What the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam actually asks.

• 65 questions in 90 minutes — about 80 seconds each if you spend the time evenly. Most of these questions are short, so there is more slack than on an associate exam.
• It sits at the Foundational tier, the lowest of AWS's certification levels, and has no prerequisite.
• 50 of the 65 are scored. The other 15 are unscored items AWS uses to trial future questions. You cannot tell which they are, and they do not count against you.
• 700 out of 1000 to pass, on a scale that runs from 100 to 1000. The score is scaled, so the number of questions you must get right is not fixed or published.
• Answer everything. A blank counts for nothing, so a guess can only help. Flag the doubtful ones and return if time allows.

Because the questions are short, the usual failure here is not running out of time. It is reading a stem too quickly and picking the first familiar service name. Read the whole question, then the requirement it ends on.

• Domain 1 — Cloud Concepts (24%). The value of the AWS Cloud, the Well-Architected Framework's design principles, what migrating to the cloud involves, and the basics of cloud economics, such as trading fixed costs for variable ones.
• Domain 2 — Security and Compliance (30%). The shared responsibility model, identity and access management, how AWS supports compliance, and the services that protect and monitor an account. Know where AWS's responsibility ends and yours begins.
• Domain 3 — Cloud Technology and Services (34%). The largest domain. Ways to deploy and operate on AWS, the global infrastructure of Regions and Availability Zones, and the core compute, storage, database, networking, and analytics services, plus the AI and machine learning services at the level of what each is for.
• Domain 4 — Billing, Pricing, and Support (12%). Pricing models such as On-Demand, Reserved, and Spot, the tools for tracking and managing cost, and the AWS Support plans.

Domains 2 and 3 together make up 64% of the exam. The smallest domain, billing, is also the most predictable: it rewards learning a short list of distinctions properly.

• Multiple choice: one correct answer and three distractors.
• Multiple response: two or more correct answers from five or more options; the question tells you how many to choose.

The exam rarely asks for configuration detail. It asks which service, model, or plan fits a stated need, and the distractors are usually real services that solve a different problem. Watch for qualifiers:

• "Who is responsible" → This is a shared responsibility question. Decide whether the item is security of the cloud (AWS) or security in the cloud (you).
• "Lowest cost" or "predictable cost" → Compare pricing models and commitments before comparing services.
• "Fully managed" or "least operational effort" → Prefer the managed service over a self-managed one on a virtual server.

A foundational exam covers a wide field at shallow depth, so the aim is breadth with accurate boundaries: knowing what each service is for, and what it is not for.

Three habits that work:

• Learn the distinctions between look-alike services. Know why you would pick one storage service, database, or security service over its neighbour, not only what each one does.
• Memorise the small lists that recur. Pricing models, support plans, the benefits of the cloud, and the Well-Architected pillars come up in different wording again and again.
• Review every option, not just your answer. Understanding why a wrong option is wrong is how you stop being fooled by it in a differently worded question.

MockRoom's CLF-C02 study room has five distinct 65-question mock exams — 325 original questions in total, written against the published exam guide and weighted across its four domains, each with an explanation for every option. It also has 90 active recall flashcards for spaced review. Nothing here is taken from an exam dump, and none of it is real examination content.

Open the CLF-C02 study room