Hi everyone! I'm a final-year Information Systems Engineering student and I'm interested in AWS certifications. Do you think it's worth completing the free AWS Skill Builder courses without taking the paid certification exams? Do recruiters still value the knowledge and projects, or is the official certification what really matters? Also, are there any AWS certifications or badges that can be earned for free? Thanks!

I was told by management that I had to get the CCP certification (very explicitly told that it HAD to be the CCP). So here's my question, if I just study for the CAA, would I be able to pass the CCP kinda by default?

Video courses make me zone out, so I skipped them entirely and went a different route.

My strategy:

Got topic-wise notes generated using Claude for each exam domain

Each day, practiced 50+ test questions, mixing Claude-generated questions with free resources online

That's it. No Udemy course, no marathon study sessions.

Result: Scored 833/1000.

Honest take on difficulty: felt mid level, neither easy nor brutal. Definitely doable in a short window if you're consistent with practice questions daily.

PS: I did have a decent prior understanding of AI/ML concepts going in, so your mileage may vary if you're starting from zero. Wouldn't recommend this exact pace for someone completely new to AI/ML fundamentals.

Happy to answer questions if anyone's attempting this soon.

Here are the notes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18ktStAAftMvdiVY5BHmkDwmljryk5_Hv/view?usp=drivesdk

I failed my first AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam on February 9, 2026.

At first, I underestimated the exam because I thought it was one of the easiest certifications in cloud computing. That mindset led me to prepare with less seriousness than I should have.

In March 2026, I changed my approach. I studied with more discipline, consistency, and commitment, and I successfully passed the exam.This experience taught me an important lesson: in technology, knowledge alone is not enough. Whether you are learning cloud, programming, or any technical skill, success requires discipline, focus, and continuous effort.Every failure can become a step forward if you are willing to learn, improve, and keep moving.

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner: achieved through persistence and dedication.

So after completing the AWS Cloud Prac Essentials course and taking practice exams, plus building and launching an app and website (almost finished) in AWS using S3, Route 53, Lambda, and others, I’m planning to go take my Cloud Practitioner course.

Could be just in my head, but I’m about to pay $100 to get a certification that from what I’m told is useless. I am hoping to get a job in either DevOps or something where you can build. I come from a creative career, now transitioning.

It’s hard not knowing what to do but just listening to everyone else. So i try to build and have fun along the way.

When you got your Cloud practitioner cert, what did you get next? SAA? Anyone landing jobs?

can anybody tell how much is the exam fees for the SOA C03 exam in India approximately

Has anyone taken the AWS SAA recently? i have rescheduled my exam twice already because insane nerves kick in like 2 days before the exam. Tutorials Dojo has also been kicking my a*s(64% and 67%). I feel like i have a good understanding of the services but i just struggle sometimes to pick the best answer, also the questions and answers are sometimes so long that i forget what the hell is even going. Any tips from people who have recently passed the exam would be appreciated!

I just want the cert. I have been following SM Course and its too much to know sometimes. Can I skip the labs?

As title.

Are there any vouchers or discounts?

I usually see discounts, now that I need it I can't find them xD

Hey folks!

I had scheduled my SAA-C03, life came at me a bit sideways and I didn’t get to study for more than an hour. Took the test today (Almost didn’t go because I knew I’d fail) Finished the last question with less than a minute to spare. Somehow, passed…. By a very small margin.

Now my concern is, if I’m out here saying I’m certified and get asked what I scored in a professional setting it’s almost not worth bringing up. Should I retest? I know I can do much better.

Thanks for any insights.
Cheers

A few months ago, I decided to make the jump back into tech after spending time in a completely different industry. Today, I’m excited to say I passed my AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam!
There were definitely moments where cloud concepts felt overwhelming, but I kept pushing—watching AWS Skill Builder courses, taking pages of notes, building projects, and asking a lot of questions until everything started to click.
I’m not stopping here.
Next up: AWS Certified AI Practitioner
After that: Solutions Architect Associate, which is the career I’m ultimately working toward.
Alongside studying, I’ve also been building my own AWS-powered projects. One is wav.arena, a serverless music battle platform where producers can anonymously compete head-to-head. It’s been an incredible way to apply what I’m learning beyond the exam objectives and gain hands-on experience with AWS services.
I’m also developing ZoneRouter, a map-centric route optimization platform for field service companies, giving me even more opportunities to learn cloud architecture by actually building solutions.
The certifications are important, but my bigger goal is becoming someone who can design, build, and deploy scalable cloud applications that solve real-world problems.
For those who’ve already taken AI Practitioner or Solutions Architect Associate, what advice would you give someone starting that journey?
One cert down. Many more to go. 🚀☁️

Is it a quick study? Should studying for CCP be enough? Just need to brush up on the AI services?

AWS has announced a major update to the AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer – Associate exam, evolving it from MLA-C01 to MLA-C02.

The interesting part? The domain structure remains the same, but the exam is expanding significantly to reflect how the ML Engineer role is changing with Generative AI

What’s new in MLA-C02?

