Last updated: September 2026. Written by Josh Hutcheson, OnlineCourseing editor. Exam facts re-read on AWS’s certification page, exam guide and FAQ on 11 September 2026. See our review methodology.
By Josh Hutcheson · E-Learning Specialist
Reviewing online learning platforms since 2019. Review methodology
THE 60-SECOND GUIDE
Bottom line: the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) is the AWS certification hiring managers ask for first. It costs $150 per attempt, runs 130 minutes for 65 questions, needs a scaled 720 out of 1,000, and is valid for three years. SAA-C03 is still the current version; AWS has announced no successor. Most people who pass put in 8–12 weeks around a job.
- Cheapest route that works: Stephane Maarek’s Udemy course plus Tutorials Dojo practice tests, about $180 all in
- If you want the AWS-authored path: AWS’s own Coursera Professional Certificate, which ends with an AWS-written exam-prep course
- If you learn by building: Udacity’s dedicated SAA Nanodegree (four reviewed projects mapped to the four exam domains), then the Cloud Architect Nanodegree for portfolio depth
- Skip it if: you are a pure developer (take DVA-C02) or a data engineer (take DEA-C01)
Start SAA-C03 prep with Maarek’s Udemy course →
What the AWS Solutions Architect Associate actually certifies
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SAA-C03 is an Associate-level certification that tests whether you can design solutions on AWS that are secure, resilient, high-performing and cost-optimized, using the AWS Well-Architected Framework as the yardstick. It sits between Cloud Practitioner, which tests awareness, and Solutions Architect Professional (SAP-C02), which tests complex multi-account and migration design. It is the most-recommended AWS Associate exam for a reason: it forces you to know the core services (VPC, EC2, S3, RDS, IAM, Lambda, load balancing, CloudFront, Route 53) well enough to choose between them under constraints, which is the daily work of a cloud engineer.
AWS recommends at least one year of hands-on experience designing cloud solutions, but says candidates with one to three years of general IT experience routinely pass. That matches what we see: the people who struggle are learning the console and the exam at the same time, which is why every prep path below starts with labs, not lectures.
Should you take SAA-C03?
Take it if
- You are targeting cloud engineer, solutions architect, platform or DevOps roles on AWS. It is the single AWS certification that appears most often in those job descriptions.
- You already have some cloud exposure and want the highest-coverage single exam rather than a foundational one.
- You plan to continue to the Professional or Specialty tier; SAA-C03 is the skill base every one of them assumes.
Skip it if
- You write application code and will not design infrastructure: the Developer Associate (DVA-C02) is the better match.
- Your target is data pipelines: the Data Engineer Associate (DEA-C01) is more aligned.
- Your employer runs Azure or GCP. Take the Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305) path or the GCP equivalent instead; our AWS vs Azure comparison covers the choice.
Exam format, cost and logistics
These are the facts from AWS’s certification page, the SAA-C03 exam guide and the AWS Certification FAQ, read on 11 September 2026.
| Detail | SAA-C03 (read 11 Sept 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cost | $150 USD per attempt |
| Duration | 130 minutes |
| Questions | 65 (50 scored, 15 unscored) |
| Format | Multiple choice and multiple response |
| Passing score | 720 out of 1,000 (scaled) |
| Delivery | Pearson VUE test centre or online proctored |
| Languages | 10, including English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Chinese; Italian retires after 31 Dec 2026 |
| Validity | 3 years |
| Retake | After 14 days; no attempt limit; full fee each time |
| Recommended experience | 1+ year designing solutions on AWS |
Two details trip people up. Fifteen of the 65 questions are unscored items AWS is trialling, and you cannot tell which, so treat every question as live. And the score is scaled, not a percentage: 720 does not mean 72% correct, and AWS does not publish the raw-to-scaled mapping, which is why we do not quote a pass rate anywhere on this page. Nobody outside AWS has that number.
The four exam domains
The exam guide weights the domains as follows. The weighting is also a study budget: half of your time belongs in the first two domains.
