In this post, I help you understand the Hierarchy of AWS professional certificates. Right from Foundational level certs to speciality level AWS certs. My idea here is to make things easier to understand for absolute beginners in the cloud computing space. If you find my efforts helpful, please share this post with your friends and on social media.
There are four levels of AWS Certificates and I am listing them below one by one. You will learn how much is the exam fee and where to find the material to learn and how to to book the exam. It is going to be straightforward information keeping the absolute beginners in mind.
Please know, as the time goes by, there will be new certificates, and I will include them into this post as needed in future. I hope all is clear! So, lets dive in and start listing all the articles level wise in Hierarchy!
Recommendation: Use Udemy Exam Vouchers to get discount for the exam.
Foundational Level AWS Certificates
As of October 2026, there are two certificates in this level and here the details:
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02
This is a foundational-level certification (CLF-C02) that validates a high-level understanding of the AWS Cloud platform, basic cloud concepts, security, and core terminology. It is intended for individuals from both technical and non-technical backgrounds.
Exam Code: CLF-C02
Exam Cost: $100 USD (plus applicable taxes) per attempt.
Where to take it: Administered by Pearson VUE. The 90-minute exam can be taken either in-person at a physical testing center or online via a proctored exam from home.
Recommended Study Material:
- Stephane Maarek’s Ultimate AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 2026 – Video Course
- 6 Practice Exams AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 – Practice Exam
AWS Certified AI Practitioner
The AWS Certified AI Practitioner is a foundational-level certification designed for individuals who want to validate their overall understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Generative AI concepts on AWS. It is ideal for those in non-engineering roles, business professionals, and career switchers looking to demonstrate AI fluency.
Exam Code: AIF-C01
Format: 65 questions (multiple choice or multiple response)
Cost: $100 in the US and equivalent in your local currency + applicable taxes
Where to take it: Pearson VUE has physical test centers in most major cities globally. Or, You can take the exam remotely from your home or office, provided you meet their strict workspace and technical requirements.
Recommended Study Material:
- Stephane Maarek’s AI Cloud Practitioner Course on Udemy
- For Practice Exam use the course created by Stephane Maarek and Abhishek Singh on Udemy
Associate Level AWS Certificates
AWS Associate certifications prove you have practical skills in Amazon Web Services. They are designed for people who have spent about a year actively building, managing, or fixing real-world setups in the AWS Cloud. Currently, there are five AWS associate level certificates and details of each is shared below!
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03)
This is the most popular AWS certification and is widely seen as the essential starting point for anyone working in cloud computing. It shows you know how to design cloud systems that are secure, reliable, and built to handle high demand.
Exam code: SAA-C03
Format: 65 questions (a mix of multiple-choice and multiple-response questions)
Cost: $150 in the US and equivalent in your local currency + applicable taxes
Where to Take:
- Take the exam at any authorized Pearson VUE testing center worldwide.
- You can also take the exam remotely from home or work. This requires a quiet, private room, a webcam that stays on for the entire exam, and Pearson VUE’s secure lockdown browser installed on your computer. Both options carry the same certification value, so pick whichever fits your schedule and comfort level better.
Recommended Study Material:
- Stephane Maarek Video Course and Practice Exam he has created in collaboration with Abhishek Singh
- LearnCantrill Course for deep understanding if just passing the exam is not on your mind.
AWS Certified Developer – Associate (DVA-C02)
This certification focuses heavily on writing, deploying, and debugging applications within AWS. It requires an understanding of core AWS services, their uses, and basic AWS architecture best practices.
Exam code: DVA-C02
Format: 65 questions (multiple-choice and multiple-response)
Cost: $150 in the US and equivalent in your local currency + applicable taxes
Note: AWS has announced that DVA-C02 will retire on November 30, 2026, with the updated DVA-C03 exam opening for registration on December 1, 2026. If you’re planning to take this certification, keep that transition date in mind when choosing your prep materials and exam date.
