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AWS Cloud Practitioner · Practice questions

Ten Cloud Practitioner scenario questions, and why the runner-up answer loses

By Mustafa K. Al-Dori · Checked against official documents on 9 October 2026 · 6 min read

The short answer

CLF-C02 questions describe a business need and ask you to choose a service, pricing option, support plan or responsibility. The exam has 65 questions in 90 minutes, 50 of them scored, and 700 on a scale of 100 to 1,000 passes. Below are ten original scenario questions weighted by domain, each explaining why the runner-up answer loses.

Many candidates who fail Cloud Practitioner did not lack definitions. They chose an option that was true but answered a different question. At US$100 an attempt and a 14-day wait before a retake, that habit is expensive.

How is CLF-C02 scored, and what formats will you meet?

The exam has 65 questions in 90 minutes. Fifty are scored. The 15 unscored trial questions look no different, so treat every question as if it counts.

Scores run from 100 to 1,000, and 700 passes. The exam is compensatory: you pass on your overall score, not domain by domain. Unanswered questions count as wrong and guessing costs nothing, so never leave one blank.

Format What you do
Multiple choice Choose the one correct answer from four options
Multiple response Choose two or more correct answers from five or more options; the question says how many

The ten questions below are multiple choice, but expect multiple-response items on the day. Read the last line of each stem first, so you know whether you are choosing a service, a pricing option or a responsibility.

The questions are original and follow the CLF-C02 domain weights. Cloud Concepts (24 per cent) gets two, Security and Compliance (30 per cent) three, Cloud Technology and Services (34 per cent) four. Billing, Pricing, and Support (12 per cent) gets one. Allow 15 minutes. Facts were checked against AWS's documents in October 2026.

Cloud Concepts: two questions

Question 1 · Cloud Concepts

A company moved its servers to Amazon EC2, AWS's virtual servers, copying its old hardware sizes. Every instance now uses a small fraction of its processing power. Which change fixes the cause?

A. Relying on AWS's economies of scale
B. Switching to smaller instance types that match actual use
C. Bringing its existing software licences to AWS
D. Buying a Savings Plan for the current instance sizes

Show answer
Answer: B. Task statement 1.4 covers cloud economics, including matching capacity to need. D is the runner-up: a Savings Plan lowers the hourly rate but still pays for capacity nobody uses.

Question 2 · Cloud Concepts

A company sets a target to cut the environmental impact of its cloud workloads, for example by switching off idle resources. Which pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework covers this goal?

A. Reliability
B. Performance efficiency
C. Sustainability
D. Operational excellence

Show answer
Answer: C. Task statement 1.2 covers the six pillars, and sustainability is the one about environmental impact. B is the runner-up: performance efficiency also concerns using resources well, but its aim is meeting performance needs.

Security and Compliance: three questions

Question 3 · Security and Compliance

A team moves its self-installed database from an EC2 instance to Amazon RDS, AWS's managed relational database service. Which task does the team hand over to AWS?

A. Deciding who may access the data
B. Choosing whether to encrypt the data
C. Patching the operating system and database software
D. Setting the network rules that allow connections

Show answer
Answer: C. Task statement 2.1: under the shared responsibility model, RDS moves patching to AWS. D is the runner-up: network settings become shared, but you still set the rules for who may connect.

Question 4 · Security and Compliance

An application on an EC2 instance needs to read files from one Amazon S3 bucket, a storage container. What is the most secure way to give it permission?

A. Attach an IAM role to the instance that allows reading only that bucket
B. Save an IAM user's access keys in the application's settings file
C. Use the root user's access keys
D. Make the bucket public, so that no keys are needed

Show answer
Answer: A. Task statement 2.3 covers IAM (Identity and Access Management) and least privilege. A role gives the instance temporary credentials, limited to what it needs. B is the runner-up: it works, but long-term keys in a file can be copied and reused if leaked.

Question 5 · Security and Compliance

A security team wants a managed service that continuously analyses account activity and network logs. It must flag likely threats, such as access from a known attacker's internet address. Which service fits?

A. Amazon Inspector
B. AWS Shield
C. AWS Artifact
D. Amazon GuardDuty

Show answer
Answer: D. Task statement 2.4 covers AWS's security services. GuardDuty detects threats by watching activity across the account. A is the runner-up: Inspector scans workloads for known software vulnerabilities, which shows weaknesses, not an attack in progress.

Cloud Technology and Services, the largest domain: four questions

Question 6 · Cloud Technology and Services

A bank must keep customer records inside its own country, where AWS operates a Region. Which approach meets the requirement?

