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A plain reference to the AWS Solutions Architect Professional as of October 2026. This guide covers the SAP-C02 exam, its four domains and weights, the 75-question format and 750 passing score, the switch to SAP-C03 on November 17, 2026, DoD 8140 status, the senior roles it fits, and where it sits on the AWS path.
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional, often shortened to SA Pro, is Amazon Web Services' Professional-level architecture certification. It tests whether you can design AWS solutions for a complex organization, not just a single application.
The exam validates advanced skills in designing optimized AWS solutions based on the AWS Well-Architected Framework, across four areas: organizational complexity, new solutions, continuous improvement of existing solutions, and workload migration and modernization. Expect multi-account governance, hybrid networking, disaster recovery against stated RTO and RPO targets, and migration planning, usually wrapped inside a long business scenario.
There are no formal prerequisites, and you don't need the Associate first, although AWS recommends two or more years of experience using AWS to design and implement cloud solutions. The credential is issued and maintained by Amazon Web Services, and the current exam is SAP-C02.
A new version is close. AWS announced SAP-C03 in September 2026. Registration opens October 27, 2026, the last day to sit SAP-C02 is November 16, 2026, and SAP-C03 delivery starts November 17, 2026. A certification earned on SAP-C02 stays active through its normal three-year term.
Multi-account design, hybrid networks, cross-account security and disaster recovery. 26% of the exam.
Deployment, continuity, security, reliability, performance and cost for new builds. The largest domain at 29%.
Making architectures that already run more secure, reliable, faster and cheaper. 25% of the exam.
Choosing, moving and modernizing existing workloads. The smallest domain at 20%.
Four things that set the Professional apart in 2026, including a version change that lands in November.
Where the Associate is mostly about designing one workload well, the Professional is written for a whole organization, with many accounts, hybrid networks, migrations already in flight and a budget someone has to defend. AWS aims it at architects who give guidance across multiple applications and projects, and that is why it sits one full tier above the Associate.
Seventy-five questions in 180 minutes leaves about 2.4 minutes each, and many questions describe a company before they ask anything. Several answers usually work. The right one meets every stated limit on cost, downtime and effort, and multiple-response questions give no partial credit.
SAP-C03 keeps the 75 questions, 180 minutes and $300 fee but moves to five domains and adds generative AI, resilience engineering and post-quantum cryptography. Our rundown of what is changing with AWS certifications in 2026 covers the rest of the lineup.
The SA Pro is not a DoD 8140 credential. It does not appear in the Qualification Matrix V2.1, so on its own it will not satisfy a cyber-coded position requirement. The current matrix is published at the DoD Cyber Exchange.
Its weight comes from the market and from AWS itself. The exam is built on the AWS Well-Architected Framework that organizations design against, it is the senior rung of the AWS architect path, and passing it also renews the Solutions Architect Associate.
The certification, the SAP-C02 exam, the SAP-C03 dates, and how to keep the credential current, as of October 2026.
The Professional is the top of the AWS architect track, so the next step goes sideways: a Specialty, a second Professional, or a second cloud. These are the three common moves.
The move AWS itself suggests on the SA Pro page. The current Security Specialty exam (SCS-C03) spends its six domains on detection, incident response, infrastructure security, identity and access management, data protection, and security governance. The Professional covers that ground at design level, and the Specialty goes a layer deeper.
The second Professional. DevOps Engineer - Professional (DOP-C02) uses the same 75-question, 180-minute format, the same 750 passing score and the same $300 fee, but it is about automating delivery and operations. Its six domains run from SDLC automation and infrastructure as code to monitoring, incident response and security. It suits architects who also own the pipeline.
The second-cloud move. Microsoft's Azure Solutions Architect Expert is the closest Azure counterpart, and earning it takes the AZ-305 exam plus the Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104), so plan for two exams. Microsoft's expert certifications expire every year but renew free through an online assessment.
The Solutions Architect Professional sits at the professional tier of the AWS path. Most people reach it through the Associate. After it, the usual moves are the Security Specialty, the DevOps Engineer Professional, or a step across into Azure.
The architecture groundwork
Architecture at organization scale
Pick your path
Two questions to answer before you commit: can you sit it, and should you pursue the Professional specifically. Here's a straight answer to both.
No prerequisites, and no Associate required.
AWS sets no formal prerequisites for the Professional, and holding the Associate first is not required. You can register and take the exam at a Pearson VUE test center or online with a remote proctor. If you want SAP-C02 rather than SAP-C03, book a date on or before November 16, 2026.
The two-year recommendation is there for a reason.
AWS recommends two or more years of experience using AWS to design and implement cloud solutions, and the scenarios assume you have seen multi-account setups, hybrid connections and migrations up close. Without that background, the Associate is usually the better first exam, because it builds the service knowledge the Professional takes for granted.
The Professional maps to senior architecture roles, the people who set direction across accounts, teams and migrations. AWS names solutions architects, cloud architects, infrastructure architects and technical leads as the target roles for SAP-C03.
Designs enterprise-grade systems on AWS and owns the trade-offs between cost, availability and security across several applications at once. This is the role AWS writes the Professional exam around.