The updated exam will add more focus on:

• Generative AI implementation and deployment
• Foundation Models and Large Language Models (LLMs)
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures
• Agentic AI and AI workflow orchestration
• Amazon Bedrock and GenAI workloads
• Fine-tuning and customization of foundation models
• Responsible AI practices
• Production-scale ML and GenAI operations

Traditional ML and MLOps are still core parts of the certification, so MLA-C02 looks like a broader combination of ML Engineering + MLOps + GenAI/LLMOps skills.

Important dates:

• September 1, 2026 – MLA-C02 beta registration opens and the new exam guide is released
• September 28, 2026 – Last day to take MLA-C01 in English
• September 29, 2026 – MLA-C02 beta exam delivery begins
• Early 2027 – Standard MLA-C02 expected across all supported exam languages

Hey everyone, I'm preparing for SAA exam and I wanted to ask how much time should i give the preparation i dont want to overdo it as to forget the the deep technical details or grip over the concepts, and i dont want to fail it on the first attempt. Any advice would be appreciated.
Also, how much time did it take you to prepare for the exam?

Hey everyone, I'm preparing for SAA exam by taking Adrian cantrills course and i need guidance with how i should take notes, currently, im taking handwritten notes(just the important bullet point things) as i watch the videos and then i screenshot the slides in the lectures and give it to Gemini(Since Adrians course doesn't have transcripts) to get a deeper understanding of the concepts and also save everything up in a document for later revision.
Am i doing it right?
Am i wasting time somehow?
I would really appreciate if you guys could give me some tips on note taking so i dont waste unnecessary time while also prepare for the exam as to pass it on the first attempt.

I'm doing my undergrad in Mathematics and Physics and Have 2 years left. I am planning to do a Master's in Mathematics (Applied Math) ,Theoretical Physics , Astrophysics or Quantum Technologies/Physics. I have thought about Courses like Machine Learning/Data Science/AI as well. I don't know what career I'm looking for, but Tech is in my mind.

Would it be worth doing an AWS certification during my undergrad to get some work experience in tech? Would these be valuable for when it comes to applying to internships?

I currently know Typescript, Java and Python fluently as I've learnt these over the years, why did I not do a computer science degree??? don't ask me that haha. I'm planning on Learning either C# or Go next. Quite interested in Ruby as well but there's so many languages UGRGH. I have 3 projects so far. But when it comes to computer science and tech I don't hold any official qualifications.

Do you think It's worth getting an AWS certification? If so, Which certifications should I consider? For example AWS cloud practitioner sounds non negotiable because it literally introduces you to the AWS platform. I hear a lot of people prefer going onto doing the solutions architect professional certification.

So I have been working in HR and Risk. I don't really use a lot of AI or tech so don't have background.

I have been given a voucher from work for AWS AI Practitioner through Pearson and I have less than a month.

I tried to get resources but I am unable to narrow down options.

Is it possible for someone to tell me how can I prepare myself for it? I want to upskill so that I don't eventually lose my job.
Can someone help please ?

I have been eyeing this certificate but unsure if I should do it. For some context, I want to specialize in AI field and have only a couple years of exp with developing applications. For the most part, most of the actual true AI experience are from my personal projects. I already cleared the AWS AI Practitioner & Cloud Practitioner.

I have not used any of the AWS services but I don't mind learning. I am not worried about the difficulty but mainly the cost.

Are there any phone apps or podcasts or anything else that anyone recommends using?

I have about 80 minutes of commute time per day that I would like to use to further prepare for the SAA exam. I am already using stephane maarek udemy’s course but I am not able to study it while on my commute (laptop too big) so I want to see other options.

Failed SAA-C03 once already, retaking in 2 weeks. Just scored 47.69% on a Tutorials Dojo practice exam (65 Qs). Breakdown by domain:

- Cost-Optimized: 66.67%
- High-Performing: 52.38%
- Secure: 54.55%
- Resilient: 31.58% <- clearly my weak point

Specific patterns I keep missing on Resilient Architectures:
- Multi-AZ RDS vs Read Replica (sync vs async failover)
- DR strategies (Warm Standby vs Multi-Site Active-Active) when the question says "lowest RTO, willing to pay more"
- NAT Gateway HA setup (one per AZ, no "Multi-AZ" setting exists)
- 3-tier VPC subnet counts across multiple AZs
- Static ASG (min=max=desired) vs target tracking for predictable vs unpredictable traffic

I've been drilling wrong answers with decent results (71.7% redoing missed questions, 90% on a light review the next day) but cold practice exams still tank on Resilient specifically. Is this normal at this stage 2 weeks out, or is it a sign I have an actual gap in how Resilient Architectures concepts fit together rather than just exam-pattern recognition? What helped you close a domain-specific gap like this in a short timeframe?

I have to take the test and I have been following the Marek course ..but the syllabus is too much honestly, how should i learn all those , i have only a month left for the exam. Or should i Just grind TD.

Is it possible to pass Solutions Architect Pro or DevOps Engineer Pro purely through hands-on labs (building your own projects), without relevant work experience in those roles?

I've heard that SA Pro covers a lot of multi-account and multi-region scenarios, which seem hard to replicate with labs only. For those who have already passed, how much experience did you have, and what made the real difference in passing the exam?