Domain 1: Design Secure Architectures (30%)
IAM users, roles and policies; encryption at rest and in transit with KMS, S3 and EBS; VPC security with security groups versus network ACLs; AWS WAF, Shield and GuardDuty; secure data flows between services. Expect scenario questions that hinge on least-privilege access and on where a control belongs (subnet, instance or edge).
Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures (26%)
Multi-AZ and multi-region patterns, RTO and RPO trade-offs, AWS Backup, disaster-recovery strategies from backup-and-restore to active-active, Elastic Load Balancing and Auto Scaling, decoupling with SQS and SNS. The recurring question shape is “which design survives the loss of an AZ at the lowest cost”.
Domain 3: Design High-Performing Architectures (24%)
Choosing compute (EC2 families, Lambda versus Fargate versus ECS), storage performance (EBS volume types, S3 storage classes and transfer acceleration), database performance (RDS read replicas, Aurora, DynamoDB capacity, ElastiCache) and edge delivery with CloudFront and Global Accelerator.
Domain 4: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures (20%)
Reserved Instances versus Savings Plans versus Spot, right-sizing, S3 lifecycle transitions and Intelligent-Tiering, data-transfer costs, Cost Explorer and Budgets. These questions usually offer four working designs and ask for the cheapest one that still meets the requirement.
What it costs, all in
The exam fee is the smallest line on most people’s budget, and the “cost” queries that bring readers to this page usually mean the whole path. Here is the honest range, with the exam fee counted once.
| Budget | Route | Total |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum | Skill Builder free tier + exam | $150 |
| Typical | Maarek ($15) + Tutorials Dojo ($15) + exam | $180 |
| Structured | Coursera certificate, 2 months ($78–$198) + exam | $228–$348 |
| Project-led | Udacity SAA Nanodegree, 2 months with the reader code (~$300) + exam | ~$450 |
| Any route + one fail | Add a second $150 attempt after 14 days | +$150 |
Two policy points affect the budget. A failed attempt means a 14-day wait and another $150; there is no limit on attempts but no discount either. And once you hold any AWS certification, AWS gives you a 50% discount voucher toward a recertification or a higher-level exam, which halves the cost of the Professional exam later.
Best ways to prepare for SAA-C03
The ranking below is by fit, not by what pays us. We earn a commission on Udemy, Zero To Mastery, Coursera and Udacity enrolments through the links on this page; we earn nothing from Tutorials Dojo, Adrian Cantrill or AWS Skill Builder, and they are here because the r/AWSCertifications consensus and our own reading put them there.
| Option | What it is | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stephane Maarek, Udemy | 27-hour video course, 4.7 from 297,000+ ratings, 1.34M students, updated September 2026 | $12–$30 on Udemy’s rolling sales | Most candidates: the consensus core course |
| Zero To Mastery bootcamp | Amber Israelsen’s SAA-C03 bootcamp with practice questions and a full practice exam, updated September 2026 | $25/month membership or $249 lifetime | Learners who want ZTM’s community and career track alongside |
| AWS Cloud Solutions Architect Professional Certificate, Coursera | AWS’s own 4-course program (about 2 months at 10 h/wk), 4.8 from 7,100+ reviews, ends with an AWS-written exam-prep course | $39–$99/month Coursera subscription, 7-day trial | Anyone who wants the AWS-authored path and a shareable certificate |
| Udacity SAA Nanodegree | Dedicated exam-prep Nanodegree: 60 hours, 5 courses, 4 reviewed projects mapped to the four domains, updated 20 Aug 2026 | $249/month all-access ($846 for 4 months); reader code onlinecourseing40 applies | People who learn by building and want human project review |
| Udacity AWS Cloud Architect Nanodegree | 34-hour program building four production-style architectures | Same Udacity subscription | Portfolio depth after (or alongside) the exam |
| Tutorials Dojo practice tests | Jon Bonso’s exam simulators, widely rated harder than the real exam | About $15 | Everyone, in the final three weeks (no affiliate relationship) |
| Adrian Cantrill’s course | Deeper, slower, more architectural than Maarek | $40 self-paced | Engineers who want to understand, not just pass (no affiliate relationship) |
| AWS Skill Builder | AWS’s own learning plan, exam-prep course and 20-question official practice set | Free tier; labs on the paid plan | A free baseline and the official question style |
#1 for most people: Stephane Maarek’s Udemy course
Maarek’s “Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate 2026” is the consensus core course: 4.7 from 297,284 ratings and 1.34 million students when we read the listing on 11 September 2026, updated that same month, and a Udemy bestseller. It covers all four domains with exam framing throughout and enough hands-on to build the muscle memory. Udemy’s rolling sales keep it at $12–$30; never pay the list price.
