The AWS Cloud Practitioner exam map: four domains, 19 task statements and the services behind them
CLF-C02 has 65 questions in 90 minutes, 50 scored and 15 unscored, and you pass with 700 on a scale of 100 to 1,000. The four domains are Cloud Concepts (24%), Security and Compliance (30%), Cloud Technology and Services (34%) and Billing, Pricing, and Support (12%). Questions ask which service, pricing option or support plan fits a need, so learn services as contrasts.
Candidates memorise a list of service names. The exam rarely asks what a service is called. It asks which service fits a situation, and a list of names does not answer that.
What is the format?
The exam has 65 questions in 90 minutes. Fifty are scored and 15 are unscored questions that AWS is testing for future use, and you cannot tell which is which. Answer every question as if it counts. Scores run from 100 to 1,000, and you need 700 to pass.
The exam is compensatory: you pass on your overall score and need not pass each domain. Unanswered questions count as wrong and there is no penalty for guessing, so never leave a question 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 tells you how many |
Most questions describe a short business need and ask you to pick the best fit. Read the last line first, so you know whether you are choosing a service, a pricing option, a support plan or a responsibility. Then remove the options that do something different.
How are the four domains weighted?
| Domain | CLF-C02 weight | Hours in a 40-hour plan |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud Technology and Services | 34% | 14 |
| Security and Compliance | 30% | 12 |
| Cloud Concepts | 24% | 10 |
| Billing, Pricing, and Support | 12% | 4 |
Technology and security together carry almost two thirds. The changes guide explains how these weights differ from the retired exam.
Domain 1: Cloud Concepts (24 per cent)
| Task | What it means in practice | Terms to know |
|---|---|---|
| 1.1 Define the benefits of the AWS Cloud | Why businesses move: speed, global reach, high availability, elasticity and agility | Regions, elasticity, agility |
| 1.2 Identify design principles | The six pillars of the Well-Architected Framework and how they differ | Operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, sustainability |
| 1.3 Understand migration | How organisations plan a move and the outcomes they expect | Cloud Adoption Framework, migration strategies |
| 1.4 Understand cloud economics | Fixed versus variable costs, licensing choices and saving by sizing correctly | Rightsizing, Bring Your Own License, economies of scale, automation |
Domain 2: Security and Compliance (30 per cent)
| Task | What it means in practice | Services and terms |
|---|---|---|
| 2.1 Shared responsibility model | What AWS secures, what you secure, and how the split shifts between services | Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, AWS Lambda |
| 2.2 Security, governance and compliance | Where to find compliance reports, encryption options and where logs live | AWS Artifact, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, AWS Config, GuardDuty, Inspector, Security Hub, Shield |
| 2.3 Access management | Protect the root user, apply least privilege, manage users, groups, roles and policies | IAM, IAM Identity Center, MFA, Secrets Manager |
| 2.4 Security components and resources | Which security services and documents AWS provides | AWS WAF, Firewall Manager, Shield, GuardDuty, Trusted Advisor |
Task 2.1 deserves special attention, because questions often turn on it. With Amazon EC2, you manage the operating system, patches and firewall settings of your servers. Amazon RDS shifts more to AWS, which patches the database software. With AWS Lambda, AWS runs almost everything except your code, data and access settings.
Domain 3: Cloud Technology and Services (34 per cent)
| Task | What it means in practice | Services and terms |
|---|---|---|
| 3.1 Deploying and operating | Console, command line, SDKs, APIs and infrastructure as code | AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, CloudFormation |
| 3.2 Global infrastructure | How Regions, Availability Zones and edge locations relate | Regions, Availability Zones, edge locations |
| 3.3 Compute | Instance types, containers or serverless; scaling and load balancing | EC2, ECS, EKS, Fargate, Lambda, Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing |
| 3.4 Databases | Managed or self-run; relational, NoSQL and in-memory; migration tools | RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, AWS DMS |
| 3.5 Networking | Parts of a VPC, how it is secured, how offices connect | VPC, subnets, security groups, network ACLs, Route 53, VPN, Direct Connect |
| 3.6 Storage | Object, block, file and cached storage; classes, lifecycle, backup | S3, EBS, instance store, EFS, FSx, AWS Backup |
| 3.7 AI, ML and analytics | What each service does for a business, without building models | SageMaker AI, Lex, Athena, Kinesis, Glue, Quick Sight |
| 3.8 Other categories | Messaging, business apps, developer tools, virtual desktops, IoT | SNS, SQS, EventBridge, Amazon Connect, CodeBuild, WorkSpaces, IoT Core |
Domain 4: Billing, Pricing, and Support (12 per cent)
| Task | What it means in practice | Services and terms |
|---|---|---|
| 4.1 Compare pricing models | When to use each way of buying compute; how data transfer and storage tiers are priced | On-Demand, Reserved Instances, Spot, Savings Plans, Dedicated Hosts |
| 4.2 Billing, budget and cost management | Plan, track and allocate costs across accounts | AWS Budgets, Cost Explorer, Pricing Calculator, AWS Organizations |
| 4.3 Technical resources and Support | Where to find help: documentation, support plans, partners | Support plans, re:Post, Trusted Advisor, AWS Health |
This is the smallest domain, but one where outdated material does most damage, because the support plans have changed.
Which services do candidates confuse?
Many wrong answers come from mixing up services with similar purposes. Learn these as contrasts, not as separate definitions.
| Easily confused | The difference that answers the question |
|---|---|
| CloudWatch, CloudTrail, AWS Config | Watches performance and alarms; records who did what; tracks how settings change |
| GuardDuty, Inspector, Shield, AWS WAF | Detects threats; scans for vulnerabilities; protects against DDoS attacks; filters web requests |
| Security groups, network ACLs | Protect individual resources and are stateful; protect whole subnets and are stateless |
| S3, EBS, EFS | Object storage for files and backups; a disk for one server; a shared file system for many servers |
| RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache | Managed relational database; NoSQL key-value database; in-memory cache |
| SNS, SQS, EventBridge | Pushes messages to many subscribers; queues messages for later processing; routes events between services |
| AWS Budgets, Cost Explorer, Pricing Calculator | Alerts you before you overspend; analyses past spending; estimates cost before you build |
| Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, Spot | Commit to specific instances; commit to an amount of spending per hour; use spare capacity cheaply but with interruptions |
Noor, in the book, rated herself on all 19 task statements. She scored 2 out of 5 on 2.1 (shared responsibility) and 4.1 (pricing models), so she gave both extra time and practised the contrasts as a quiz. Seven of her practice-exam errors had come from those two areas. Test yourself with ten original practice questions.
- Download the CLF-C02 exam guide from the AWS documentation site.
- Rate yourself from 1 to 5 on each of the 19 task statements.
- Learn the eight service contrasts aloud, without notes.
- Read the last line of every practice question first.
Questions readers ask
How many questions are on the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam?
What score do I need to pass?
Is there a penalty for guessing?
Which domain is the largest?
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification page
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) exam guide
This guide is independent and is not endorsed by Amazon Web Services. Facts change: confirm them on the official page before you act.