The exam at a glance
- Exam code: SAA-C03 (the version AWS's certification page links to).
- 65 questions, multiple choice or multiple response, in 130 minutes.
- Cost: 150 USD (AWS's exam pricing page shows local currency and taxes).
- Taken at a Pearson VUE test centre or online with a remote proctor.
- Languages: English, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Latin America and Spain), Simplified and Traditional Chinese. The Italian version will be retired after 31 December 2026.
- Valid for 3 years. You can recertify by passing the latest version, or by earning the Solutions Architect – Professional.
How scoring works
Of the 65 questions, 50 count towards your score and 15 are unscored questions AWS is testing for future exams. You cannot tell which are which, so treat every question as if it counts. Results are a scaled score from 100 to 1,000, and the pass mark is 720.
Scoring is compensatory: you do not need to pass each domain, only the exam as a whole. A weak area can be balanced by strong ones — but the weightings below tell you where most of the marks are.
The four domains
- Domain 1 — Design Secure Architectures: 30% of scored content. IAM users, roles and policies, least privilege, encryption with KMS, securing VPCs (security groups, NACLs) and protecting data at rest and in transit.
- Domain 2 — Design Resilient Architectures: 26%. Multi-AZ and multi-Region designs, Auto Scaling, load balancing, decoupling with SQS and SNS, backups and disaster recovery.
- Domain 3 — Design High-Performing Architectures: 24%. Choosing the right compute, storage and database (EC2, Lambda, S3, EBS, EFS, RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB), caching and content delivery.
- Domain 4 — Design Cost-Optimized Architectures: 20%. Pricing models (On-Demand, Savings Plans, Spot), storage classes and lifecycle rules, and right-sizing.
Who it suits
AWS's exam guide recommends at least one year of hands-on experience designing solutions on AWS. Freshers can still pass, but plan more practice time: build small projects on the AWS Free Tier — a static website on S3 with CloudFront, a three-tier app with an Auto Scaling group and RDS, a serverless API with Lambda and API Gateway — and delete the resources afterwards so you are not billed.
A six-week plan
- Week 1: Core services and the global infrastructure — Regions, Availability Zones, IAM, EC2, S3 and VPC basics.
- Week 2: Security in depth (Domain 1, the biggest at 30%): IAM policies and roles, KMS, VPC security, and the shared responsibility model.
- Week 3: Resilience (Domain 2): load balancers, Auto Scaling, SQS/SNS, Route 53 routing policies and disaster-recovery strategies.
- Week 4: Performance (Domain 3): storage and database choices, caching with ElastiCache and CloudFront, and when to go serverless.
- Week 5: Cost (Domain 4) plus two full-length timed mocks of 65 questions in 130 minutes.
- Week 6: Revise the services behind every wrong answer, take two more mocks, then book the exam when you are scoring comfortably above the pass mark.
Exam-day tips
- Read each scenario for the deciding requirement — “most cost-effective”, “least operational overhead” or “highest availability” usually picks the answer.
- Multiple-choice questions have one correct answer out of four; multiple-response questions have two or more correct answers out of five or more options.
- Flag hard questions and come back; 130 minutes for 65 questions leaves time for review.
- After you pass, you get a 50% discount on your next AWS Certification exam.
Key takeaways
- The current exam is SAA-C03: 65 questions, 130 minutes, 150 USD, pass mark 720 on a 100–1,000 scale.
- Domains: Secure 30%, Resilient 26%, High-Performing 24%, Cost-Optimized 20%; only the overall score must pass.
- Valid for 3 years; your next AWS exam is 50% off once you are certified.
- Practise hands-on on the Free Tier and take full timed mocks before booking.
Sources
Dates and patterns change — always confirm on the official website before applying.
