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AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02)

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tagsaws, cloudpractitioner
aliasesCLF-C02, AWS Cloud Practitioner

6 min read

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02)

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner is the foundational Amazon Web Services certification for explaining cloud value, security and compliance, core AWS services, and cloud economics without implementing or troubleshooting workloads.

Exam at a glance

  • Questions: 65 total; 50 scored and 15 unscored.
  • Question styles: multiple choice and multiple response.
  • Passing score: 700 on a 100-1,000 scale; scoring is compensatory across domains.
  • Target experience: up to six months of exposure to AWS Cloud design, implementation, or operations.
  • Out of scope: coding, architecture design, troubleshooting, implementation, and load/performance testing.

Domain map

  1. CLF-C02 Domain 1 - Cloud Concepts - 24%
  2. CLF-C02 Domain 2 - Security and Compliance - 30%
  3. CLF-C02 Domain 3 - Cloud Technology and Services - 34%
  4. CLF-C02 Domain 4 - Billing Pricing and Support - 12%

Domain 3 is the largest, but Domains 2 and 3 together make up 64% of scored content. Learn the boundary between services and the reason for choosing one, not implementation commands.

2026 version drift from the supplied study material

The supplied course PDF, cheat sheet, and terminology workbook are useful term banks, but they preserve several older names and services. AWS’s live exam guide is the source of truth for exam scope. As of August 17, 2026:

  • Amazon QuickSight is still the name in the live CLF-C02 list, while the product evolved into Amazon Quick Suite and the BI capability is called Quick Sight. Know both labels.
  • Amazon SageMaker AI, AWS Health Dashboard, Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser, and AWS Security Hub CSPM replace older SageMaker, Personal Health Dashboard, WorkSpaces Web, and Security Hub naming.
  • The exam list still says AWS Application Migration Service, but the live product is now AWS Transform MGN. AWS Migration Hub stopped accepting new customers in November 2025; AWS points new migrations to AWS Transform.
  • The guide still names AWS Schema Conversion Tool (SCT), but AWS now recommends DMS Schema Conversion; SCT is the legacy downloadable option.
  • AWS Snow Family is no longer on the current in-scope list (verified against the live exam guide and the supplied exam-guide PDF, which agree exactly); it has been removed from the in-scope sections below. AWS also no longer offers Snow Family devices to new customers — current alternatives include AWS DataSync, AWS Data Transfer Terminal, partner devices, and AWS Outposts for edge compute.
  • AWS Support Plans now center on Basic, Business Support+, Enterprise Support, and AWS Unified Operations. Developer, plain Business, and Enterprise On-Ramp continue only during their transition to January 1, 2027.
  • The post-July-15-2025 AWS Free Tier provides new customers 100 more, a six-month Free plan or a Paid plan, and always-free offers. The older universal “12-month free tier” summary applies only to legacy offers/accounts.
  • Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is now Amazon Data Firehose; Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics is now Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink; CloudWatch Evidently was discontinued in October 2025.
  • CodeStar, Server Migration Service, OpsWorks, QLDB, and other older workbook/course entries are not on the current in-scope list. Keep their notes as historical or distractor context, not study priorities.
  • Amazon Kendra, AWS AppSync, and AWS Audit Manager have also dropped off the current in-scope list — verified against both the live exam guide and the supplied exam-guide PDF, which agree exactly. They no longer appear in either the in-scope or out-of-scope sections of the guide; only AWS Firewall Manager remains in-scope for that role in the Security category, and AWS Artifact remains in-scope for compliance-document retrieval.

Current in-scope services

Analytics

Application integration and business applications

Cloud financial management

Compute and containers

Customer enablement

Database

Developer tools

End-user, frontend, and mobile

Internet of Things

Machine learning

Management and governance

Migration and transfer

Networking and content delivery

Security, identity, and compliance

Serverless and storage

High-yield service boundaries

  • CloudTrail vs CloudWatch vs Config: API activity vs operational telemetry/alarms vs resource configuration history/rules.
  • GuardDuty vs Inspector vs Macie vs Detective vs Security Hub: threats vs workload vulnerabilities vs sensitive S3 data vs investigation vs aggregation/posture.
  • SQS vs SNS vs EventBridge vs Step Functions: queue/buffer vs push fan-out vs event routing vs workflow orchestration.
  • EBS vs EFS vs S3: block storage for compute, shared file storage, and object storage.
  • Site-to-Site VPN vs Client VPN vs Direct Connect: encrypted network-to-network internet tunnel, encrypted user remote access, and dedicated private connectivity.
  • RDS/Aurora vs DynamoDB vs ElastiCache: relational, NoSQL key-value/document, and in-memory cache/data store.
  • Application Migration vs DMS: move whole servers vs move/replicate database data.

Sources

Graph View

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