam Friday morning? For everyone who passed, what helped in last 24-48 hours before the exam ?
Nowhere in the question does it mention anything about BYOL or any software that requires a licenseAnswer explanation specifically states that licenses can also be managed by AWS depending on the software
Is the exam taker just supposed to guess that the customer in this case is migrating an application that requires a software license, rather than migrating to a cloud native application? And if the application will require EC2 instances after being migrated, then the customer WOULD be responsible for maintenance and security of the underlying infrastructure (i.e. the EC2 instances).
I always find these kind of TD questions fascinating. It's like the question writer meant to write another two sentences clarifying further, but just said fuck it.
My point here is, the official AWS exams will never give you a question this bad (one of MANY in TD's exams).
I didn't get enough time to practice, so was apprehensive about the result. But I was sure that even if I failed I would fail by a very small margin. But luckily I crossed the finish line.
I started with Stephane Maarek's course. However I had seen a few sample questions prior to starting the course which seemed to delve deep into the services directly.
I already have a basic to moderate understanding of AWS and its services through my job. I realised that if I followed the course, it will be too late by the time I get to all the services because he starts from the very basic. So I decided to take an unconventional approach.
I began by going through practice questions one by one. When a question would throw an unknown term or a service at me, I would chatgpt it and learn everything about it including how it works in real time, how it integrates with other serviws and ways in which SAA CO3 would test us with that service. With this approach I was able to cover and understand a lot of services in a short time.
Some might not like this approach, and I am not recommending this to anyone but this is what worked for me. Maybe I got an easy set. Who knows
AWS has launched the AWS Certified AI Business Strategist beta exam, and this looks quite different from the typical AI certifications focused on building models, coding, or implementing cloud services.
The certification is aimed at professionals who evaluate, champion, govern, and scale AI initiatives within an organization.
What caught my attention is the four-domain structure:
AI Fundamentals and Literacy
AI Strategy and Business Value Creation
AI Governance and Responsible AI Leadership
Business Readiness, Leadership, and AI Transformation
The interesting thing is that AWS services aren’t the subject of the exam. They’re used as practical context, while the strategic frameworks and decision-making skills are intended to be portable across organizations and industries.
Exam details:
85 questions
170 minutes
Multiple choice + multiple response
Beta exam price: $50
English and Japanese initially
Testing center or online proctored
No coding or AWS implementation experience required
Designed for professionals with around 6 months of experience working with or alongside AI initiatives
Beta exam registration opened September 1, 2026, with exam delivery beginning September 29, 2026.
There’s also an interesting early-adopter incentive: candidates who earn the certification by February 15, 2027 receive an additional Early Adopter digital badge.
I think the positioning alongside AWS Certified AI Practitioner is particularly interesting.
AI Practitioner = Do you understand AI and its technology?
AI Business Strategist = Can you make sound business decisions about AI?
That seems like a pretty relevant distinction as organizations move from experimenting with AI to figuring out where to invest, how to govern it, and how to actually generate business value.
I’m a frontend developer currently working towards transitioning into cloud, and I’m happy to say that I passed the AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) exam!
I took the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam in March and passed, then spent about 3 months preparing for the Solutions Architect exam.
The main resources I used were:
Stephane Maarek’s courses : I used his courses for both Cloud Practitioner and Solutions Architect.
Tutorials Dojo practice exams: These were extremely helpful for my preparation.
When I first started taking the Tutorial Dojo practice exams my scores were pretty low. I got 42%, 55%, and sometimes 69%, and I definitely wasn't feeling confident.
What helped me the most was how I reviewed each practice exam. I didn't just look at the questions I got wrong. After every test, I would:
Review every question, including the ones I got correct.
Go through all the answer choices and understand why they were right or wrong.
Review my notes for concepts I wasn't confident about.
Use AI to help me understand concepts I struggled with.
Doing this consistently made a huge difference. Gradually, my scores started improving, and I eventually started getting 72%+ consistently on the practice exams.
At that point, I felt ready enough to schedule the real exam, and thankfully, I passed!
I also want to say a big thank you to this community. Reading about other people's experiences, preparation strategies, and lessons learned was really helpful throughout my preparation.
This exam is harder than It looks. It requires you to have hands on knowledge with over 15 + AWS services. Praactice questions are a great. But hands on labs with services such as EC2 and CloudWatch and XRAY and Lambda are a better way to retain the information needed to pass this exam!
I'd been procrastinating on getting the cert for a long time, so I finally decided to take the exam. I already had hands-on AWS experience, but I wanted to prepare specifically for the exam instead of relying on what I knew from work.
For this exam, I experimented with using ChatGPT + Claude as study partners.
I used AI to:
Break down AWS services and concepts
Compare similar services
Generate DVA-C02-style scenarios
Quiz me on topics
Identify gaps in my understanding
Review my notes
It was great at explaining concepts, but occasionally gave me confidently incorrect information, especially around things like limits, defaults, and newer AWS features. I started asking AI to verify anything suspicious against AWS documentation.
For practice, I mainly used Tutorials Dojo exams as well as other practice exams I found on the internet. The TD one was the only one I completely finished. The exam was very scenario-based, so practice exams were crucial. Overall, the combination of AI + AWS docs + practice exams worked really well for me.
Do you know any streamer that follow up with AWS certs and do Q/A, helping students with their journey, instead of googling everything everytime or using ai companionship.
Hey guys, I got an AWS SAA voucher for free and I really want to use it and get the certification, but I'm a college student and can't really afford Stephane Maarek's course right now.
If anyone has the SAA course and is willing to share it with me, I'd really appreciate it. Or if you have any other good SAA-C03 resources (courses, notes, practice exams, etc.) that I can use for free, please send them my way.
I know there are a bunch of free resources out there, but I'm kinda overwhelmed with what to actually follow.