Leads the multi-account strategy: the AWS Organizations structure, the guardrails, central logging, and the governance model every new team inherits when it gets an account.
Designs the hybrid network, identity and resilience layer underneath everything else, from Direct Connect links and DNS to the disaster recovery plan and its recovery targets.
Runs portfolio assessments and migration waves, picks one of the seven migration strategies for each workload, and decides what gets rehosted and what gets rebuilt.
Guides engineering teams on cloud-native, serverless and AI-integrated designs and reviews architectures before they reach production. AWS names technical leads as a target role for SAP-C03.
Advises organizations on large AWS programs, from landing zone design to modernization roadmaps. The Professional shows a client you have been tested on design at enterprise scale.
The Solutions Architect Professional sits one tier above the Associate and alongside the DevOps Engineer Professional. Here's how the three line up.
| Solutions Architect Professional | Solutions Architect Associate | DevOps Engineer Professional | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issuer | AWS | AWS | AWS |
| Level | Professional | Associate | Professional |
| Focus | Complex enterprise AWS design and migration | Designing AWS architectures | Automating delivery and operations on AWS |
| Prerequisites | None (rec. 2 years) | None (rec. 1 year) | None (rec. 2 years) |
| Exam | SAP-C02, 75 items, 180 min | SAA-C03, 65 items, 130 min | DOP-C02, 75 items, 180 min |
| Passing Score | 750 of 1000 | 720 of 1000 | 750 of 1000 |
| Exam Cost | $300 | $150 | $300 |
| Best For | Senior and principal architects | Cloud architects and engineers | Senior DevOps and platform engineers |
Pricing varies by region and taxes. None of the three appear on the DoD 8140 Approved Qualifications Matrix V2.1, so their recognition comes from the market rather than a DoD listing. Full guide: Solutions Architect Associate.
Certification Matchups: the published facts, strengths and weak spots of 33 certifications, side by side.
Our AWS Architect: Associate & Professional Boot Camp prepares you for both Solutions Architect exams in six days of live, instructor-led training, in person or live online. Days four through six are built around the Professional domains, with hands-on labs, official AWS courseware, practice exams, both exam vouchers and a free retake included.
The salary picture, the 2026 changes to the AWS lineup, and the second-cloud question that tends to come up after the Professional.
What the Professional credential does for earning potential, the senior roles it leads to, from solutions architect to enterprise architect, and the skills that push pay higher.
The Machine Learning Specialty retired, SysOps became CloudOps, and the Security Specialty moved to SCS-C03. A map of which AWS exams are live and how to plan around them.
The multi-cloud question for AWS holders, including why Azure Solutions Architect Expert is the natural Azure target once you hold the Professional.
Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Braket and the AI and quantum work shaping AWS. Useful background for the generative AI content SAP-C03 adds to the blueprint.
MFA, least privilege, CloudTrail, S3 bucket protection and AWS Config rules. Five controls the Professional's security tasks assume you already know how to set up.
Where AZ-305 sits among the Microsoft exams people are actually taking in 2026, with what each costs and who it fits, for architects weighing a second cloud.
Why certification salary rankings run higher than federal wage data, why cloud architect roles have no federal occupation code of their own, and which certifications actually move pay.
The SAP-C02 exam is organized into four domains, each with its own weight. Design for New Solutions is the largest at 29 percent, the smallest still carries 20 percent, and all four are scoped to the AWS Well-Architected Framework. Click any domain for what it covers.
Designing for an organization rather than a single workload. Network connectivity across many VPCs and on-premises sites with Amazon VPC, AWS Direct Connect, AWS VPN, transitive routing and hybrid DNS through Route 53 Resolver. Security controls that span accounts: IAM and IAM Identity Center, third-party identity providers, AWS KMS and ACM, and centralized auditing with CloudTrail, IAM Access Analyzer and Security Hub. It also covers disaster recovery built to RTO and RPO targets, multi-account environments on AWS Organizations and Control Tower, and cost visibility through tagging, Cost Explorer, Budgets and Compute Optimizer.
The largest domain. Deployment strategies with infrastructure as code, CI/CD and Systems Manager, with rollback planned from the start. Business continuity through backup and restore, pilot light, warm standby and multi-site designs, plus data and database replication and disaster recovery testing. The rest of the domain asks for least-privilege IAM, attack mitigation for large web applications with AWS Shield, AWS WAF and GuardDuty, Multi-AZ and multi-Region designs with Route 53 routing policies, caching, buffering and replicas for performance, and pricing models and data transfer costs for the budget.
Taking an architecture that already runs and making it better. Operational excellence through CloudWatch monitoring and logging, blue/green and rolling deployments, configuration automation and failure-scenario exercises. Security work covers secrets in Secrets Manager, AWS Config rules for automated remediation, least-privilege audits, and patch and backup processes. Then performance (auto scaling, placement groups, Global Accelerator, CloudFront), reliability (removing single points of failure, data replication, self-healing) and cost (finding unused resources, billing alarms, Cost and Usage Reports and tagging for cost allocation).
