# AWS Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02)
Independent preparation for AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner — the blueprint, 122 study points across ten note pages, the service catalogue you must be able to place by purpose, and the habits that pass a foundational exam.
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CLF-C02 65 items · 90 min Pass 700/1000 $100 Foundational
**The entry point to AWS certification.** CLF-C02 validates that you understand what the AWS Cloud *is*, what the main services *do*, how AWS charges for them and who is responsible for what. It assumes no prior IT or cloud experience, and it asks you to *recognise and place* services rather than configure them. The whole exam turns on one skill: given a business need in one sentence, name the AWS service that meets it.
:::caution[Unofficial preparation]
Independent study material, not affiliated with or endorsed by AWS, containing no official exam questions. Verify every figure on this page against the current [CLF-C02 exam guide](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/aws-certification/latest/cloud-practitioner-02/cloud-practitioner-02.html) before booking.
:::
## The blueprint
| # | Domain | Weight | Where it is taught here |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Cloud Concepts | 24% | [Cloud concepts & networking](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/01-cloud-concepts-and-networking/) |
| 2 | Security and Compliance | 30% | [Security & compliance](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/06-security-and-compliance/) |
| 3 | Cloud Technology and Services | **34%** | [Storage](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/02-storage/), [Compute](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/03-compute/), [Databases](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/04-databases/), [Serverless](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/05-serverless/), [Monitoring](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/07-monitoring-and-logging/), [Analytics](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/09-analytics-and-big-data/) |
| 4 | Billing, Pricing, and Support | 12% | [Billing, pricing & support](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/08-billing-pricing-and-support/) |
**Two-thirds of the exam is services and security.** Domain 3 alone is a third of the paper and is the reason six of the ten note pages are service pages. Domain 4 is the smallest but the most mechanical — support plans, pricing models and cost tools are pure recall, so it is the cheapest 12% you will ever bank.
## Exam mechanics
- **65 items, 90 minutes** — about 83 seconds each. Foundational items are short; time pressure is mild if you do not stall.
- **50 items are scored**, 15 are unscored pretest items mixed in unmarked. You cannot tell which, so treat every item as real.
- **Scaled 100–1,000, pass at 700**, compensatory — you pass the exam as a whole, never domain by domain.
- **No penalty for guessing.** An unanswered item scores zero exactly like a wrong one. Answer everything.
- Multiple choice (one of four) and multiple response (two or more of five-plus, all-or-nothing credit).
## The ten note pages
| # | Page | Study points | Covers |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | [Cloud concepts & networking](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/01-cloud-concepts-and-networking/) | 15 | Regions, AZs, Edge Locations, HA vs fault tolerance, Well-Architected, deployment models, CloudFront |
| 2 | [Storage](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/02-storage/) | 11 | S3 and its classes, EBS, EFS, Glacier tiers, lifecycle policies, durability |
| 3 | [Compute](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/03-compute/) | 12 | EC2 families and purchasing options, Auto Scaling, ELB, containers |
| 4 | [Databases](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/04-databases/) | 12 | RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, Redshift — which shape fits which workload |
| 5 | [Serverless](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/05-serverless/) | 11 | Lambda, API Gateway, SQS, SNS, Step Functions, EventBridge |
| 6 | [Security & compliance](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/06-security-and-compliance/) | 15 | Shared responsibility, IAM, MFA, KMS, WAF, Shield, GuardDuty, Artifact |
| 7 | [Monitoring & logging](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/07-monitoring-and-logging/) | 11 | CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Config, Trusted Advisor |
| 8 | [Billing, pricing & support](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/08-billing-pricing-and-support/) | 14 | Pricing models, Free Tier, Budgets, Cost Explorer, Organizations, the four support plans |
| 9 | [Analytics & big data](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/09-analytics-and-big-data/) | 10 | Athena, Glue, EMR, Kinesis, QuickSight, the AWS AI services |
| 10 | [Exam extras](/aws/cloud-practitioner/notes/10-exam-extras/) | 11 | Migration tooling and the cross-cutting facts that do not sit in one domain |
**122 study points in total.** Each one is a fact or a distinction that CLF-C02 items are built on.
## A two-week plan
Pages 1–5 straight through, one per session. Do not memorise yet — you are building the map of what exists.
Pages 6–7. The shared responsibility model is worth its own session: know which side of the line every example falls on.
Page 8 twice. Support plans and pricing models are recall questions you can get to 100% on.
Pages 9–10, then the [practice exam](/aws/practice-exam/). Re-read only the pages your weak domains point at.
The [practice exam](/aws/practice-exam/) is pitched at associate depth, which is deliberately harder than CLF-C02. Treat anything above 65% on it as comfortably ready for this exam, and use the explanations as teaching rather than as a score.
## What this exam rewards
- **Naming the service.** Most items are "which service does X" in disguise. If you can define every entry in the [services glossary](/aws/services-glossary/) in one sentence, you are most of the way there.
- **The shared responsibility line.** AWS secures *of* the cloud, you secure *in* the cloud. Patching a managed database: AWS. Patching an EC2 guest OS: you.
- **Knowing the cheapest correct answer.** Reserved and Spot instances, S3 storage classes, the Free Tier and Savings Plans all exist to be selected against a stated constraint.
- **Support plans by capability.** Which plan gets a Technical Account Manager, which gets 24/7 phone, which gets full Trusted Advisor — pure recall, frequently asked.
- **Not over-thinking.** This is a foundational exam. If an answer requires three inferences, it is probably the distractor.
## Where to go next
- The [certification tracks page](/aws/certifications/) compares this with the four other courses and suggests what to sit after it.
- [Solutions Architect – Associate](/aws/solutions-architect/) is the natural follow-on; roughly half its service coverage is already here.
- The [AWS appendix](/appendix/aws/service-landscape/) carries the reference material — frameworks, service landscape, pricing and ROI, study plans.