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Amazon Web Services · CLF-C02 · Foundational

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

The AWS entry credential: cloud concepts, the shared responsibility model, core services, and how billing works.

Free practice: 246 questions written to the official exam guide, with the diagnostic, practice papers, timed mocks, a study plan and an explanation on every answer.

Official exam page

Find out where you stand on CLF-C02

20 questions drawn in the exam’s own domain weights. You get a report straight away: your score against the pass mark, where the points went, and what to study first.

Questions
20
Time
about 20 minutes
Cost
free

Your email

Your answers save as you go, and the report stays in your record. A new email needs no code.

· your answers stay on this device and you can save the report at the end.

The course

The diagnostic shows where you stand. Then you learn the syllabus chapter by chapter, answer that chapter’s questions, and move on. When every chapter is mastered, you sit full timed mocks in the real exam’s shape.

15 chapters, about 11.5 hours in all. Each is a 45-minute study session with quick checks, then a 10-question quiz on that chapter.

Cloud Concepts24% of the exam

  1. The value of the AWS Cloud and the Well-Architected Framework45 min
  2. Migration and cloud economics45 min

Security and Compliance30% of the exam

  1. The shared responsibility model45 min
  2. Security, governance and compliance concepts45 min
  3. Identity and access management45 min
  4. AWS security services and resources45 min

Cloud Technology and Services34% of the exam

  1. Ways to deploy, and the AWS global infrastructure45 min
  2. Compute: EC2, containers, serverless, scaling and load balancing45 min
  3. Databases and database migration45 min
  4. Networking: VPC, Route 53 and connectivity45 min
  5. Storage: S3, EBS, EFS, FSx, Storage Gateway and Backup45 min
  6. AI/ML and analytics services45 min
  7. Integration, business apps, developer tools, end-user computing, frontend and IoT45 min

Billing, Pricing, and Support12% of the exam

  1. Pricing models: compute purchasing, data transfer and storage45 min
  2. Billing tools, Organizations, and AWS Support45 min

About the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) exam

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner is the most widely held cloud certification in the world and the standard first step into AWS. It is for anyone who needs to understand the cloud well enough to work with it: sales, finance, project managers, support staff, students and career changers, and technical people who want the foundation before the associate exams.

The exam covers what the cloud is and why organisations use it, how security is shared between AWS and the customer, the core services (compute, storage, database, networking) and what they are for, and how AWS charges for it all. The latest version, CLF-C02, put more weight on security and on the breadth of services.

No experience is required. Most candidates prepare in three to six weeks.

The exam at a glance

Questions
65 questions (50 scored, 15 unscored), multiple choice and multiple response
Time
90 minutes
Pass mark
700 out of 1,000 (scaled)
Exam fee
About US$100
Valid for
3 years
Where you sit it
Pearson VUE test centre or online proctored
Prerequisites
None. AWS suggests six months of exposure to the AWS Cloud

As published in the vendor’s exam guide at the time of writing. Fees vary by country and change; the vendor’s page is the source of truth.

The fee and how to sit it in your country: Sri Lanka · India · Pakistan · Bangladesh · Nepal · Australia · New Zealand · Philippines · Indonesia · Vietnam

What is on the exam, domain by domain

  1. Cloud Concepts

    The value proposition of the cloud, the AWS Well-Architected Framework pillars, migration strategies and the economics of moving from capital to operating expense.

    24% of the paper

  2. Security and Compliance

    The shared responsibility model, IAM users, groups, roles and policies, MFA, encryption, and the compliance programmes and tools (Artifact, Inspector, GuardDuty, Shield, WAF).

    30% of the paper

  3. Cloud Technology and Services

    The largest domain. Regions, availability zones and edge locations; EC2, Lambda, containers; S3, EBS, EFS; RDS, DynamoDB; VPC, Route 53, CloudFront; and dozens of one-line services you must recognise.

    34% of the paper

  4. Billing, Pricing, and Support

    On-demand, reserved, spot and savings plans; the free tier; Cost Explorer, Budgets and the pricing calculator; the support plans and what each includes.

    12% of the paper

How to prepare

  1. Take the free AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course on Skill Builder. It is the vendor's own map of the exam.
  2. Get hands-on in the free tier for a few hours: create an IAM user, launch and terminate an EC2 instance, put an object in S3. The concepts stick once you have clicked them.
  3. Make flashcards for services by purpose. The exam asks which service does a job far more often than how the service works.
  4. Memorise the shared responsibility model cold. It is asked directly and it underlies many security questions.
  5. Practice papers until you clear 80% twice in a row, then book.

Sample questions

Three questions in the exam’s style, written by Square 1 against the published domains. They are ours, not the vendor's. The answer and the reasoning are under each one; the practice papers on this page draw from a bank written the same way, with an explanation on every question.

  1. Question 1 · Security and Compliance

    Under the AWS shared responsibility model, which of the following is the customer's responsibility?

    1. Physical security of the data centre
    2. Patching the hypervisor
    3. Configuring security groups and encrypting data in Amazon S3
    4. Maintaining the hardware that runs Amazon EC2

    Answer: C. AWS is responsible for security of the cloud (facilities, hardware, hypervisor); the customer is responsible for security in the cloud (their configuration, access control and data). Security groups and S3 encryption are customer configuration.

  2. Question 2 · Billing, Pricing, and Support

    A company runs a batch job that can be interrupted and restarted without harm, and wants the lowest possible EC2 cost. Which purchasing option should it use?

    1. On-demand instances
    2. Spot instances
    3. Dedicated hosts
    4. A one-year Reserved Instance

    Answer: B. Spot instances offer the deepest discount in exchange for the possibility of interruption, which this workload tolerates. Reserved and dedicated options trade commitment for savings but do not go as low, and on-demand is the most expensive.

  3. Question 3 · Cloud Technology and Services

    Which AWS service should a company use to run code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers?

    1. Amazon EC2
    2. AWS Lambda
    3. Amazon RDS
    4. AWS Direct Connect

    Answer: B. Lambda runs functions on demand in response to events with no servers to manage. EC2 is virtual servers you manage, RDS is a managed relational database, and Direct Connect is a private network link.

Questions people ask before they book

Is the Cloud Practitioner worth it for a technical person?
As a first AWS exam, yes: it gives the service landscape and the vocabulary that every associate exam assumes. If you already work in AWS daily, you can go straight to Solutions Architect Associate.
How long should I study?
Twenty to forty hours for someone new to cloud; less with prior exposure.
Is there hands-on work in the exam?
No. It is multiple choice and multiple response only.
How much does it cost and how long is it valid?
About US$100 at the time of writing, regionally priced, and it is valid for three years.
What is the difference between CLF-C01 and CLF-C02?
C02 is the current version. It reorganised the domains, increased the weight on security and added newer services. Study material for C01 is mostly still relevant but check anything dated before late 2023.