Where to Take:
- Take the exam at any authorized Pearson VUE testing center worldwide.
- You can also take the exam remotely from home or work. This requires a quiet, private room, a webcam that stays on for the entire exam, and Pearson VUE’s secure lockdown browser installed on your computer. Both options carry the same certification value, so pick whichever fits your schedule and comfort level better.
Recommended Study Material:
- Ultimate AWS Certified Developer Associate Course by Stephane Maarek
- Practice test of Tutorials Dojo
- For Deep understanding go for LearnCantrill Course
Focus: Serverless patterns (Lambda, API Gateway), CI/CD pipelines, IAM security, and working with AWS SDKs and APIs.
Best for: Software developers and application engineers.
AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate
This certification validates your ability to monitor, operate, and maintain AWS workloads reliably, covering everything from security controls and networking to business continuity and cost optimization. It’s the modern successor to the former AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate.
Exam code: SOA-C03
Format: 65 questions (multiple-choice and multiple-response)
Cost: $150 in the US and equivalent in your local currency + applicable taxes
Where to Take:
- Take the exam at any authorized Pearson VUE testing center worldwide.
- You can also take the exam remotely from home or work. This requires a quiet, private room, a webcam that stays on for the entire exam, and Pearson VUE’s secure lockdown browser installed on your computer. Both options carry the same certification value, so pick whichever fits your schedule and comfort level better.
Recommended Study Material:
- James Lee Course on Learn Cantrill
- Stephane Maarek and Abshihek Singh Practice Test
Focus: Monitoring and maintaining AWS workloads, implementing security controls and networking, business continuity procedures, and cost/performance optimization.
Best for: Cloud operations engineers, cloud support engineers, systems administrators, and anyone managing day-to-day AWS environments.
AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate
This certification is built for professionals who design, build, and manage data pipelines on AWS. It goes deep into the services data engineers rely on daily, rather than covering AWS broadly like the Solutions Architect exam does.
Exam code: DEA-C01
Format: 65 questions (multiple-choice and multiple-response)
Cost: $150 in the US and equivalent in your local currency + applicable taxes
Where to Take:
- Take the exam at any authorized Pearson VUE testing center worldwide.
- You can also take the exam remotely from home or work. This requires a quiet, private room, a webcam that stays on for the entire exam, and Pearson VUE’s secure lockdown browser installed on your computer. Both options carry the same certification value, so pick whichever fits your schedule and comfort level better.
Recommended Study Material:
- Udemy Course created in collaboration with Stephane Maarek and Frank Kane
Focus: Data pipeline design and ingestion, data storage and modeling (Glue, Kinesis, Redshift, Lake Formation, EMR, Athena), data operations, and data security/governance.
Best for: Data engineers, data analysts transitioning into engineering roles, and cloud professionals working with large-scale data systems.
AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer – Associate
This certification validates your ability to build, deploy, and operationalize machine learning workloads in production on AWS — ideal for engineers who sit between traditional software/DevOps roles and data science.
Exam code: MLA-C01
Format: 65 questions (multiple-choice and multiple-response)
Cost: $150 in the US and equivalent in your local currency + applicable taxes
Note: As of September 28, 2026, AWS has retired the English version of MLA-C01 and moved to a beta version, MLA-C02, which began delivery on September 29, 2026. Since today’s date is past that cutover, you’ll want to confirm current exam availability and update this section to reflect MLA-C02 details once it’s out of beta, rather than pointing readers toward the retired version.
Where to Take:
- Take the exam at any authorized Pearson VUE testing center worldwide.
- You can also take the exam remotely from home or work. This requires a quiet, private room, a webcam that stays on for the entire exam, and Pearson VUE’s secure lockdown browser installed on your computer. Both options carry the same certification value, so pick whichever fits your schedule and comfort level better.
