Course orientation: how this course works and how the exam is built

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam checks that you can talk about the AWS Cloud with confidence: what it is for, who secures what, what the main services do and how AWS charges for them. You do not write code or design systems for it. This page explains how the course works, how the exam is built and how to study, so that you spend your time on what is tested.

Why it matters

Many people fail their first attempt not because the material is hard but because they studied the wrong things: old service names, support plans that no longer exist, or deep technical detail the exam never asks. Others know the material but lose marks to the format, such as leaving questions blank. A few minutes on how the exam is built, and on how this course is put together, saves hours later.

How this course works

The course has eight modules. Module 1 (this page and the account lab) gets you ready. Modules 2 to 7 each teach one part of the exam and follow the same rhythm:

1. Lessons. Short pages, one topic each. Every lesson explains why the topic matters, includes a Try it you can do in a few minutes, and ends with Exam tips: the words in a question that point to the answer.
2. A lab. Numbered steps in the AWS Management Console (the website you use to work with AWS). Every lab says at the top what it costs (nothing), offers a path for people without an AWS account, and ends with a clean-up.
3. A checkpoint. Ten new questions across the whole module. They are not repeats of the lesson questions, so they show whether the ideas stuck.

Module 8 closes the course with an exam strategy lesson and a full practice exam of 65 questions, weighted like the real one.

Signing in and unlocking lessons

• Module 1 is open to everyone. You can read it and answer its questions without an account.
• Sign in to go further. Signing in is free. Go to sign in, enter your email address, and open the one-time link we email you. There is no password. Your progress is then saved to your account, so it follows you to any device.
• Each later page unlocks when you pass the one before. Every lesson and lab ends with ten questions. Score at least 7 of 10 and the page is passed and the next one opens.
• Tries are unlimited. If you miss the mark, reread and try again. The answers and their explanations are shown once you pass, or after three tries, so you are never stuck.

Tip: Read the explanation for every question, including the ones you got right. Many explanations say why the most tempting wrong answer is wrong, and that is often what the real exam tests.

How the exam is built

These facts come from AWS’s CLF-C02 exam guide. Read it again before you book, because AWS revises its exams.

• Who it is for. The guide describes a candidate with up to six months of exposure to AWS Cloud design, implementation or operations. Coding, designing architectures, troubleshooting, implementation and performance testing are out of scope.
• Question types. Multiple choice has one correct answer and three distractors. Multiple response has two or more correct answers out of five or more options.
• Scored and unscored. There are 65 questions. 50 count toward your score; 15 are unscored questions AWS is trying out. You cannot tell which is which, so treat every one as if it counts.
• No penalty for guessing. A blank answer is scored as wrong. Never leave one blank.
• Scaled score. Results are reported from 100 to 1,000 and the minimum passing score is 700. Scaling evens out small differences between versions of the exam, so 700 is not the same as 70% correct.
• Compensatory scoring. You pass on your overall score. You do not need to pass each domain separately.

The exam’s four domains and their share of the scored content:

Domain	Weight	Where this course covers it
1 Cloud Concepts	24%	Module 2
2 Security and Compliance	30%	Module 3
3 Cloud Technology and Services	34%	Modules 2, 4, 5 and 6
4 Billing, Pricing, and Support	12%	Module 7

The time allowed, the fee, the languages offered and how to book are on AWS’s Cloud Practitioner certification page. Check them there, because they can change. You book and sit the exam yourself with AWS, at a test centre or online. Pontelon does not run exams or sell vouchers, and this course is independent of AWS.

A study plan you can follow

This is a sequence, not a timetable. Go at the pace your week allows.

1. Do module 1 fully. The lab gives you an AWS account that cannot surprise you with a bill. Do it before any other lab.
2. For each module: read the lessons and do each Try it, do the lab (or follow its no-account path), then take the checkpoint without notes.
3. Keep a list of misses. For each wrong answer, write one line: the word in the question you overlooked and the service or idea it pointed to. Patterns appear quickly, such as mixing up two similar services.
4. Close gaps before moving on. Revisit the lesson the checkpoint points to. Later modules build on earlier ones.
5. Learn the vocabulary. The exam often describes a need (“send a text message to customers”, “find who deleted a resource”) rather than naming a service. Practise saying what each service is for in one sentence.
6. Sit the practice exam in one go, without notes, then revisit the lessons behind your misses.
7. Read the exam guide’s in-scope services list one last time. Any service you cannot place in a sentence is worth half an hour.

What this edition updates

AWS changes faster than exams do, and older study material still teaches things that are no longer true. This edition was checked against AWS’s own documentation in October 2026. The main changes, and where they are taught:

When	Change	Where
June 2025	MFA required on the root user for every kind of account	Lab: an AWS account that cannot surprise you
July 2025	New accounts choose a free plan or a paid plan, with credits, instead of the old twelve-month offers	Lab: an AWS account that cannot surprise you
November 2025	AWS Migration Hub and AWS Application Discovery Service closed to new customers; AWS points to AWS Transform	Moving to AWS
December 2025	New AWS Support plans: Business Support+, Enterprise Support and Unified Operations; the older Developer, Business and Enterprise On-Ramp plans run until 1 January 2027	Module 7
June 2026	AWS Application Migration Service renamed AWS Transform MGN	Moving to AWS

Later lessons flag other changes, such as new service names, in a “What changed recently” note. The exam guide sometimes still uses an older name, so the lessons give both.

Watch out: Exam questions can lag behind AWS. Learn the current behaviour and the principle behind it, so an older or newer phrasing of a question does not throw you.

Try it

Open the CLF-C02 exam guide and find the page for Domain 1: Cloud Concepts. Read its four task statements. Then open the in-scope services list and count how many service names you already recognise. Write the number down; at the end of the course, count again.

No account is needed, and nothing here costs anything.

Exam tips

• Answer every question. A blank scores zero and guessing is free.
• For multiple response, choose exactly the number of answers the question asks for.
• Do not try to spot the unscored questions; you cannot, and it wastes time.
• Read the last sentence of the question first. It tells you what is being asked: the most cost-effective, the least effort, who is responsible.
• Learn the current service names and the old ones they replaced, because the exam guide may use either.