AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) is the entry-level AWS certification. It proves you understand what the AWS Cloud is, how security and billing work, and which core service fits which use case. It needs no coding, which makes it the most common first certification for freshers, non-IT graduates and anyone starting a cloud career in India.
This guide covers the exam format, all four domains with AWS's official weights, a 4-week plan and 15 original practice questions.
Quick facts (AWS, November 2026)
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Exam | AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) |
| Time | 90 minutes |
| Questions | 65 (50 scored, 15 unscored and not identified) |
| Question types | Multiple choice and multiple response |
| Passing score | 700 on a 100–1,000 scale; no penalty for guessing |
| Cost | USD 100 (plus taxes and exchange charges) |
| Valid for | 3 years |
| Experience | Up to 6 months of AWS exposure; no coding or architecture design expected |
Check the official CLF-C02 page and exam guide before booking. AWS notes that the Italian and German versions retire after 31 December 2026; English is unaffected.
Who should take it?
- Freshers and students starting in cloud.
- Non-IT graduates moving into IT. See non-IT to software jobs.
- Testers, support engineers, sales and project staff who work with AWS teams.
- Anyone planning the Solutions Architect Associate who wants a gentler start.
Experienced engineers often skip straight to Solutions Architect Associate. Not sure which cloud to start with? Read AWS vs Azure vs GCP: which to learn first, or compare with the AZ-900 guide.
Domains and weights
| Domain | Weight |
|---|---|
| 1. Cloud Concepts | 24% |
| 2. Security and Compliance | 30% |
| 3. Cloud Technology and Services | 34% |
| 4. Billing, Pricing, and Support | 12% |
The exam uses compensatory scoring: you need to pass overall, not each domain.
Domain 1: Cloud Concepts (24%)
- Benefits of the cloud: agility, elasticity, global reach in minutes, pay-as-you-go, economies of scale.
- Design principles: the six pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework (operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimisation, sustainability).
- Migration: the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) and migration strategies; services such as AWS Snow Family and Database Migration Service.
- Cloud economics: fixed vs variable cost, rightsizing, the cost of licences and operations.
Domain 2: Security and Compliance (30%)
- Shared responsibility model: AWS secures the cloud (hardware, facilities, managed-service infrastructure); you secure what you put in it (data, IAM, OS patching on EC2, security groups). This appears in many questions.
- Governance and compliance: AWS Artifact for compliance reports, CloudTrail for API auditing, AWS Config for resource configuration, encryption at rest and in transit.
- Access management: IAM users, groups, roles and policies; least privilege; MFA; protecting the root user; IAM Identity Center.
- Security services: Shield (DDoS), WAF, GuardDuty (threat detection), Inspector (vulnerability scanning), Security Hub, KMS, Secrets Manager.
Domain 3: Cloud Technology and Services (34%)
- Deployment and operation: console, CLI, SDKs, CloudFormation (infrastructure as code); cloud, hybrid and on-premises models.
- Global infrastructure: Regions, Availability Zones, edge locations; using multiple AZs for high availability.
- Compute: EC2 (instance families, purchase options), Lambda (serverless), ECS, EKS, Fargate, Elastic Beanstalk, Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing.
- Databases: RDS and Aurora (relational), DynamoDB (NoSQL), ElastiCache, and when to use managed databases vs databases on EC2.
- Networking: VPC, subnets, security groups vs network ACLs, Route 53, CloudFront, Direct Connect, VPN.
- Storage: S3 and its storage classes, EBS, EFS, S3 Glacier, AWS Backup.
- AI/ML and analytics: SageMaker AI, Amazon Bedrock, Rekognition, Comprehend, Lex, Athena, Kinesis, QuickSight.
- Other services: SQS, SNS, EventBridge, CloudWatch, and developer tools.
Domain 4: Billing, Pricing, and Support (12%)
- Pricing models: On-Demand, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, Spot Instances, Dedicated Hosts; data transfer costs.
- Cost tools: Billing console, Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, Cost and Usage Report, Pricing Calculator, cost allocation tags, AWS Organizations consolidated billing.
- Support: Basic, Developer, Business, Enterprise On-Ramp and Enterprise support plans; Trusted Advisor; AWS Health Dashboard; re:Post and the AWS Marketplace.
4-week study plan (about 1 hour a day)
| Week | Focus | Hands-on (Free Tier) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cloud concepts, Well-Architected, global infrastructure | Create an account, enable MFA, set a budget alert |
| 2 | Security: shared responsibility, IAM, security services | Create an IAM user and group with least-privilege access |
| 3 | Compute, storage, databases, networking | Launch an EC2 instance; host a static site on S3 |
| 4 | Billing and support; practice questions; revise weak areas | Explore Cost Explorer and the Pricing Calculator; book the exam |
Use AWS Skill Builder's free resources and the official practice question set. Delete resources after each lab to avoid charges.
15 practice questions with answers
These are original practice questions written for this guide, not exam questions.
1. Who patches the operating system on an EC2 instance?
The customer. AWS manages the underlying host.
2. Which service lets you download AWS compliance reports such as SOC and ISO?
AWS Artifact.
3. Which service records API calls made in your account?
AWS CloudTrail.
4. You need a workload to survive a data-centre failure. What do you use?
Multiple Availability Zones.
5. Which pricing option gives the largest discount for interruptible batch jobs?
Spot Instances.
6. A steady workload will run for 3 years. Which options lower cost?
Reserved Instances or Savings Plans.
7. Which service runs code without managing servers?
AWS Lambda.
8. Which database is a managed NoSQL key-value store?
Amazon DynamoDB.
9. Which service delivers content to users with low latency from edge locations?
Amazon CloudFront.
10. What should you do with the root user?
Enable MFA, avoid daily use, and use IAM identities instead.
11. Which tool alerts you when spending passes a threshold?
AWS Budgets.
12. Which service detects threats from logs such as VPC Flow Logs and CloudTrail?
Amazon GuardDuty.
13. Which Well-Architected pillar covers recovering from failures?
Reliability.
14. Which support plan is the minimum that includes a designated Technical Account Manager?
Enterprise (Enterprise On-Ramp provides a pool of TAMs).
15. Which service provisions infrastructure from templates?
AWS CloudFormation.
After CLF-C02
- Next certification: Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03), or the AWS AI Practitioner (AIF-C01) for an AI focus.
- Career paths: AWS cloud engineer salary in Hyderabad and live AWS jobs.
Cloud Soft Solutions in Ameerpet, Hyderabad runs AWS training with hands-on labs, real-time projects and placement assistance. See all courses.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many questions are on CLF-C02?
65 questions in 90 minutes: 50 scored and 15 unscored questions that are not identified.
What is the CLF-C02 passing score?
700 on a scale of 100 to 1,000. There is no penalty for guessing.
How much does the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam cost?
USD 100, plus applicable taxes and exchange charges.
Does CLF-C02 require coding?
No. Coding, architecture design, troubleshooting and implementation are out of scope.
Which CLF-C02 domain has the most weight?
Cloud Technology and Services, at 34%, followed by Security and Compliance at 30%.
How long is the certification valid?
3 years.