The smallest domain. Deciding what to migrate with AWS Migration Hub, portfolio assessment, wave planning, the seven common migration strategies (7Rs) and total cost of ownership. Picking the transfer tools, from DataSync, Transfer Family and the Snow Family to Application Migration Service, AWS DMS and AWS SCT. Then choosing the new architecture across EC2, Elastic Beanstalk, ECS, EKS, Fargate and the storage and database services, and spotting chances to modernize with Lambda, purpose-built databases such as DynamoDB and Aurora Serverless, and integration services like SQS, SNS, EventBridge and Step Functions.
Domains and weights reflect the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional (SAP-C02) exam guide, which also lists an Emerging Topics area (security and responsible AI controls for generative AI) that can appear as unscored pretest questions. SAP-C03 replaces it on November 17, 2026 with five announced domains, "Cloud-native architecture design and implementation," "Security, compliance, and governance," "Cost-optimized architecture design," "Resilience, migration, and business continuity" and "Operational excellence and automation." AWS publishes the SAP-C03 weights and task statements when registration opens on October 27, 2026.
The questions candidates ask most often when researching the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional.
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional is Amazon Web Services' Professional-level architecture certification. It validates advanced skills in designing optimized AWS solutions based on the AWS Well-Architected Framework, aimed at complex organizations: multi-account environments, hybrid networks, disaster recovery, and the migration and modernization of existing workloads.
The current version is SAP-C02, and its last test day is November 16, 2026. AWS opens registration for the replacement, SAP-C03, on October 27, 2026, and SAP-C03 delivery begins November 17, 2026. Check the exam version on the official AWS certification page before you schedule.
If you're already prepared, take SAP-C02 by November 16, 2026. AWS says a credential earned on SAP-C02 stays active through its original expiration date. If you're early in your studies, plan for SAP-C03, which adds generative AI and agentic AI design, resilience engineering, and post-quantum cryptography in AWS KMS. AWS publishes the full SAP-C03 exam guide when registration opens on October 27, 2026.
No. There are no formal prerequisites, and you don't need the Solutions Architect Associate first. AWS recommends two or more years of experience using AWS services to design and implement cloud solutions. That's a recommendation rather than a requirement, but the exam is clearly written for people who have that experience.
The four domains are Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity (26 percent), Design for New Solutions (29 percent), Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions (25 percent), and Accelerate Workload Migration and Modernization (20 percent). Design for New Solutions is the largest, but even the smallest domain carries a fifth of the scored content, so none of them is safe to skip.
SAP-C02 has 75 questions in 180 minutes. Of those, 65 are scored and 10 are unscored questions AWS is trying out for future use, and the exam doesn't tell you which ones they are. Every question is multiple choice or multiple response, and a multiple-response question only earns credit if you select every correct answer.
You need a scaled score of 750 on a scale of 100 to 1,000. The scoring is compensatory, so you don't have to pass each domain, only the exam as a whole. Unanswered questions count as wrong and there is no penalty for guessing, so never leave one blank.
The exam costs $300 USD as of October 2026, plus any taxes or foreign exchange differences, and AWS has announced the same $300 price for SAP-C03. If you already hold an active AWS certification, you get a 50 percent discount on your next AWS exam. Training Camp's boot camp includes the exam vouchers in the program fee.
No. AWS certifications don't appear on the DoD 8140 Approved Qualifications Matrix V2.1, so the Professional on its own won't satisfy a cyber-coded position requirement. Federal agencies and contractors can still list AWS certifications in their own cloud job requirements, which sit outside the 8140 matrix. See the full DoD 8140 work role paths.
It's valid for three years. You renew for another three years by passing the latest version of the exam, and you can use the 50 percent discount voucher in your AWS Certification Account. AWS also offers a maintain option on AWS Skill Builder, with a paid subscription, that extends an active certification by one year. Passing the Professional also renews the Solutions Architect Associate.
The Professional maps to senior roles such as Senior Solutions Architect, Cloud Architect, Infrastructure Architect, Cloud Migration Architect, Technical Lead, and Principal Cloud Consultant. AWS itself lists solutions architects, cloud architects, infrastructure architects, and technical leads as the target roles for SAP-C03.
For most people, the Associate. It costs $150, runs 130 minutes, and builds the service knowledge the Professional takes for granted. If you already have two or more years designing on AWS, you can go straight to the Professional, since the Associate isn't required. Passing the Professional later also renews an Associate you already hold.
It's one of the harder AWS exams. The scenarios are long, several answers often work on paper, and you have to pick the one that meets every constraint on cost, downtime, and effort. With 75 questions in 180 minutes you get about 2.4 minutes per question, so reading speed and time management matter as much as service knowledge.
For working AWS architects, yes. It's the Professional-level architecture credential AWS offers, it renews your Associate, and AWS aims it squarely at senior architect and technical lead roles. It's less useful if you're new to AWS, where the Associate comes first, or if your organization runs mainly on Azure. If you're deciding in late 2026, factor in the move to SAP-C03 on November 17.
Deciding between SAP-C02 and SAP-C03, or planning architect training for a team? Tell us where you are and we'll help you map out the next step.