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AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03)

SAA-C03· Associate· Intermediate

Solutions Architect - Associate is the most widely held AWS certification and the one named most often in cloud job postings. It tests design judgment rather than recall. Given a workload with constraints on security, resilience, performance and cost, you pick the right combination of AWS services. Every domain is framed as "design", so there is no operations or coding content.

65
Questions

50 scored, 15 unscored

130 min
Duration
720 on a 100 to 1000 scaled score
Passing score
US$150
Exam cost

Confirm current local pricing on aws.amazon.com

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Exam facts reviewed July 2026 · Independent study resource, not affiliated with Amazon Web Services

Who should take it

Engineers, architects and senior operations staff who already work on AWS and need the credential hiring managers recognise. AWS recommends at least a year of hands-on experience designing solutions on AWS. That recommendation matters more here than on Cloud Practitioner, because the exam is built around trade-offs that are hard to reason about if you have never had to make them.

Skills measured

Domains and weightings as published by Amazon Web Services. Full objectives →

  • 30%Design Secure Architectures
  • 26%Design Resilient Architectures
  • 24%Design High-Performing Architectures
  • 20%Design Cost-Optimized Architectures

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Frequently asked questions

Should I take Cloud Practitioner first?
Only if you are new to AWS. If you already build on AWS, go straight to this exam. It is the credential employers ask for, and Cloud Practitioner is not a prerequisite.
What score do I need to pass?
720 on a scaled range of 100 to 1000. That scaling is not a straight percentage of questions correct, so treat any percentage you see (including on practice exams) as an approximation rather than a threshold.
How much hands-on experience do I really need?
AWS recommends about a year designing on AWS. You can pass with less through disciplined study, but the exam rewards having lived the trade-offs. Knowing what Multi-AZ is differs from having chosen it over multi-Region on a real budget.
How is this different from the Developer - Associate exam?
Solutions Architect asks which services to combine and why. Developer asks how to build, secure and ship application code on them. Architect never asks you to read code, and Developer goes far deeper on SDKs, APIs and CI/CD.
How long does the certification last?
Three years. You can recertify by passing the current version of the exam, or automatically by earning a higher-level AWS certification.

Related certifications

Facts on this page come from Amazon Web Services’s officially published exam information and were last reviewed on July 19, 2026. Practice content is AI-generated and human-reviewed. See how our exams are made.

Kwizza is an independent study tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Amazon Web Services. Amazon Web Services names, logos and certification marks are the property of their respective owners and are used here only to identify the exam described. Practice questions are original, written against the publicly published exam objectives. No real exam content is reproduced.