SAA-C03 exam guide: what's on it and how to pass

SAA-C03 is the exam for AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, and it is still the current version: AWS has announced no SAA-C04, and it revised the SAA-C03 exam guide on 29 October 2026 rather than replacing it. The exam is 65 questions in 130 minutes, you need a scaled 720 out of 1,000, and it costs US$150 (₹12,829.50 plus tax in India) as of November 2026. Almost a third of the marks are on security, and most questions ask you to pick the design that best fits a stated requirement.

This guide covers what changed in 2026, what each of the four domains asks, how the questions are written and the traps in them, whether to take Cloud Practitioner first, the cost and renewal rules, and a study plan. Every fact was checked on AWS's certification pages on 4 November 2026.

SAA-C03 at a glance

Exam: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, code SAA-C03, Associate level.
Who it's for: people who design cost- and performance-optimised solutions on AWS. AWS recommends at least a year of hands-on experience designing cloud solutions.
Prerequisites: none. No AWS certification requires another one first.
Format: 65 questions in 130 minutes, as of November 2026. 50 are scored and 15 are unscored questions AWS is trying out; you can't tell which are which.
Question types: multiple choice (one right answer of four) and multiple response (two or more right answers of five or more). Wrong answers cost nothing, so never leave one blank.
Passing score: 720 on a 100-1,000 scale. Scoring is compensatory: you pass on your overall score, with no minimum per domain.
Price: US$150; ₹12,829.50 plus tax when you buy a voucher in rupees.
Delivery: at a Pearson VUE test centre or online with a proctor, in 10 languages.
Validity: three years.

Is SAA-C03 still current in 2026?

Yes. AWS's "coming soon" page lists no SAA-C04, and the exam page carries no retirement notice for the exam itself. You'll see SAA-C04 rumours on forums and prep sites; AWS hasn't published an exam guide for it, so study for SAA-C03.

What did change is the exam guide. AWS published revision 1.0 of the current guide on 28 August 2026 and revision 1.1 on 29 October 2026. Revision 1.1 removed Amazon Elastic Transcoder from the in-scope services. The other 2026 change is about language: the Italian version of the exam retires after 31 December 2026, so if you planned to sit it in Italian, book before then or switch to another language.

What the SAA-C03 exam tests

The four domains are all about design, and their weights tell you where the marks are:

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

Secure architectures (30%)

The largest domain covers IAM (users, roles, policies and cross-account access), protecting data with encryption, and network security with security groups, network ACLs and AWS WAF. The recurring idea is least privilege with no long-lived credentials. A practice question on cross-account access with an IAM role shows the shape: the right answer is a role the partner account can assume, never a shared access key. A practice question on a WAF rate-based rule covers the edge of the network.

Resilient architectures (26%)

This domain asks how a design survives failure: Multi-AZ databases, Auto Scaling across Availability Zones, decoupling with queues, and disaster recovery across Regions. Know the disaster-recovery strategies by their recovery time and recovery point, because questions give you an RTO and an RPO and ask for the cheapest strategy that meets them. Three practice questions cover this domain well: one on RDS Multi-AZ failover, one on Route 53 failover routing between Regions and one on choosing warm standby for a 5-minute RTO. For decoupling, a practice question on an SQS dead-letter queue is typical.

High-performing architectures (24%)

Here you pick the right storage, database, compute and caching for a workload's speed and scale: which EBS volume type, when to add a read replica or a cache, how to keep Lambda latency predictable. A practice question on Lambda provisioned concurrency is a good example: the answer pairs provisioned concurrency with scheduled scaling, because the requirement says traffic is predictable.

Cost-optimized architectures (20%)

The smallest domain is still a fifth of the exam. It covers purchasing options (On-Demand, Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, Spot), storage classes and lifecycle rules, and the cost of data transfer. Database pricing comes up too; a practice question on Aurora I/O-Optimized asks when paying more for storage lowers the total bill.

How SAA-C03 questions are written

Almost every question is a short scenario followed by a requirement, and the requirement is the whole question. Words like "most cost-effective", "least operational overhead", "highest availability" or "without changing the application" decide between answers that would all technically work. Read the last sentence first, then the scenario.

Two habits help. First, eliminate: usually two options break a stated requirement, leaving two that work, and the requirement picks between them. Second, prefer managed services when the question mentions operational overhead; AWS writes the exam to reward the managed choice in that case.

Here is how that plays out on an invented example. A company's web tier runs on EC2 instances in one Availability Zone, and the requirement is "keep the application available if an Availability Zone fails, with the least operational overhead". The four options might be: take nightly AMI snapshots; run a second instance in another AZ behind an Application Load Balancer in an Auto Scaling group; copy the instances to another Region with a script; or move the app to a bigger instance type. Snapshots and a bigger instance don't survive an AZ failure, so they go first. A cross-Region script would work but adds the most operational overhead. That leaves the Auto Scaling group across two AZs behind a load balancer, which meets both halves of the requirement. Most SAA-C03 questions fall apart the same way once you hold each option against every word of the requirement.

