AWS Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Study Guide: A 4-Week Plan
What CLF-C02 covers (4 domains, 65 questions, 90 minutes), a 4-week plan split by domain weight, and how to tell you are ready. Verified Oct 15, 2026.
CLF-C02 (AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner) has 65 questions in 90 minutes across 4 domains, passes at 700 on a 100-1,000 scale, and costs USD 100. Cloud Technology and Services is the biggest domain at 34%, so it gets the most study days in the plan below.
Four weeks at about an hour a day, five days a week, is a realistic plan if you are new to AWS: learn by domain weight in weeks 1-3, then practise under the 90-minute clock. Verified October 15, 2026 against the AWS pages listed under Sources.
Practice this exam in timed mode with the StudyKits CLF-C02 Cloud Practitioner app. The AWS certification hub lists every AWS exam guide and practice app.
What is on the CLF-C02 exam?
| Detail | CLF-C02 | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Questions | 65 (50 scored, 15 unscored) | Exam guide |
| Time | 90 minutes | Exam page |
| Question types | Multiple choice, multiple response | Exam guide |
| Passing score | 700 on a scaled 100-1,000 score; compensatory (no per-domain minimum) | Exam guide |
| Cost | USD 100 (JPY 15,000 in Japan) | AWS exam pricing |
| Delivery | Pearson VUE test center or online proctored | Exam page |
| Valid for | 3 years | Exam page |
Unanswered questions score as incorrect and there is no penalty for guessing, so answer every question. The 15 unscored questions are not marked on the exam.
Which CLF-C02 domains matter most?
| Domain | Weight | What the guide says you must do (task statements) |
|---|---|---|
| 3. Cloud Technology and Services | 34% | Deployment methods, global infrastructure, compute, database, network, storage, AI/ML and analytics, other in-scope service types |
| 2. Security and Compliance | 30% | Shared responsibility model, security and governance concepts, access management, security components and resources |
| 1. Cloud Concepts | 24% | Benefits of the cloud, Well-Architected design principles, migration strategies, cloud economics |
| 4. Billing, Pricing, and Support | 12% | Pricing models, billing and cost-management tools, technical resources and AWS Support options |
Domains 2 and 3 together are 64% of the scored content. Domain 4 is the smallest, but its questions are narrow and learnable: pricing models, the cost tools and the support plans.
How should you split 4 weeks of CLF-C02 study?
This split is our own arithmetic, not an AWS figure: 20 sessions of about 60 minutes (5 a week), of which 16 are learning sessions shared out in proportion to the domain weights (24% / 30% / 34% / 12% of 16 rounds to 4 / 5 / 5 / 2) and 4 are timed practice.
| Week | Sessions (about 60 minutes each) | Goal |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 on Domain 1 (Cloud Concepts), 1 on Domain 4 (pricing models) | Vocabulary: pillars, economics, pricing |
| 2 | 5 on Domain 2 (Security and Compliance) | Shared responsibility and IAM first |
| 3 | 5 on Domain 3 (Cloud Technology and Services) | Match each service to the job it does |
| 4 | 1 on Domain 4 (billing tools, support plans), 2 domain-weak review, 2 timed full runs (90 min) | Practise under the real clock, fix weak spots |
Add 5 to 10 questions from the day’s domain at the end of every learning session, so practice starts in week 1 and not in week 4.
How do you know you are ready for CLF-C02?
Our rule of thumb (our view, not an AWS figure): schedule the exam when two timed 65-question runs in a row finish inside 90 minutes with 80% or more on questions you have not seen, and no single domain falls below 70%.
Why a buffer above the 700/1,000 pass mark? AWS reports a scaled score, so a raw percentage does not map to 700 one-to-one, and a practice bank is not the exam. The buffer is there because of that gap. Practice questions also do not replace clicking around the console in a free-tier account for the services in Domain 3.
Which services and ideas does each domain test?
The task statements in the exam guide are specific. Examples straight from the guide:
- Domain 1: the pillars of the Well-Architected Framework; fixed versus variable cost; rightsizing; the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework.
- Domain 2: which security tasks AWS owns and which the customer owns, and how that shifts between Amazon RDS, AWS Lambda and Amazon EC2; the least-privilege principle; tasks only the account root user can perform; MFA.