Get Maarek’s SAA-C03 course on Udemy →
The AWS-authored path: Coursera’s AWS Cloud Solutions Architect Professional Certificate
AWS publishes its own four-course program on Coursera, rated 4.8 from about 7,100 reviews with 122,000 enrolled. It runs roughly two months at ten hours a week and the fourth course is a dedicated exam-prep unit with practice questions written by AWS. It costs a Coursera subscription ($39–$99 a month, seven-day trial) rather than a one-off fee, so it suits people who will finish in two months and want a shareable certificate on top of the exam.
See AWS’s own certificate on Coursera →
The project-led path: Udacity’s SAA Nanodegree, then Cloud Architect
PREMIUM PICK — IF YOU WANT THE PORTFOLIO, NOT JUST THE CERT
Udacity now runs a dedicated AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Nanodegree: 60 hours, five courses and four projects that map onto the four exam domains (secure access, scalable and loosely coupled design, high performance, cost-optimized storage), plus a six-hour exam-prep course, updated 20 August 2026. Every project is reviewed by a human. Finish it and the AWS Cloud Architect Nanodegree (34 hours, four production-style architectures) turns the exam knowledge into a portfolio.
Pricing: Udacity’s all-access subscription is $249 a month at list, or $846 for a four-month bundle ($212 a month). The reader code onlinecourseing40 takes 40% off and is applied when you click through. Skip if: you only need the badge for a promotion; Maarek plus the exam is the efficient route.
See the SAA Nanodegree Cloud Architect Nanodegree →
Affiliate partnership: we may earn a commission when you enrol via these links. Read our Cloud Architect Nanodegree review.
The bootcamp option: Zero To Mastery
ZTM’s AWS Certified Solutions Architect bootcamp, taught by Amber Israelsen and updated in September 2026, covers the SAA-C03 objectives with demos, per-topic practice questions and a full practice exam, and comes with ZTM’s Discord community and career support. It is $25 a month on the membership (which unlocks every ZTM course) or $249 to own the course outright. It makes most sense if you are also using ZTM for a programming or DevOps track.
See the ZTM AWS Solutions Architect bootcamp →
Practice tests and free supplements
Tutorials Dojo (about $15) remains the practice-test standard; its questions run harder than the real exam and the explanations are the best on the market. Score above 80% on fresh timed sets and you are ready. Adrian Cantrill’s $40 course goes deeper than Maarek and suits engineers who want to understand the platform rather than pass a test. AWS Skill Builder has a free SAA-C03 exam-prep plan and an official 20-question practice set that shows you the real question style; the paid plan adds labs. We have no affiliate relationship with any of the three.
A 12-week study plan
Weeks 1-2: foundations
Read the official SAA-C03 exam guide, set up an AWS account with billing alerts at $25, $50 and $100, and finish the free Cloud Practitioner Essentials course if AWS is new to you.
Weeks 3-7: the main course
Work through Stephane Maarek’s SAA-C03 course on Udemy (or the Zero To Mastery bootcamp), doing every hands-on lab rather than watching it.
Weeks 8-9: build architectures
Build a multi-AZ web tier behind a load balancer, a VPC with peering and private subnets, S3 plus CloudFront, and a Lambda plus API Gateway service, all inside the Free Tier.
