AWS Developer Associate exam guide: DVA-C02 to DVA-C03

The AWS Developer Associate exam is about to change version. The last day to take the current exam, DVA-C02, is 30 November 2026, and its replacement, DVA-C03, can be taken from 1 December 2026. The format stays the same (65 questions in 130 minutes, 720 to pass, US$150), but DVA-C03 adds a task on the security of AI services, AI-assisted coding and testing throughout, and container builds and deployments.

This guide sets out the dates, what AWS's own comparison says changes, how to decide which version to sit, what each domain tests, how the Developer Associate compares with the Solutions Architect and Data Engineer Associates, and a study plan. Facts were checked on AWS's certification pages on 4 November 2026.

AWS Developer Associate at a glance

• Certification: AWS Certified Developer – Associate, Associate level.
• Exam code: DVA-C02 until 30 November 2026; DVA-C03 from 1 December 2026.
• Who it's for: people in developer roles. AWS recommends a year or more of hands-on experience developing and maintaining applications on AWS, and proficiency in at least one high-level programming language.
• Prerequisites: none. No AWS certification requires another first.
• Format: 65 questions in 130 minutes, both versions. 50 are scored and 15 are unscored questions AWS is trialling, and they aren't marked.
• Question types: multiple choice (one right answer of four) and multiple response (two or more right of five or more). There's no penalty for guessing.
• Passing score: 720 on a 100-1,000 scale, scored across the whole exam rather than per domain.
• Price: US$150, or ₹12,829.50 plus tax with a rupee voucher, as of November 2026.
• Delivery: Pearson VUE test centre or online proctoring. DVA-C02 is offered in English, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese and Spanish.
• Validity: three years.

DVA-C02 or DVA-C03: the dates

AWS's announcement gives the dates: "Registration for the updated exam (DVA-C03) will open on October 27, 2026, with GA delivery beginning December 1, 2026", and "the last day to take the current version of the exam (DVA-C02) will be November 30, 2026." (The DVA-C03 exam guide's own note still says registration opens on 1 December; either way, 1 December is the first exam day.) There's no overlap. Book a DVA-C02 slot for 30 November or earlier, or plan for DVA-C03.

Both versions lead to the same certification, AWS Certified Developer – Associate, with the same three-year validity. If you already hold it, nothing changes for you until renewal, when you'll sit whichever version is current.

What changes in DVA-C03

AWS publishes a side-by-side comparison. The domain names and weights move like this:

• Development with AWS Services: DVA-C02: 32%. / DVA-C03: 30%.
• Security: DVA-C02: 26%. / DVA-C03: 26%.
• Deployment: DVA-C02: 24%, called Deployment. / DVA-C03: 22%, renamed Testing and Deployment.
• Troubleshooting and Optimization: DVA-C02: 18%. / DVA-C03: 22%.

A new task on AI security

The biggest addition is Task 2.3: "Identify and mitigate security risks associated with using and integrating AI services into application development." It has five skills: requesting and managing access to AI services; data privacy controls such as private connectivity through VPC endpoints and making sure inputs and outputs aren't used to train models; filtering model inputs and outputs (content filtering, sensitive-data detection and redaction, denied topics, prompt-injection protection); securing AI agent interactions with tool-use authorisation, session isolation and human approval for sensitive actions; and keeping sensitive content out of monitoring logs.

None of this asks you to choose a foundation model or design a retrieval system: AWS lists selecting models, prompt engineering and RAG design as out of scope. It is a developer's view of AI: call it safely.

AI tools and containers across the exam

AWS added smaller items to several existing tasks:

• Task 1.1: use AI-assisted development tools to generate, review and optimise code, and integrate managed AWS AI services into applications.
• Task 2.1: use presigned URLs for secure, time-limited access, with Amazon S3 and CloudFront.
• Task 3.1: build and manage container images (Amazon ECR, Dockerfiles, image tagging, lifecycle policies).
• Task 3.2: use AWS AI tools to generate tests and automate testing workflows.
• Task 3.3: deploy containerised applications with ECS task definitions, EKS manifests and Fargate, with rolling updates, and use AI tools to support CI/CD.
• Tasks 4.1 and 4.3: use AI tools to analyse errors and suggest fixes, and to find optimisation opportunities.

What moved or merged

Some content moved rather than changed. Unit testing with AWS SAM moved from Development to Testing and Deployment; Lambda performance tuning moved to Troubleshooting and Optimization; API Gateway stages and custom domains moved within Deployment. AWS also merged granular skills: DynamoDB's four skills (partition keys, consistency, query versus scan, indexes) are now one, and encryption and sensitive-data handling went from 13 skills across two tasks to seven in one. AWS says the merges don't reduce the emphasis on those topics; DynamoDB is still everywhere.

Which version should you take?

• You're nearly ready now: sit DVA-C02 before 30 November. Most study material on the market was written for it, and you avoid the new AI tasks.
• You're starting from scratch: study for DVA-C03. It's the version you'll actually sit, and its extra topics (AI service security, containers) are skills employers are asking for anyway.
• You're halfway through DVA-C02 material: keep going. Most of the content carries over; add the new Task 2.3, the container tasks and presigned URLs from AWS's DVA-C03 exam guide before you book.