- Domain 3: EC2 instance types, containers (Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS) and serverless (AWS Fargate, AWS Lambda); Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon ElastiCache; VPC components, Amazon Route 53, AWS VPN and AWS Direct Connect; Amazon S3 storage classes, Amazon EBS, Amazon EFS; Amazon SageMaker AI, Amazon Athena, Amazon Kinesis, AWS Glue.
- Domain 4: On-Demand, Reserved, Spot, Savings Plans; AWS Budgets, Cost Explorer, Pricing Calculator; consolidated billing; support plans and AWS Trusted Advisor.
Use the guide’s full task list as your checklist and tick items off as you can explain them without notes.
What does a CLF-C02 question look like?
Two original sample questions, written by StudyKits for this guide. They are not from the exam and not copied from any AWS material.
Sample question 1 (original, Domain 2: shared responsibility). A company runs its database on Amazon RDS. Which task remains the customer’s responsibility?
- A. Patching the operating system of the underlying host
- B. Managing database user permissions and the data that is stored
- C. Replacing failed physical storage hardware
- D. Controlling physical access to the data center
Answer: B. With a managed service such as Amazon RDS, AWS takes over the host, hardware and physical layers; the customer still decides who can access the database and what data it holds. The exam guide lists this shift between services as a skill (Task Statement 2.1).
Sample question 2 (original, Domain 4: pricing models). A steady, always-on workload will run for three years and must not be interrupted. Which option usually costs least?
- A. On-Demand Instances
- B. Spot Instances
- C. A Compute Savings Plan with a 3-year commitment
- D. Capacity Reservations used on their own
Answer: C. A commitment lowers the hourly price for predictable usage. Spot can be cheaper but AWS can interrupt it, which the scenario rules out; On-Demand has no commitment discount. This matches the guide’s skill of identifying when to use each compute purchasing option (Task Statement 4.1).
Can you take CLF-C02 in Japanese, or get extra time?
Yes to the language: the AWS exam page lists 12 languages, including Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and several European languages. The Italian and German versions are retired after December 31, 2026.
Extra time: AWS offers a 30-minute extension, called “ESL +30”, to non-native English speakers who take an exam in English. You request it once, before you register for an exam, and it applies to the English version only. See AWS exam policies.
Where do practice questions fit in the plan?
After the concepts, and in small daily doses from week 1. What matters is the explanation behind each answer, not the number of questions you get through. The StudyKits CLF-C02 app has more than 1,000 original practice questions (App Store listing, checked October 15, 2026) with explanations, a timed exam mode, per-domain accuracy and spaced-repetition flashcards, and it works offline. Free sets let you start; a one-time purchase unlocks all sets, with no subscription. StudyKits is independent of AWS; its questions are original, written from the public exam guide.
Pair it with the practice-questions strategy guide and spaced repetition for certification exams.
What comes after CLF-C02?
If you already work with AWS, the next associate-level step is Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03); see SAA-C03 vs CLF-C02: which AWS certification first?. If AI is your focus, read AI Practitioner (AIF-C01) versus the other AI certifications. For the whole map, see the AWS certification path, and for budgeting, what AWS, Google Cloud and PMI exams cost.
Frequently asked questions
How much does the CLF-C02 exam cost?
USD 100 (JPY 15,000 in Japan). AWS lists the other local currencies on its pricing page and says prices are updated at least annually in May.
What is the CLF-C02 passing score?
700 on a scaled score of 100-1,000. The model is compensatory: you need to pass the exam overall, not each domain.
How long should you study for CLF-C02?
The plan above uses 20 sessions of about 60 minutes over 4 weeks. AWS describes the target candidate as someone with up to 6 months of exposure to AWS; with more experience, shorten the plan.
Should you take CLF-C02 or AI Practitioner (AIF-C01) first?
CLF-C02 covers cloud basics, security, services and billing; AIF-C01 covers AI and generative AI. Pick by the role you want. AWS’s own wording for CLF-C02 is “overall knowledge of the AWS Cloud, independent of a specific job role”.
How long is CLF-C02 valid, and how do you renew?
3 years. AWS lists three routes: take the game-based “AWS Cloud Quest: Recertify Cloud Practitioner” course (no exam), pass the latest version of the Cloud Practitioner exam, or pass an Associate-level or Professional-level exam. Check the exam page for the current terms of the Cloud Quest route.
Sources
Verified October 15, 2026:
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (exam page)
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) exam guide, including the domain pages for task statements
- AWS exam pricing and policies (before testing)
- StudyKits Cloud Practitioner Prep on the App Store (question count)
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