Weeks 10-11: practice exams
Take timed full-length practice tests (Tutorials Dojo or the Coursera exam-prep course), reviewing every wrong answer by domain until you score above 80%.
Week 12: sit the exam
Book the exam for the end of the week, keep the last two days to light review, and know that a retake is 14 days away if it goes wrong.
Working full time, that plan is about eight to ten hours a week. Compress it to six weeks only if you already work in AWS daily.
Five labs to build before you sit the exam
Every course above includes labs, but the ones that move a score are the ones you design yourself from a requirement, because that is what the questions do. Each of these stays inside the Free Tier if you tear it down the same day, and each maps to a domain.
- A two-tier web app across two Availability Zones (Domain 2). An Application Load Balancer in public subnets, EC2 in an Auto Scaling group in private subnets, and an RDS Multi-AZ instance. Then stop one instance and watch what recovers on its own.
- A VPC with peering and a NAT gateway (Domains 1 and 4). Two VPCs, non-overlapping CIDRs, a peering connection, route tables that only allow the traffic you intend. Note what the NAT gateway costs per hour; that number appears in cost questions.
- Static site on S3 behind CloudFront with an origin access control (Domains 1 and 3). Bucket private, CloudFront public, HTTPS via ACM, and a lifecycle rule moving logs to Glacier after 30 days.
- A serverless API (Domain 3). API Gateway in front of Lambda writing to DynamoDB, with an IAM role scoped to one table. Compare its cost model with the EC2 tier you built first.
- Cost controls (Domain 4). A Budget with an alert, a Cost Explorer report grouped by service, and a Savings Plan recommendation you read but do not buy. The exam expects you to know which tool answers which question.
Screenshot the architecture diagram and the final bill for each. That is the beginning of the portfolio the Udacity route formalizes, and it is worth more in an interview than the score report.
Registration and test day
You book through AWS Certification (an AWS Builder ID or Amazon account) and sit the exam either at a Pearson VUE test centre or online with a proctor. Online delivery needs a quiet room, a webcam, a room scan and government ID that matches your registration name exactly; test centres are the safer choice if your internet or your workspace is unpredictable. AWS lets you reschedule an appointment twice before you must cancel and rebook, and the 14-day retake clock starts on the day you fail. Results arrive within five business days, though most candidates see the pass or fail banner at the end of the session and the domain-level breakdown shortly after.
Mistakes that cost people the exam
- Studying services instead of decisions. The exam rarely asks what a service is; it asks which of four working designs is the most secure, resilient, performant or cheap. Practise eliminating three good answers.
- Skipping the labs. Watching 27 hours of video without touching the console produces a candidate who recognises every term and cannot place it in a scenario.
- Taking practice tests too early. Tutorials Dojo’s value is in the explanations; used before the course is finished it becomes memorisation. Keep it for the final three weeks.
- Ignoring the unscored questions. You cannot identify the 15 experimental items, so a “hard question” is not a signal to panic or to change strategy.
- Booking before you are consistent. One 80% practice score is noise; three in a row on fresh sets is readiness. A retake is $150 and 14 days, which is cheaper than another month of drifting.
Salary impact, honestly
Every certification site quotes a salary, and most of the numbers trace back to self-reported survey data that mixes Associate holders with 15-year architects. The defensible statement is narrower: US solutions architect and cloud engineer roles that list SAA-C03 typically advertise in the low-to-mid six figures in major markets, junior cloud roles sit below that, and the certification’s effect is largest at the CV-screen stage, where it moves an application from the “no cloud” pile to the “interview” pile. Aggregators such as Glassdoor publish live ranges for “AWS Solutions Architect” if you want a market-specific figure; we no longer quote a single number here because the sources disagree with each other by tens of thousands of dollars.