Whichever you choose, use AWS's own exam guide for that version as your checklist, because third-party courses take time to catch up after a version change.

What the Developer Associate exam tests

The four domains, using DVA-C03's names:

1. Development with AWS Services (30%). Writing code that uses AWS services through the SDK and CLI: Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3, SQS, SNS and Step Functions. Expect questions on Lambda concurrency, API Gateway throttling and caching, and DynamoDB access patterns. Three practice questions from the Solutions Architect bank show the developer side of these services: one on Lambda provisioned concurrency, one on API Gateway usage plans and throttling and one on API Gateway stage caching.
2. Security (26%). Authentication and authorisation for applications (IAM roles, Cognito), encryption with KMS, secrets management, and now the AI-security task.
3. Testing and Deployment (22%). Packaging and deploying with SAM, CloudFormation and CDK, CI/CD with AWS's developer tools, container images and deployments, and testing.
4. Troubleshooting and Optimization (22%). Logs, metrics and traces, finding the cause of errors, and tuning performance and cost. Messaging bugs are a favourite here: a practice question on SQS visibility timeouts causing duplicates is exactly the kind of fault you'll be asked to diagnose, and one on SQS FIFO message group IDs covers ordering.

There's no Developer Associate practice bank on this site yet. The SAA-C03 practice questions are the closest substitute for the service knowledge, since both exams lean on Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB and SQS; the SAA-C03 cert page explains that bank.

Developer vs Solutions Architect vs Data Engineer Associate

The three associate exams that developers most often weigh up, all US$150, 65 questions and 720 to pass as of November 2026:

• What it asks: Developer: how to build, deploy and debug code on AWS. / Solutions Architect: which design meets a requirement. / Data Engineer: how to build and run data pipelines.
• Recommended experience: Developer: a year or more developing on AWS. / Solutions Architect: a year designing solutions. / Data Engineer: 2-3 years of data engineering plus 1-2 on AWS.
• Largest domain: Developer: Development with AWS Services (30%). / Solutions Architect: Design Secure Architectures (30%). / Data Engineer: Data Ingestion and Transformation (34%).

If you write application code, take the Developer Associate; it's the most hands-on of the three. If your job is designing systems or you want the broadest of the associate exams, take Solutions Architect first, as the SAA-C03 exam guide explains. If you build pipelines, Data Engineer fits; a practice question on DynamoDB global secondary indexes shows where it overlaps with developer work. The Data Engineer cert page and Data Engineer practice questions cover that exam, and the AWS vs Databricks data engineer guide compares it further. Many developers take two of these, which the 50% voucher makes cheaper. The AWS certification roadmap shows how they fit with the rest.

Cost and renewal

The exam costs US$150 as of November 2026, or ₹12,829.50 plus tax if you buy a voucher in rupees from Pearson's voucher store. Passing gives you a 50% discount voucher for another AWS exam. For every AWS exam price and the free prep, see AWS certification cost.

The certification lasts three years. You renew by passing the current Developer Associate exam again, by passing AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional, or through AWS Skill Builder, which extends it by one year.

How to prepare

A plan of six to eight weeks at 8-10 hours a week suits most developers who already use AWS:

1. Weeks 1-2: the serverless core. Build a small API with Lambda, API Gateway and DynamoDB using the SDK, then add SQS and SNS. The Lambda guide and SQS, SNS and EventBridge guide cover the theory.
2. Weeks 3-4: security and deployment. IAM roles for functions, Cognito, KMS, Secrets Manager; then deploy the same API with SAM or CDK through a pipeline.
3. Week 5: troubleshooting. Break your own app on purpose and find the fault with logs, metrics and traces. For DVA-C03, add a container: build an image, push it to ECR and deploy it to ECS on Fargate.
4. Week 6 (DVA-C03): AI services. Call a managed AI service from your app over a VPC endpoint, add input and output filtering, and keep prompts out of your logs. That covers Task 2.3 in practice.
5. Weeks 7-8: questions. AWS's free 20-question Official Practice Question Set and free Exam Readiness training, plus the service questions here.

Frequently asked questions

Is DVA-C02 being retired?

Yes. The last day to take DVA-C02 is 30 November 2026, and DVA-C03 exams start on 1 December 2026. Both lead to the same AWS Certified Developer – Associate certification.

What is new in DVA-C03?

A new task on the security of AI services (access, data privacy, input and output filtering, agent interactions, logs), AI-assisted coding and testing across several tasks, container image builds and deployments, and presigned URLs. Troubleshooting and Optimization grows from 18% to 22% of the exam.

Is the AWS Developer Associate harder than Solutions Architect Associate?

They're hard in different ways. The Developer Associate goes deeper into the APIs and behaviour of a smaller set of services, while Solutions Architect is broader and asks for design trade-offs. Developers who write AWS code daily often find the Developer Associate easier.

How much does the AWS Developer Associate exam cost?

US$150, or ₹12,829.50 plus tax with a rupee voucher, as of November 2026. Passing any AWS exam gives you 50% off another one.

Should I take Developer Associate or Solutions Architect first?

Take the Developer Associate first if you write application code on AWS every day; take Solutions Architect first if you design systems or want the broadest associate exam. Both are US$150 and the 50% voucher makes the second one cheaper.