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About the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) exam
Scenario-based practice for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate exam (SAA-C03). Every question is a short architecture problem with a stated constraint, and every explanation says why the tempting wrong answer fails as well as why the right one wins.
10
Sample questions
130 min
Exam time limit
72%
Passing score
$150
Exam voucher
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) is the AWS certification most cloud engineers sit first, and the one hiring managers actually recognise. You get 65 questions in 130 minutes and a scaled score out of 1,000, with 720 to pass. Fifteen of those questions are unscored trial items that look identical to the rest, so pacing is part of the test: about two minutes per question, all the way through. What fails candidates is rarely the service list. Almost every item is a short scenario with four plausible options where two of them would technically work and only one meets the constraint written into the question. "With the least operational overhead" is asking for the managed service. "Without changing the application code" rules out anything that needs an SDK call. "Must survive the loss of an Availability Zone" separates Multi-AZ from read replicas. People who revise by memorising service descriptions read all four options as correct and then guess. The blueprint has four domains: Design Secure Architectures at 30 percent, Design Resilient Architectures at 26, Design High-Performing Architectures at 24, and Design Cost-Optimized Architectures at 20. Security is the biggest block, and most of it is IAM policy evaluation, VPC boundaries, and where encryption keys live, not anything exotic. AWS suggests around a year of hands-on experience designing solutions on the platform. If you have that and you still miss questions, the gap is almost always reading the constraint rather than knowing the service.
Exam Domains Covered
Exam Format & Details
65 questions in 130 minutes, all multiple choice (one correct answer of four) or multiple response (two or more correct answers of five or more). Only 50 questions are scored; the other 15 are unscored trial items that are not identified on the exam, so treat all 65 as real. Results come back as a scaled score from 100 to 1,000 with 720 to pass, and the model is compensatory: you do not have to pass each domain, only the exam overall. There are no labs, simulations or drag-and-drop items. The seat costs 150 USD and is booked through Pearson VUE or PSI at a test centre or online.
Why Practice Questions Matter
Reading about S3 storage classes will not teach you to recognise which one a scenario is describing. SAA-C03 questions are decided in one constraint sentence, and the only way to train for that is to read a lot of scenarios and have the misses explained. Every question here gives the reasoning for the correct answer and, more usefully, why each distractor fails: why Multi-AZ is not a read-scaling answer, why a NAT gateway is not a security control, why Glacier Deep Archive breaks a four-hour recovery target. Work by domain first, then run timed sets of 65 in 130 minutes so pacing stops being a variable on the day.
Sample Practice Questions
The following questions are a preview of the type of syllabus-aligned questions you will practise in CertCrush. They reflect the format and reasoning style of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) exam — not actual exam content.
Q1.A university research group uploads roughly 20 TB of instrument readings from its campus network into an Amazon S3 bucket each month. Analysis runs on EC2 instances in the same Region, and researchers download only a few gigabytes of summary files to their laptops. The finance office is preparing a budget and needs to know which direction of this traffic will appear as a data transfer charge. Which statement correctly describes how AWS bills this traffic?
- A.Data transfer into AWS from the internet is generally free, and the summary files downloaded to the internet are charged per gigabyte.
- B.Both the 20 TB uploaded and the summary files downloaded are charged per gigabyte at the same rate.
- C.The 20 TB uploaded is charged per gigabyte and the summary files downloaded to the internet are free.
- D.Neither direction is charged, because the bucket and the EC2 instances are in the same Region.
Domain: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures
Q2.A logistics company runs application servers in private subnets across two Availability Zones. The servers write about 8 TB of shipment tracking logs to an Amazon S3 bucket in the same Region every month, and that traffic currently reaches S3 through a NAT gateway. The monthly invoice shows a large NAT gateway data processing charge. The company wants to eliminate that charge for the S3 traffic at the lowest possible cost. What should the solutions architect do?
- A.Create a gateway VPC endpoint for Amazon S3 and add routes to it in the private subnet route tables.
- B.Create an interface VPC endpoint for Amazon S3 in each Availability Zone.
- C.Move the application servers into public subnets and assign each server an Elastic IP address.
- D.Replace the NAT gateway with a NAT instance running on a smaller EC2 instance type.
Domain: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures
Q3.A retail company's monthly AWS bill has climbed steadily for the past four months. The finance director wants to see which AWS services account for the growth and how the trend is likely to continue, using an interactive view she can group and filter herself. She does not need to be notified about anything. Which service should the solutions architect point her to?
- A.AWS Cost Explorer
- B.AWS Budgets
- C.The AWS Cost and Usage Report
- D.AWS Pricing Calculator
Domain: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures
Q4.A software startup gives each engineering team its own monthly cloud spending target. The head of platform wants an email to arrive automatically when a team's spend is projected to exceed its target before the month ends, so that the team can act while there is still time. Which service meets this requirement?
- A.AWS Budgets
- B.AWS Cost Explorer
- C.AWS Trusted Advisor
- D.The AWS Cost and Usage Report
Domain: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures
Q5.An insurance group charges internal business units for the AWS resources they consume. The accounting team needs raw line-item records at hourly and individual resource granularity, delivered somewhere it can query them with Amazon Athena and build dashboards in Amazon QuickSight. Which solution meets these requirements?
- A.Enable an AWS Cost and Usage Report delivered to an Amazon S3 bucket and query it with Athena.
- B.Use AWS Cost Explorer and group the results by linked account and service.
- C.Create an AWS Budget for each business unit and export the alert history.
- D.Download the monthly summary from the Billing and Cost Management dashboard each month.
Domain: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures
Frequently Asked Questions
What is included in the free AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) sample?
The free sample includes 10 syllabus-aligned practice questions, sample flashcards, and a preview chapter from the study guide. No account or payment is required to try the sample.
How many questions are in the full AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) course?
The full course includes a comprehensive question bank covering all exam domains. You can see the total question count on the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) course page.
Are these official AWS exam questions?
No. CertCrush questions are independently written and syllabus-aligned — they mirror the format, difficulty, and reasoning style of the official exam. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by AWS.
Which domains does the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) course cover?
The course covers 4 exam domains: Design Secure Architectures, Design Resilient Architectures, Design High-Performing Architectures, Design Cost-Optimized Architectures.
Can I study on mobile?
Yes. CertCrush is fully responsive and works on phones, tablets, and desktops. The timed exam, flashcards, and study guide all work on mobile without installing an app.
What happens when I create an account?
Creating a free account lets you access full courses, track your weak areas by domain, and resume practice sessions across devices. No credit card is required to register.