For how the exam's scoring, unscored questions and scaled scores work across all AWS exams, see how AWS certification exams work.

Services in scope that you shouldn't pick

The SAA-C03 in-scope services list still names two services that AWS has closed to new customers: the AWS Snow Family and AWS Application Discovery Service. AWS points new customers to AWS DataSync and Data Transfer Terminal instead of Snow devices, and to AWS Transform instead of Application Discovery Service. Older practice material uses Snowball as the textbook answer for moving large amounts of data; for a real design today, it's the wrong one. Expect the exam to keep catching up, as revision 1.1 did when it removed Elastic Transcoder.

CLF-C02 first, or straight to SAA-C03?

Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) is not a prerequisite, and AWS suggests it for people new to cloud or in non-technical roles. A quick comparison as of November 2026:

Questions and time: CLF-C02: 65 questions in 90 minutes. / SAA-C03: 65 in 130 minutes.
Passing score: CLF-C02: 700. / SAA-C03: 720.
Price: CLF-C02: US$100 (₹8,553 plus tax). / SAA-C03: US$150 (₹12,829.50 plus tax).
What it asks: CLF-C02: what services do and how AWS bills. / SAA-C03: which design meets a requirement.

Take CLF-C02 first if you are new to cloud or in a non-technical role. If you already work as a developer, administrator or support engineer, go straight to SAA-C03; most of CLF-C02 is in it anyway. A pass on CLF-C02 gives you a 50% discount voucher for another AWS exam, which softens the cost of doing both. The Cloud Practitioner exam guide covers that exam in full, the CLF-C02 cert page has its tests, and the CLF-C02 practice questions are a quick check of whether the basics are already there. For the full map of AWS exams, see which AWS certification to get.

Cost, renewal and retakes

The exam costs US$150 as of November 2026. In India you can pay ₹12,829.50 plus tax by buying a voucher in rupees from Pearson's voucher store. A pass gives you a voucher for 50% off another AWS exam or a recertification. For the cost of every AWS exam and the free ways to prepare, see AWS certification cost.

The certification lasts three years. You renew it by passing SAA-C03 again, or by passing Solutions Architect – Professional, which renews the Associate for another three years. AWS also offers a Skill Builder route that extends it by one year. If you're heading toward the Professional, the SAP-C02 vs SAP-C03 guide covers that exam's change.

A study plan for SAA-C03

Six to eight weeks at 8-10 hours a week suits most people with some AWS exposure.

Weeks 1-2: the core services. IAM, VPC (subnets, route tables, gateways, endpoints), EC2 and Auto Scaling, S3 and its storage classes, RDS and Aurora, DynamoDB. Build each one in a free-tier account rather than only reading about it.
Weeks 3-4: design patterns. Multi-AZ and multi-Region designs, the four disaster-recovery strategies, decoupling with SQS, SNS and EventBridge, caching, and serverless with Lambda and API Gateway.
Week 5: security and cost. Encryption with KMS, cross-account roles, WAF and Shield, purchasing options and storage lifecycle rules. Security is 30% of the exam, so give it a full week.
Weeks 6-8: questions. Work through the SAA-C03 practice questions one test at a time and read every explanation, including for the ones you got right. The SAA-C03 cert page also has a full-length, 65-question timed mock exam to take a week before the real one. AWS's free 20-question Official Practice Question Set and its free exam prep course on Skill Builder round this off.

If you can explain why each wrong option is wrong, you are ready. SAA-C03 is also good preparation for cloud interviews; the AWS interview questions guide works through the same designs as spoken scenarios.

Frequently asked questions

Is SAA-C03 still valid in 2026?

Yes. SAA-C03 is the current exam, with no SAA-C04 announced as of November 2026. AWS updated its exam guide on 29 October 2026, and only the Italian version retires, after 31 December 2026.

How hard is the SAA-C03 exam?

It's an associate exam, but the questions are long scenarios where two answers often work and the requirement picks one. People with a year of hands-on AWS work usually find it fair; people who only watched videos find the wording hard. Practice questions are the best way to get used to it.

How long should I study for SAA-C03?

Six to eight weeks at 8-10 hours a week if you have some AWS experience. Allow longer if AWS is new to you, and consider Cloud Practitioner first if IT is new to you.

How much does SAA-C03 cost in India?

₹12,829.50 plus tax when you buy a rupee voucher, against US$150, as of November 2026. A pass gives you 50% off another AWS exam.

What is the SAA-C03 passing score?

720 on a scale of 100 to 1,000. Scoring is compensatory, so a weak domain can be made up by a strong one, and only the 50 scored questions count.