AWS Certification Hub
Free study guides, role-based study paths, and a side-by-side comparison of all 12 active AWS certifications. Maintained by FactualMinds architects with 50+ AWS certifications across the team.
What's in the hub
Free study guides
Each guide breaks down the exam domains, weights, recommended labs, and the resources that paid back the time we put into them. More guides land each quarter.
~1 year of hands-on AWS experience expected. Most candidates start here.
Deep expertise in one domain. Pairs well with an Associate or Professional cert.
Decision framework
Four steps that work for almost any AWS cert decision — from picking your first Associate to deciding whether the Professional is worth 12 weeks of evenings.
Map the cert to your day job
AWS now organizes certs by job role — architect, developer, SysOps, data engineer, ML engineer, security, networking, AI. Pick the one closest to what you actually build. A cert outside your daily work is the slowest path to a pass and the fastest to forget.
Match level to experience
Foundational (Cloud Practitioner, AI Practitioner) assumes ≤6 months of cloud exposure. Associate assumes ~1 year of hands-on AWS. Professional assumes 4+ years and an Associate already in hand. Specialty assumes deep expertise in one domain plus an Associate baseline.
Confirm the cert is current
AWS retired the Database Specialty (DBS-C01) and SAP on AWS Specialty (PAS-C01) in April 2024. AI Practitioner (AIF-C01) reached GA. ML Engineer Associate (MLA-C01) and Data Engineer Associate (DEA-C01) replaced the older data/ML certs as the default new track. Always check the official exam guide on the day you book.
Plan time and money
Budget 4–8 weeks of evenings for an Associate and 8–12 weeks for a Professional. Exam fees are $100 (Foundational), $150 (Associate), $300 (Professional / Specialty). AWS recertification is now free — passing once gets you a 50% retake voucher and a free official practice exam every cycle.
Use-case based recommendations
The cert sequence we'd recommend if you took the role title on your offer letter literally. Each path links to the study guide we have published; the rest of the route is signposted with the official AWS exam.
You ship application code on AWS — Lambda, ECS, RDS, DynamoDB — and want a cert that mirrors what you already do.
~3–4 months for Associate stack, +8 weeks for Pro
You design systems end-to-end and want the cert AWS itself uses as the architect baseline.
~6 weeks Associate, ~10–12 weeks Professional
You own IAM, KMS, GuardDuty, Security Hub, or compliance work (HIPAA, PCI, SOC 2) on AWS.
~4–5 months for SAA + Specialty
You run CI/CD, IaC (Terraform / CDK), EKS / ECS platforms, observability, and on-call.
~6–8 months for full stack
You build pipelines on Glue, Athena, Redshift, EMR, Kinesis, or MSK.
~4 months for SAA + DEA
You build with Bedrock, SageMaker, or apply LLMs / agents in production.
~3–4 months for AIF + MLA
Quick reference
Cost, duration, recommended experience, and the role each cert is shaped for. The highlighted row is the cert most engineers should take first; rows with linked names point to a free study guide.
AWS retired Database Specialty (DBS-C01) and SAP on AWS Specialty (PAS-C01) in April 2024 — they are excluded from this table. ML Specialty (MLS-C01) is still live but ML Engineer Associate (MLA-C01) is the recommended successor for new candidates.
Costs in USD. Always confirm pricing and availability on aws.amazon.com/certification before booking.
What we see most often
Patterns we see across engineers we mentor. None of them are about intelligence — they are about how candidates allocate their study time and money.
Starting with Cloud Practitioner when you already use AWS
CLF-C02 is genuinely entry-level. If you have ~1 year of hands-on experience, skip it and go straight to SAA-C03. The same study time spent on Associate material is worth more in interviews and on the job.
Chasing a Professional before consolidating Associate
SAP-C02 and DOP-C02 assume the Associate-level material is muscle memory. Most failed Pro attempts are by candidates who jumped from limited experience to Pro without the Associate first. The Associate is not a tax — it is the foundation the Professional builds on.
Studying videos without timed practice exams
Watching another 6 hours of course content rarely improves a score above 70%. Timed practice exams (Tutorials Dojo, official AWS Skill Builder questions) surface gaps that videos cannot. Switch the ratio earlier than you think.
Letting certs lapse — recertification is now free
Since 2024, AWS gives every certified individual a free 50% retake voucher and a free official practice exam each cycle. There is no reason to let a cert expire if you are still in cloud — the recert path is meaningfully cheaper than the first attempt.
Want help deciding which architecture topics to study deepest? The AWS decision hub and Well-Architected Framework guide cover the same scenarios the exams test.
Cost vs time
Four principles we tell every engineer we mentor. They override anything you read on a cert-prep blog about which exam is 'easiest' or 'most prestigious'.
Associate exams are role-shaped and hiring managers recognize them. Specialties are deeper but narrower — pursue them when the depth maps to your actual work.
For non-technical stakeholders or pure beginners it is the right entry point. For an engineer with hands-on experience, the value is closer to a refresher than a credential.
A $30 practice-exam bundle teaches more in 6 hours than a $200 video course teaches in 30. Use video courses as a syllabus, then live in practice exams for the last 2–3 weeks.
A $300 Specialty is cheap relative to the time investment. Pick the cert most likely to be used in your job — not the cheapest, not the trendiest.
Cert hub FAQ
The questions engineers ask us most often when planning their next cert.
FactualMinds runs internal AWS certification cohorts for engineering teams — hands-on labs, mock exams, and review sessions led by certified architects. We also place certified engineers on client teams when you need depth fast.
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