AWS Certification Path: Levels, Order and Cost

The AWS certification path has four levels: Foundational, Associate, Professional and Specialty. AWS has also added a Business level for non-technical leaders. The order matters less than people think, because AWS has no prerequisites. What matters is which exam fits the job you do or want next.

This page lists every current exam with its code, what it tests and what it costs, then suggests a path for each role. I hold 14 active AWS certifications and coach engineers through these exams in the evenings. Every exam fact below comes from AWS's own pages, checked on 13 October 2026. The study-time figures are my estimates and are labelled that way.

The short answer

The AWS certification levels, in order:

1. Foundational: Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) and AI Practitioner (AIF-C01). No experience assumed.
2. Associate: Solutions Architect (SAA-C03), Developer (DVA-C02), CloudOps Engineer (SOA-C03), Data Engineer (DEA-C01) and Machine Learning Engineer (MLA-C02, in beta). These are the job-role exams.
3. Professional: Solutions Architect (SAP-C02), DevOps Engineer (DOP-C02) and Generative AI Developer (AIP-C01). AWS recommends two or more years of hands-on experience.
4. Specialty: Security (SCS-C03) and Advanced Networking (ANS-C01), each testing depth in one domain. Advanced Networking retires on 31 December 2026.

Business sits beside the ladder: AI Business Strategist (AIB-C01), in beta, for people who decide which AI projects get funded.

If you already work in IT, the path with the best return is SAA-C03, then the Associate that matches your job, then a Professional exam. If you're unsure, take SAA-C03 first and decide after that.

How the path fits together

A few rules shape the order you take exams in:

• There are no prerequisites. You can book a Professional exam as your first, though few people should.
• A certification is valid for three years. AWS asks you to recertify every three years, by passing the latest version of the exam or, for some certifications, a higher-level one. Several Associate, Professional and Specialty certifications can also be extended by one year through AWS Skill Builder.
• Once you hold a certification, AWS puts a 50% discount voucher in your certification account, for recertification or any other exam.
• After a fail you wait 14 calendar days, and every attempt costs the full fee.

The catalogue also moves. As of 13 October 2026:

• Solutions Architect – Professional is being updated. Registration for SAP-C03 opens on 27 October 2026, and the last day to sit SAP-C02 is 16 November 2026.
• Developer – Associate is being updated the same way. DVA-C03 registration opens on 27 October 2026, and the last day for DVA-C02 is 30 November 2026.
• Machine Learning Engineer – Associate is in beta as MLA-C02. The English MLA-C01 closed on 28 September 2026.
• Advanced Networking – Specialty is being retired. The last day to take the exam is 31 December 2026. Certifications earned before then stay active for the usual three years, and AWS issues no new ones after it.
• Machine Learning – Specialty was retired on 31 March 2026. Holders stay certified for three years from the date they earned it.
• SysOps Administrator – Associate is now CloudOps Engineer – Associate (SOA-C03).

Check the exam page again in the week you book.

Foundational: Cloud Practitioner and AI Practitioner

Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) tests cloud literacy, not hands-on skill. The domains are cloud concepts (24%), security and compliance (30%), cloud technology and services (34%), and billing, pricing and support (12%). AWS recommends up to six months of exposure to the AWS Cloud.

It suits career changers, people in sales, project and finance roles, and anyone who needs a first badge to get past a CV filter. If you already run workloads on AWS, it won't teach you much.

The questions that catch people out are rarely about EC2 or S3. They're about cost tools (Cost Explorer, Budgets, the pricing calculator) and the shared responsibility model: what AWS secures and what you secure.

AI Practitioner (AIF-C01) covers AI and ML fundamentals, generative AI, foundation model applications, responsible AI, and security and governance for AI. Take it if your role now involves generative AI proposals and you need the vocabulary.

Associate: where most working engineers start

Five exams sit at this level. Pick the one that matches your job.

Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) is the one most people take first, and the one I'd take first. It covers designing secure (30%), resilient (26%), high-performing (24%) and cost-optimized (20%) architectures. AWS recommends at least a year of hands-on experience designing cloud solutions.

SAA-C03 doesn't ask you to configure anything. It gives you a scenario and four options, and the right answer depends on a constraint in the question: latency, budget, a migration deadline. People who study service facts do worse than people who study why you'd pick one service over another.

The other four Associates:

• Developer – Associate (DVA-C02): Development with AWS services (32%), security (26%), deployment (24%), troubleshooting and optimization (18%). For people who ship code. DVA-C03 replaces it after 30 November 2026.
• CloudOps Engineer – Associate (SOA-C03): the renamed SysOps exam: monitoring and remediation, reliability, deployment and automation, security, and networking. Operations first.
• Data Engineer – Associate (DEA-C01): Ingestion and transformation (34%), data store management (26%), operations (22%), security and governance (18%). For people whose day job is pipelines.
• Machine Learning Engineer – Associate (MLA-C02, beta): Data preparation, model development, deployment and orchestration, and operating ML and AI solutions. The beta runs longer than the other Associates.

Professional: SAP, DOP and AIP

AWS recommends two or more years of hands-on experience for each Professional exam. The questions are long scenarios, and the right answer often turns on a phrase like most cost-effective or least operational overhead.

• Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C02): Design for organizational complexity (26%), design for new solutions (29%), continuous improvement for existing solutions (25%), and migration and modernization (20%). SAP-C03 replaces it after 16 November 2026.
• DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C02): SDLC automation, configuration management and infrastructure as code, resilient cloud solutions, monitoring and logging, incident response, and security and compliance. A real CI/CD background helps more here than anywhere else on the path.
• Generative AI Developer – Professional (AIP-C01): Foundation model integration and data management (31%), implementation and integration (26%), AI safety, security and governance (20%), plus operational efficiency and testing. AWS also asks for a year of hands-on work implementing generative AI solutions.

Each is 75 questions in 180 minutes, with a pass mark of 750.

Specialty: Security and Advanced Networking

Specialties test depth in one area. Both are 65 questions in 170 minutes, with a pass mark of 750.

• Security – Specialty (SCS-C03): Detection, incident response, infrastructure security, identity and access management (the largest domain, at 20%), data protection, and security foundations and governance. In practice, a lot of it is reading IAM policies against the clock. AWS recommends three to five years of experience securing cloud solutions.
• Advanced Networking – Specialty (ANS-C01): Network design, implementation, management and operation, and security and governance. The last day to sit it is 31 December 2026, so only start it if you can book before then.

Most people take a Specialty after a Professional, or instead of one when their role is narrow.

Every current AWS certification compared

Some questions on every exam are unscored: AWS uses them to test new items. Beta exams cost less. The standard fees for those two levels are $150 for an Associate and $100 for Business.

What the AWS certification path costs

AWS charges by level: $100 for Foundational and Business, $150 for Associate, and $300 for Professional and Specialty. The 50% voucher changes the sums. Pass SAA-C03 for $150, and SAP-C02 costs $150 with the voucher instead of $300.

A failed attempt is the expensive part: a full fee and at least two weeks. Booking an exam just to see what it's like costs the same as booking it when you're ready. If you want help deciding when you're ready, that's what Track A of my coaching starts with: a gap assessment against the official exam guide.

Choosing your AWS certification path by role

Three questions decide most paths:

• Already in IT? Skip Cloud Practitioner. It won't teach you anything you use daily.
• Architect or DevOps? If your week is Terraform and pipelines, DOP-C02 says more about you than SAP-C02. If it's design reviews and migration plans, it's the other way round.
• One Professional or two Associates? For most CVs, one Professional plus your role's Associate reads better than three Associates.

My take: if you're employed and unsure, take SAA-C03 and stop there for a while. It has the best effort-to-return ratio on this page, and it tells you whether you enjoy the architecture track before you put a hundred hours into a Professional exam.

How long each exam takes to prepare for

AWS doesn't publish study hours. It publishes recommended experience, which is in the sections above. The hours below are my own estimates, not AWS figures, for someone with that recommended experience who studies 8 to 10 hours a week around a full-time job.

Two caveats. If you've never used the services in the exam guide, expect to need more time, and spend part of it building something in your own account, because reading without building costs you more hours later. And book the exam slot before you feel fully ready. A date in the calendar does more for momentum than another month of theory.

What the certifications don't cover

A certification shows you know the material. It doesn't show you can defend a design decision out loud in an interview, which is a separate skill:

1. System design rounds. The exam gives you four options. An interview gives you a blank whiteboard and asks why you'd go multi-Region and what it costs. The system design interview questions post covers how those rounds are graded.
2. Behavioural questions. "Tell me about a time you broke production" has no answer in an exam guide.
3. Trade-offs without options. Picking the right database from a list is easier than justifying one with no list in front of you.

That gap is what my 1:1 coaching is for: Track A for exam prep, Track B for timed mock interviews with a written scorecard, both in evening and weekend slots. If you'd rather have steady support month to month, mentoring is the lighter option.

FAQ

Which AWS certification should I take first?

If you already work in IT, Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03). It covers the breadth the other tracks build on. If you are new to cloud or in a non-technical role, start with Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02), or AI Practitioner (AIF-C01) if your work is about AI.

Do I need Cloud Practitioner before Solutions Architect – Associate?

No. AWS has no prerequisites for any exam. Cloud Practitioner helps if cloud is new to you, but an engineer who already uses AWS can go straight to an Associate exam.

How long is an AWS certification valid?

Three years. You recertify by passing the latest version of the exam or, for some certifications, a higher-level one. Several Associate, Professional and Specialty certifications can also be extended by one year through AWS Skill Builder, and Cloud Practitioner can be renewed through the AWS Cloud Quest recertification game.

What happens if I fail an AWS exam?

You wait 14 calendar days before you can sit it again, and you pay the full exam fee for each attempt. There is no limit on the number of attempts.

Is one Professional certification better than several Associates?

For most CVs, yes. One Professional plus the Associate that matches your job shows depth, and a reader can tell it apart from a row of entry-level badges. Extra Associates make sense when your role spans development, operations and data.

Sources

• AWS Certification: all exams
• AWS Certification exam guides: codes and domains
• Exam fees and policies before testing
• Retake policy and scoring after testing
• AWS Certification FAQs
• Recertification options
• Benefits of being AWS Certified