AWS · Associate
AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03)
Design secure, resilient, high-performing, cost-optimized architectures on AWS.
SAA-C03 exam at a glance
| Exam code | SAA-C03 |
|---|---|
| Vendor | AWS |
| Level | Associate |
| Domains | 4 |
| Published practice questions | 250 |
| Our mock exam | 65 questions in 130 minutes |
| Our practice pass target | 72% |
| Checked against the exam guide | July 6, 2026 |
| Official exam page | AWS — SAA-C03 |
The mock exam length, time limit and pass target are our practice settings, not official exam scores or a guarantee of passing. Check the official SAA-C03 exam page for the current format, price and scoring before you book.
SAA-C03 exam domains
Weights show our practice allocation, built from the official exam guide; official blueprints may give ranges. Each domain links to its free sample questions (with explanations) and study guide preview once they are published.
Design Secure Architectures
30%Design secure access to AWS resources, secure workloads and applications, and determine appropriate data security controls.
- IAM users, roles, policies, and permission boundaries
- AWS Organizations, SCPs, and multi-account strategies
- Federation and identity providers (IAM Identity Center, Cognito, SAML/OIDC)
- Security groups vs network ACLs, VPC security layers
- Encryption at rest and in transit (KMS, CloudHSM, ACM, TLS)
- Data protection: S3 bucket policies, Block Public Access, Object Lock, Macie
- Secrets management (Secrets Manager vs Parameter Store)
- Edge protection: WAF, Shield, CloudFront with OAC
- Inspection and audit: CloudTrail, GuardDuty, Security Hub, Inspector
Free Design Secure Architectures practice questions →Design Secure Architectures study guide →
Design Resilient Architectures
26%Design scalable, loosely coupled architectures and highly available or fault-tolerant architectures.
- Multi-AZ and multi-Region patterns, RTO/RPO trade-offs
- ELB types and health checks, Auto Scaling groups and policies
- Decoupling with SQS, SNS, EventBridge, and Step Functions
- DLQs, visibility timeout, fan-out and event-driven design
- Route 53 routing policies and failover
- Storage durability and replication (S3 CRR/SRR, EFS, EBS snapshots)
- Database HA: RDS Multi-AZ vs read replicas, Aurora failover, DynamoDB global tables
- Disaster recovery strategies: backup and restore, pilot light, warm standby, active-active
- Serverless resilience: Lambda retries, throttling, idempotency
Free Design Resilient Architectures practice questions →Design Resilient Architectures study guide →
Design High-Performing Architectures
24%Determine high-performing and scalable storage, compute, database, network, and data ingestion solutions.
- EC2 instance families, placement groups, and EBS volume types
- Compute choices: EC2 vs Lambda vs Fargate vs ECS/EKS
- S3 performance: storage classes, multipart upload, Transfer Acceleration
- Caching: CloudFront, ElastiCache (Redis vs Memcached), DAX
- Database selection: RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, Redshift, OpenSearch, purpose-built DBs
- RDS/Aurora read scaling, DynamoDB capacity modes, partition key design
- Networking performance: enhanced networking, ENA, VPC endpoints, Direct Connect vs VPN
- Global Accelerator vs CloudFront
- Data ingestion and transformation: Kinesis family, Glue, Athena, EMR
Free Design High-Performing Architectures practice questions →Design High-Performing Architectures study guide →
Design Cost-Optimized Architectures
20%Design cost-optimized storage, compute, database, and network architectures.
- S3 storage classes, lifecycle policies, Intelligent-Tiering
- EC2 purchasing options: On-Demand, Reserved, Savings Plans, Spot
- Right-sizing with Compute Optimizer and Cost Explorer
- Lambda and Fargate cost trade-offs vs EC2
- EBS vs EFS vs FSx cost characteristics, snapshot management
- Database cost: Aurora Serverless, DynamoDB on-demand vs provisioned, RDS reserved instances
- Data transfer costs: NAT gateway alternatives, VPC endpoints, CloudFront offload
- Cost governance: budgets, Cost Allocation Tags, Organizations consolidated billing
Free Design Cost-Optimized Architectures practice questions →Design Cost-Optimized Architectures study guide →
SAA-C03 FAQ
How is the Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) practice assessment configured?
Our practice format targets 65 questions in 130 minutes. Availability depends on the published question bank and is shown on this course page. Official exam question counts and formats may differ.
What does the 72% practice target mean?
Check the provider's current exam guide for official scoring. A practice percentage is not an official scaled score. DataCertPrep uses 72% as an internal practice target, not a prediction or guarantee of passing.
How should I assess my progress in Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03)?
Use practice accuracy to find weak topics. Repeating familiar questions can inflate your score. Check coverage of the current objectives, practise hands-on tasks, and assess yourself on unseen questions.
What is the best way to study Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03)?
Read the available guides, work through practice explanations, use flashcards and complete practical exercises. Take a timed assessment when available. Check the provider's current exam guide before booking your exam.
Should I use SAA-C03 exam dumps?
No. "Dumps" are questions copied or recalled from the live exam. Certification exams are covered by a candidate agreement that prohibits sharing or using them, and breaking it can lead to a revoked certification or a ban from future exams. Dumps are also often wrong, and they go out of date when the exam blueprint changes. Memorising answers does not build the skills the exam tests. Study the official AWS exam guide and practise with original questions that explain each answer, such as the free sample questions linked on this page.