Amazon Web Services, Inc.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03)

This associate-level certification is aimed at people who design systems on AWS. It tests whether you can choose an architecture along the four lenses of the AWS Well-Architected Framework: security, resilience, performance, and cost. The exam has 65 questions and a 130-minute limit, and 15 of those questions are unscored. Results are reported as a scaled score from 100 to 1,000, with a minimum passing score of 720. The fee is USD 150 and the certification is valid for three years. AWS describes the target candidate as having at least one year of hands-on experience designing cloud solutions that use AWS services, and the emphasis is less on recalling service names than on deciding which architecture fits a given set of requirements. Because the domains map directly onto Well-Architected lenses — secure architectures at 30%, resilient at 26%, high-performing at 24%, and cost-optimized at 20% — the same structure works as a study outline and as a design review checklist. The official exam guide publishes in-scope and out-of-scope service lists. Japanese is among the available exam languages.