About the AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) Exam

Quick Answer: The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) exam has 65 questions, a 130-minute time limit, and requires 720/1000 to pass. It covers Design Secure Architectures (30%), Design Resilient Architectures (26%), Design High-Performing Architectures (24%), and Design Cost-Optimized Architectures (20%). The exam costs $150 USD and validates your ability to design well-architected solutions on AWS.

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) is one of the most popular and respected cloud certifications in the industry. It validates your ability to design distributed systems on AWS that are secure, resilient, high-performing, and cost-optimized. The SAA-C03 version replaced the SAA-C02 and includes updated content reflecting modern AWS services and best practices.

Exam Format at a Glance

Domain Breakdown

On the Exam: Design Secure Architectures (30%) is the heaviest-weighted domain. Combined with Design Resilient Architectures (26%), these two domains make up 56% of the exam. Security and resilience should be your top priorities in preparation.

Domain 1: Design Secure Architectures (30%)

This domain covers three task statements:

• Task 1.1: Design secure access to AWS resources (IAM, STS, Organizations, federation)
• Task 1.2: Design secure workloads and applications (VPC security, WAF, Shield, security groups, NACLs)
• Task 1.3: Determine appropriate data security controls (KMS, encryption at rest/in transit, Secrets Manager, Macie)

Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures (26%)

This domain covers two task statements:

• Task 2.1: Design scalable and loosely coupled architectures (Auto Scaling, SQS, SNS, API Gateway, event-driven)
• Task 2.2: Design highly available and/or fault-tolerant architectures (Multi-AZ, Multi-Region, disaster recovery strategies)

Domain 3: Design High-Performing Architectures (24%)

This domain covers five task statements:

• Task 3.1: Determine high-performing and/or scalable storage solutions (S3, EBS, EFS, FSx)
• Task 3.2: Design high-performing and elastic compute solutions (EC2 types, Lambda, containers)
• Task 3.3: Determine high-performing database solutions (RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, Redshift)
• Task 3.4: Determine high-performing and/or scalable network architectures (CloudFront, Global Accelerator, VPC peering, Transit Gateway)
• Task 3.5: Determine high-performing data ingestion and transformation solutions (Kinesis, Glue, EMR)

Domain 4: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures (20%)

This domain covers three task statements:

• Task 4.1: Design cost-optimized storage solutions (S3 lifecycle, storage classes, EBS optimization)
• Task 4.2: Design cost-optimized compute solutions (Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, Spot Instances, right-sizing)
• Task 4.3: Design cost-optimized database solutions (Aurora Serverless, DynamoDB on-demand, reserved capacity)

Question Types Explained

Multiple-Choice (Single Select)

You are presented with a question and four answer options (A, B, C, D). One answer is correct. These make up the majority of questions.

Multiple-Response (Multi-Select)

You are given a question with five or more options and asked to select two or more correct answers. The question will specify how many to select (e.g., "Select TWO").

Tip: On multi-select questions, partial credit is NOT given. You must select all correct answers and no incorrect answers to receive credit.

Unscored Questions

Of the 65 questions, 15 are unscored experimental questions that AWS uses to evaluate for future exams. You will not know which questions are unscored, so treat every question as if it counts.

Who Should Take This Exam?

The SAA-C03 is ideal for:

• Cloud architects designing solutions on AWS
• DevOps engineers building and maintaining cloud infrastructure
• IT professionals migrating workloads to AWS
• Software developers who need to understand AWS architecture patterns
• Anyone who passed the Cloud Practitioner and wants to advance

Prerequisites

AWS states there are no formal prerequisites for the Solutions Architect Associate exam. However, they recommend:

• 1+ year of hands-on experience designing distributed systems on AWS
• Familiarity with AWS compute, networking, storage, and database services
• Experience with AWS deployment and management services
• Understanding of the AWS Well-Architected Framework
• Ability to identify and define technical requirements for AWS-based applications

How to Register

1. Create an account at aws.training
2. Navigate to AWS Certification and select Schedule an Exam
3. Choose SAA-C03: AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate
4. Select Pearson VUE as your test delivery provider
5. Pick a test center or choose online proctoring
6. Select your preferred date and time
7. Pay $150 USD (50% discount available if you hold an active AWS certification)

Scoring

The exam uses a scaled scoring model ranging from 100 to 1,000. The passing score is 720. AWS does not publish the exact number of questions you need to answer correctly because the difficulty of questions can vary between exam versions. As a rough guideline, aim for approximately 72% or higher accuracy.

After completing the exam, you receive a pass/fail notification immediately. Your detailed score report (showing domain-level performance) is available within 5 business days in your AWS Certification account.