SAA-C03 versus the neighbouring exams
| Exam | Level | Cost | Choose it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) | Foundational | $100 | You need a first, low-stakes AWS exam or a non-technical role |
| Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) | Associate | $150 | You design or run infrastructure on AWS |
| Developer Associate (DVA-C02) | Associate | $150 | You build applications and CI/CD on AWS |
| Data Engineer Associate (DEA-C01) | Associate | $150 | You build pipelines and lakes |
| Solutions Architect Professional (SAP-C02) | Professional | $300 | You have SAA plus two years of complex design work |
Frequently asked questions
How hard is the SAA-C03 exam?
Moderate for someone with hands-on AWS time, hard for someone learning the console and the exam at once. AWS does not publish a pass rate; what it publishes is a scaled passing score of 720 out of 1,000, 65 questions in 130 minutes, and a recommendation of at least one year of hands-on experience. Candidates who work through a full course and score consistently above 80% on hard practice tests generally pass.
How much does the AWS Solutions Architect Associate cost in total?
The exam is $150 USD per attempt, and every retake costs the full $150 again. Prep runs from $0 (AWS Skill Builder) to roughly $12-$30 for Stephane Maarek’s Udemy course, $25 a month or $249 for Zero To Mastery, $39-$99 a month on Coursera for AWS’s own certificate, or $249 a month on Udacity for a Nanodegree. A realistic all-in budget is $165 to $450; a first-attempt fail adds $150.
Is SAA-C03 worth it?
For anyone targeting cloud engineer, solutions architect or DevOps roles on AWS, yes: it is the most-recommended AWS Associate certification and the usual gateway to the Professional and Specialty exams. Salary claims vary by source and market, so treat any single dollar figure with caution; the credential is worth more when it sits next to hands-on projects than on its own.
Should I take Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) first or go straight to SAA-C03?
Go straight to SAA-C03 if you have six months or more of AWS exposure or a technical background; it covers Cloud Practitioner’s scope and goes deeper. Take CLF-C02 first only if you are new to cloud concepts entirely and want a lower-stakes first exam.
How long is the SAA-C03 certification valid?
Three years. AWS lets you recertify by retaking the current Associate exam or by passing a higher-level certification such as Solutions Architect Professional, and it gives certified individuals a 50% discount voucher for the recertification or upgrade exam.
Is there an SAA-C04 coming? Is SAA-C03 still the current exam?
SAA-C03 is the current exam as of 11 September 2026: AWS’s certification page and exam guide both carry the C03 code, and AWS’s coming-soon page lists no change to the Solutions Architect Associate. When AWS replaces an exam version it announces a transition window months ahead, as it did for the CloudOps Engineer exam in 2025. Third-party pages describing an SAA-C04 are speculation.
What happens if I fail SAA-C03?
You must wait 14 calendar days before retaking it, there is no limit on attempts, and each attempt costs the full $150 fee. Your score report breaks results down by domain, so the retake plan is to drill the weak domain rather than restart the whole course.
What jobs can I get after SAA-C03?
Solutions architect associate, cloud engineer, cloud support engineer, DevOps or platform engineer and AWS-focused systems administrator roles are the common destinations. The certification gets the CV through the screen; a portfolio of real architectures and one or two years of hands-on work is what the interviews test.
Final verdict
SAA-C03 is the most career-relevant single AWS exam you can take, and it is stable: the current version, no successor announced, three-year validity. Prepare with Maarek and Tutorials Dojo if budget is the constraint, with AWS’s own Coursera certificate if you want the vendor-authored path, or with Udacity’s SAA Nanodegree if you need projects to show. Whichever you choose, the exam is the easy part to buy; the hands-on hours are what you are actually paying for.
Start SAA-C03 prep with Maarek’s Udemy course →
Related guides: AWS Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) · AWS Data Engineer (DEA-C01) · AWS Machine Learning Engineer Associate (MLA-C01 → C02) · AWS Developer Associate (DVA-C02 and C03) · AWS DevOps Engineer Professional (DOP-C02) · AWS vs Azure · Azure Solutions Architect (AZ-305) · Best cloud certifications · Udacity Cloud Architect review