Recommended Study Material:
- Course on Udemy by Frank Kane and Stephane Maarek collaboration
Focus: Data preparation for ML, feature engineering, model training, model performance/evaluation, model deployment, and ML operations/security.
Best for: ML engineers, MLOps engineers, and backend/DevOps engineers moving into machine learning roles.
Professional Level AWS Certificates
AWS Professional certifications are the most advanced tier AWS offers, designed for experienced practitioners who have spent two or more years designing, operating, and optimizing complex, production-grade workloads in the AWS Cloud.
Unlike the Associate level, these exams assume you already have hands-on depth across multiple services and expect you to reason through real-world, multi-constraint scenarios rather than recall facts. Currently, there are three AWS professional level certificates, and details of each are shared below!
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
This is one of AWS’s most respected and challenging certifications, validating your ability to design optimized, cost-effective AWS solutions across complex, multi-account environments at an enterprise scale.
Exam code: SAP-C02 (current) → transitioning to SAP-C03
Format: 75 questions (multiple-choice and multiple-response), 180 minutes
Cost: $300 in the US and equivalent in your local currency + applicable taxes
Note: AWS is updating this certification. SAP-C02 remains available until November 16, 2026. Registration for the refreshed SAP-C03 opens October 27, 2026, with general availability beginning November 17, 2026. If you’re starting prep now, factor in which version you’ll actually sit for.
Where to Take:
- Take the exam at any authorized Pearson VUE testing center worldwide.
- You can also take the exam remotely from home or work. This requires a quiet, private room, a webcam that stays on for the entire exam, and Pearson VUE’s secure lockdown browser installed on your computer. Both options carry the same certification value, so pick whichever fits your schedule and comfort level better.
Recommended Study Material:
- Stephane Maarek Course
- Practice test by Abhishek Singh and Stephane Maarek
Focus: Designing for organizational complexity, creating new solutions, continuous improvement for existing workloads, and accelerating workload migration and modernization.
Best for: Experienced solutions architects, enterprise architects, and senior cloud engineers designing large-scale, multi-account AWS environments.
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
This certification validates advanced skills in provisioning, operating, and managing distributed systems on AWS, with heavy emphasis on CI/CD automation, infrastructure as code, and operational excellence at scale.
Exam code: DOP-C02
Format: 75 questions (multiple-choice and multiple-response), 180 minutes
Cost: $300 in the US and equivalent in your local currency + applicable taxes
Where to Take:
- Take the exam at any authorized Pearson VUE testing center worldwide.
- You can also take the exam remotely from home or work. This requires a quiet, private room, a webcam that stays on for the entire exam, and Pearson VUE’s secure lockdown browser installed on your computer. Both options carry the same certification value, so pick whichever fits your schedule and comfort level better.
Recommended Study Material:
- Stephane Maarek Course on Udemy
- Practice test on Udemy by Stephane Maarek and Abhishek Singh
Focus: SDLC automation, configuration management and infrastructure as code, resilient cloud solutions, monitoring and logging, incident/event response, and security and compliance automation.
Best for: Experienced DevOps engineers and cloud engineers with 2+ years managing AWS environments, automating deployments, and building CI/CD pipelines.
AWS Certified Generative AI Developer – Professional
One of AWS’s newest and most advanced credentials, this certification validates expertise in building and deploying production-ready generative AI applications on AWS — primarily through Amazon Bedrock — including agentic AI, cost/performance optimization, and responsible AI governance.
Exam code: AIP-C01
Format: 75 questions (65 scored + 10 unscored; multiple-choice and multiple-response), 180 minutes
Cost: $300 in the US and equivalent in your local currency + applicable taxes
Note: This is a newly launched certification, so pricing, format, and domain weighting may still be settling. Worth double-checking the official AWS exam guide close to your test date.
Where to Take:
- Take the exam at any authorized Pearson VUE testing center worldwide.
