AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03)

Official exam facts verified 19 August 2026. AWS's live documentation remains authoritative.

Exam at a glance

Exam: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03)
Duration: 130 minutes
Total questions: 65
Scored questions: 50
Unscored questions: 15, not identified during the exam
Question types: Multiple choice and multiple response
Scaled score: 100–1,000
Minimum passing score: 720

Unanswered questions are scored as incorrect, and there is no penalty for guessing. Scoring is compensatory: you pass the overall exam rather than passing every domain separately. A raw practice percentage cannot be converted reliably into AWS's scaled score.

Current domains

1. Design Secure Architectures — 30%

1.1 Design secure access to AWS resources.
1.2 Design secure workloads and applications.
1.3 Determine appropriate data security controls.

2. Design Resilient Architectures — 26%

2.1 Design scalable and loosely coupled architectures.
2.2 Design highly available and/or fault-tolerant architectures.

3. Design High-Performing Architectures — 24%

3.1 Determine high-performing and/or scalable storage solutions.
3.2 Design high-performing and elastic compute solutions.
3.3 Determine high-performing database solutions.
3.4 Determine high-performing and/or scalable network architectures.
3.5 Determine high-performing data ingestion and transformation solutions.

4. Design Cost-Optimized Architectures — 20%

4.1 Design cost-optimized storage solutions.
4.2 Design cost-optimized compute solutions.
4.3 Design cost-optimized database solutions.
4.4 Design cost-optimized network architectures.

Official AWS resources

AWS describes the target candidate as having at least one year of hands-on experience designing cloud solutions. The service lists are non-exhaustive and can change, so always use the live guide when checking scope.