A. Store the records in that country's Region
B. Store them in a Region abroad, encrypted with the bank's own keys
C. Spread them across Availability Zones in a cheaper Region
D. Cache them at edge locations inside the country

Show answer
Answer: A. Task statement 3.2 covers the global infrastructure. AWS does not move content you store in a Region out of it without your agreement. B is the runner-up: encryption protects the records, but they would still sit abroad.

Question 7 · Cloud Technology and Services

An online shop runs on EC2 instances. Traffic doubles every evening and falls overnight, and the shop wants servers added and removed automatically. Which service does this?

A. Elastic Load Balancing
B. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
C. AWS Lambda
D. Amazon EBS

Show answer
Answer: B. Task statement 3.3 covers compute and scaling. Auto Scaling launches instances as demand rises and removes them as it falls. A is the runner-up: a load balancer spreads traffic across the instances you have, but does not change their number.

Question 8 · Cloud Technology and Services

Four Linux EC2 instances must read and write the same files at the same time. Which storage service fits best?

A. Amazon EBS
B. Amazon S3
C. Amazon EFS
D. Instance store

Show answer
Answer: C. Task statement 3.6 covers storage types. EFS is a shared file system that many servers can use at once. A is the runner-up: EBS is block storage, a disk that normally attaches to one instance.

Question 9 · Cloud Technology and Services

An order website sometimes receives orders faster than the payment system can process them. No order may be lost, and a few minutes' delay is acceptable. Which service should sit between the two?

A. Amazon SNS
B. Amazon EventBridge
C. Amazon SQS
D. Amazon CloudWatch

Show answer
Answer: C. Task statement 3.8 covers messaging. SQS holds each order in a queue until the payment system is ready. A is the runner-up: SNS pushes each message to its subscribers at once and holds no backlog.

Billing, Pricing, and Support: one question

This domain is the smallest, but outdated material does most damage here. The exam guide now names Basic Support, AWS Business Support+, AWS Enterprise Support and AWS Unified Operations.

Question 10 · Billing, Pricing, and Support

A research team runs image-processing jobs overnight. Jobs can stop and restart without harm, and the team wants the lowest compute price. Which pricing option fits best?

A. Spot Instances
B. On-Demand Instances
C. Savings Plans
D. Dedicated Hosts

Show answer
Answer: A. Task statement 4.1 compares pricing models. Spot uses spare AWS capacity cheaply, and AWS can interrupt it, which these jobs tolerate. C is the runner-up: Savings Plans suit steady use and commit you to a set hourly spend.

What your score tells you

Count first answers only, then sort your misses by habit.

If you missed The habit to fix
1 or 10 Lowering the price instead of changing what you buy
2 or 5 Choosing a related purpose instead of the stated goal
3 or 4 Misplacing responsibility, or granting more access than needed
6 or 7 Choosing something that helps but misses the requirement
8 or 9 Confusing services in the same family

The services candidates confuse sets out these pairs as contrasts, and How to build your Cloud Practitioner study plan turns your misses into dated hours.

Chapter 5 of the book has you rate yourself on all 19 task statements, and Appendix G adds 17 more timed questions, including a multiple-response item.

Your next step
  1. Answer all ten questions in 15 minutes, counting only your first choice.
  2. Write down the task statement behind each miss and rate yourself from 1 to 5 on it.
  3. Check that your question bank names CLF-C02 and teaches AWS Business Support+ and AWS Unified Operations.
  4. Explain the SNS, SQS and EventBridge contrast aloud without notes, then check it.

Questions readers ask

Are these real AWS exam questions?
No. They were written for this page and are not AWS questions. Each is mapped to a CLF-C02 domain and task statement, so use them to find weak task statements rather than to predict the wording you will meet.
Where can I find official practice questions?
AWS Skill Builder, AWS's own training site, offers a free official practice question set for Cloud Practitioner. At the time of writing, a paid subscription adds the official practice exam. The free set makes a sound final check, whatever else you use.
What practice results show I am ready to book?
Look for a pattern, not one good score. You want consistent results across two or three full practice exams and no domain far behind. You should also explain each commonly confused pair of services aloud without notes.
Can I still use a CLF-C01 question bank?
Not safely. CLF-C02 replaced CLF-C01 in September 2023, with different domain weights and new topics such as the Cloud Adoption Framework. Questions on weights, support or migration may teach answers the current exam no longer wants.
Sources

This guide is independent and is not endorsed by AWS. Facts change: confirm them on the official page before you act.