- You can also take the exam remotely from home or work. This requires a quiet, private room, a webcam that stays on for the entire exam, and Pearson VUE’s secure lockdown browser installed on your computer. Both options carry the same certification value, so pick whichever fits your schedule and comfort level better.
Recommended Study Material:
- Stephane Maarek and Frank Kane Course on Udemy
- Practice Exam by Abhishek Singh & Stephane Maarek
Focus: Building and deploying generative AI applications (Amazon Bedrock), implementing agentic AI solutions, optimizing for cost/performance/business value, and AI safety, security, and governance.
Best for: Experienced developers, ML specialists, or cloud architects (2+ years of AWS experience) moving into production-grade generative AI development.
Specialty Level AWS Certificates
AWS Specialty certifications are the narrowest and deepest credentials AWS offers, built for professionals who want to prove expert-level knowledge in one specific technical domain rather than broad cloud competency. Unlike the Associate and Professional tracks, Specialty exams don’t follow a strict experience requirement on paper, but AWS still expects real, hands-on depth in that domain before you sit for one.
It’s worth knowing that AWS has significantly trimmed this tier in recent years. Database Specialty and Data Analytics Specialty were retired in 2024, Machine Learning Specialty held its final exam on March 31, 2026, and Advanced Networking Specialty is retiring after August 25, 2026. As of now, AWS Certified Security Specialty is the main active certification left in this tier, with AWS folding most of the retired specialties into newer role-based Associate and Professional certifications instead (like Data Engineer Associate and Machine Learning Engineer Associate).
AWS Certified Security – Specialty
This is AWS’s dedicated certification for cloud security practitioners. It validates deep expertise in securing AWS workloads, covering identity and access management, data protection, logging and monitoring, and incident response at a level well beyond the Associate exams.
Exam code: SCS-C02
Format: 65 questions (multiple-choice and multiple-response), 170 minutes
Cost: $300 in the US and equivalent in your local currency + applicable taxes
Where to Take:
- Take the exam at any authorized Pearson VUE testing center worldwide.
- You can also take the exam remotely from home or work. This requires a quiet, private room, a webcam that stays on for the entire exam, and Pearson VUE’s secure lockdown browser installed on your computer. Both options carry the same certification value, so pick whichever fits your schedule and comfort level better.
Recommended Study Material:
- Learn Cantrill Course by Adrian Cantrill
- Tutorials Dojo Practice Test
Focus: Identity and access management, data protection and encryption (KMS), infrastructure and network security, security logging and monitoring, and threat detection/incident response.
Best for: Security engineers, security consultants, and cloud architects who need to prove deep, hands-on AWS security expertise. There’s no formal prerequisite, but AWS recommends solid hands-on AWS experience first — the Solutions Architect Associate is a common stepping stone.
AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty
Widely considered one of the toughest AWS certifications, this exam validates expert-level ability to design, implement, and troubleshoot complex AWS and hybrid network architectures at scale.
Exam code: ANS-C01
Format: 65 questions (multiple-choice and multiple-response), 170 minutes
Cost: $300 in the US and equivalent in your local currency + applicable taxes
Where to Take:
- Take the exam at any authorized Pearson VUE testing center worldwide.
- You can also take the exam remotely from home or work. This requires a quiet, private room, a webcam that stays on for the entire exam, and Pearson VUE’s secure lockdown browser installed on your computer. Both options carry the same certification value, so pick whichever fits your schedule and comfort level better.
Recommended Study Material:
- Stephane Maarek and Chetan Agrawal Course on Udemy
- Abhishek Singh and Stephane Maarek Practice Exam
Focus: Hybrid and cloud-based network design, core AWS networking services (VPC, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect, Cloud WAN), network automation, and secure network architecture.
Best for: Network engineers and architects with deep, hands-on networking experience. There’s no formal prerequisite, but this is not a good first AWS exam — a strong networking background (and ideally the Solutions Architect Associate) is recommended before attempting it.
Best Wishes!