This guide targets AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional (SAP-C02), AWS’s professional-level architecture exam for candidates who need to justify AWS designs under organizational scale, hybrid connectivity, resilience, modernization, cost, and operational constraints. As of April 13, 2026, AWS’s current exam guide lists four weighted domains, and AWS’s certification page lists 75 total questions, 180 minutes, and 300 USD exam pricing. This guide follows that current four-domain structure directly.
SCP: Service control policy, the AWS Organizations guardrail that limits the maximum permissions available in an account or OU.
PrivateLink: Private service connectivity pattern that lets consumers reach a service without exposing it through public internet paths.
Warm standby: Reduced-capacity disaster-recovery environment that stays live and can scale up after failover.
At a glance
Exam fact
Current official signal
Exam code
SAP-C02
Official exam name
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional
Total questions
75
Scored questions
65
Unscored questions
10
Exam time
180 minutes
Passing score
750 on a scaled 100-1000 range
AWS recommended experience
2+ years designing and implementing AWS cloud solutions
Guide model
4 domains -> 20 task lessons -> support appendices
SAP-C02 is not an advanced flash-card exam. It is a trade-off exam. Strong answers usually begin with the dominant organizational or architectural constraint, then pick the simplest enterprise-safe AWS pattern that satisfies it. The trap is often not choosing a totally wrong service. The trap is choosing a design that technically works but is too hard to govern, too expensive to operate, or too weak under failure.
How to use this guide
Start with the study plan if you want a disciplined route through the four domains and twenty tasks.
Work the domain chapters in order, because multi-account governance and connectivity choices shape many later resilience, modernization, and cost answers.
Use the cheat sheet after the lessons, not before them, so the pickers reinforce reasoning instead of replacing it.
Use the cheat sheet when organization, network, DR, migration, cost, and governance constraints start to blur.
Work through the sample questions to practice professional architecture trade-off prompts with full explanations.
Use the faq for exam logistics, pacing, and common professional-level traps.
Use the resources page to confirm the live AWS exam guide and primary documentation close to your exam date.
Use the glossary only when AWS governance, network, or DR terms begin to blur together.
Blueprint-aligned chapter map
AWS’s current exam guide breaks SAP-C02 into four domains. This guide follows that structure directly.
flowchart LR
A["1. Organizational complexity"] --> B["2. New-solution design"]
B --> C["3. Continuous improvement"]
C --> D["4. Migration and modernization"]
D --> E["Cheat sheet, glossary, FAQ, and live AWS checks"]
What strong answers usually do
start with governance, account structure, and connectivity before optimizing one workload component
prefer the architecture that stays supportable across many accounts, teams, and failure scenarios
treat DNS, routing, encryption policy, and account boundaries as design constraints, not cleanup details
match migration and DR choices directly to business constraints such as cutover risk, RTO / RPO, and operational burden
Where candidates usually lose points
Failure pattern
Better instinct
choosing a design that works technically but ignores org-wide governance
read the account, OU, SCP, and delegated-admin model first
using VPC peering or ad hoc networking at organizational scale
decide whether the problem needs TGW, Cloud WAN, PrivateLink, DX, VPN, or Resolver before naming services casually
treating IAM allow alone as sufficient
remember SCPs, key policies, trust policies, and network boundaries can still block the action
answering DR questions without translating RTO / RPO
decide backup, pilot light, warm standby, or multi-site only after the recovery target is clear
choosing modernization patterns that overfit the current system
the best answer usually reduces long-term ops drag without forcing unnecessary rewrite effort
Best fit for this guide
If you are coming from…
Bias your review toward…
SAA-C03 or associate-level AWS background
multi-account governance, hybrid DNS, and professional-level trade-offs
platform or DevOps background
migration strategy, modernization judgment, and org-scale cost visibility
networking background
IAM, KMS, service integration, and workload modernization patterns
Before you schedule the exam
use the resources page to confirm the live AWS exam guide and certification page
keep the cheat sheet for final compression, but do the real learning in the domain lessons first
use the exact SAP-C02 page on MasteryExamPrep.com for current practice availability and companion exam routing