AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C02): Study Guide

The advanced architecture exam. SAP-C02 format, the four domains, the enterprise-scale topics to master, and how to prepare for its long, scenario-heavy questions.

Practice 524 free AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C02) questions

Official exam page: https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-solutions-architect-professional/

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C02) is one of the most respected and challenging AWS certifications. It tests your ability to design complex, enterprise-scale solutions across organizations, migrations and multi-account environments. Expect long, scenario-based questions.

Exam at a glance

• Format: 75 questions (multiple choice and multiple response)
• Duration: 180 minutes
• Cost: 300 USD
• Passing score: 750 out of 1000 (scaled)
• Recommended experience: 2+ years designing on AWS

Exam domains

1. Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity — 26%. Multi-account strategy with AWS Organizations, cross-account networking, centralized governance, hybrid connectivity.
2. Design for New Solutions — 29%. Architecting greenfield workloads against business requirements: security, reliability, performance, cost.
3. Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions — 25%. Improving operational excellence, security posture, performance and resilience of running workloads.
4. Accelerate Workload Migration and Modernization — 20%. Migration strategies (the 7 Rs), data migration services, and modernization to serverless/containers.

High-value topics

• Multi-account & governance: Organizations, SCPs, Control Tower, centralized logging, RAM
• Networking at scale: Transit Gateway, PrivateLink, Direct Connect, hybrid DNS, multi-region
• Migration: the 7 Rs, DMS, DataSync, Snow family, Application Migration Service
• Resilience & DR: backup/restore, pilot light, warm standby, multi-site active/active; RTO/RPO trade-offs
• Cost at scale: consolidated billing, Savings Plans, cost allocation tags

A study plan

• Weeks 1–2: Organizations, multi-account patterns and advanced networking.
• Weeks 3–4: Migration and modernization strategies; DR patterns and their RTO/RPO.
• Week 5: Cost and operational excellence at scale.
• Week 6: Timed full-length practice — pacing is critical with 75 long questions in 180 minutes.

Exam-day tips

• Read for the constraint that breaks ties — usually cost, operational overhead, or RTO/RPO.
• Eliminate answers that solve the problem but violate a stated requirement (e.g. "no downtime", "least management").
• Manage time: ~2 minutes per question. Flag and move on.

Practice with realistic questions

The SAP-C02 rewards pattern recognition built from many scenarios. Work through the free questions below and review every explanation.