This guide targets Snowflake SnowPro Core (COF-C03), the current foundational Snowflake certification. As of April 14, 2026, Snowflake’s current certification page and transition FAQ say the English COF-C03 exam launched on February 16, 2026, replaced COF-C02, and the English COF-C02 exam remains available only until May 14, 2026. Snowflake’s public transition FAQ also says the content was reorganized from six domains to five domains and updated to reflect newer platform features including Snowflake Notebooks, Apache Iceberg tables, and Snowflake Cortex.
Cloud services: Snowflake control-plane layer that coordinates metadata, authentication, optimization, and transaction management.
Secure share: Snowflake mechanism that exposes governed live data to another Snowflake consumer without copying the provider’s underlying storage.
At a glance
Exam fact
Current official signal
Current English version
COF-C03
English launch date
February 16, 2026
English COF-C02 retirement date
May 14, 2026
Translated COF-C03 release date
April 15, 2026
Recommended experience
6 or more months using Snowflake
Price
$175 USD per attempt
Question count in Snowflake’s transition FAQ
100
Guide model
5 public topic chapters -> 10 section lessons
Snowflake’s public COF-C03 materials now point to five topic lanes. The public certification page still describes the exam in practical terms instead of implementation detail: architecture, account and warehouse management, loading and unloading, data-type handling, performance, collaboration, protection, and connectivity. Strong answers usually begin by classifying the responsibility first: platform, governance, loading, performance, or collaboration.
Use this exam guide in order
Start with the study plan if you want a structured route through the five public Snowflake topic lanes.
Work the chapter map in order, because architecture and governance mistakes cascade into loading, performance, and sharing mistakes later.
Use the cheat sheet after the lessons, not before them, so the quick pickers reinforce the model instead of replacing it.
Use the faq for version timing, current public exam facts, and common confusion pairs.
Use the resources page to re-check the live Snowflake certification pages and the exact docs that match your weak lane.
Use the glossary only when terms blur together; do not let it replace the actual lessons.
Public topic map
Snowflake’s current public COF-C03 materials expose five current topic groups. This guide follows that public shape directly.
flowchart LR
A["1. Platform layers and warehouse behavior"] --> B["2. Governance, roles, and cost control"]
B --> C["3. Loading, unloading, and connectivity"]
C --> D["4. Performance, data types, and transformations"]
D --> E["5. Collaboration, protection, and final review"]
What strong answers usually do
keep storage, compute, and cloud services separate instead of treating Snowflake like one undifferentiated database server
choose the feature that owns the responsibility: load, connect, govern, optimize, recover, or share
distinguish object hierarchy, role hierarchy, and warehouse behavior instead of letting them blur together
solve pruning, caching, and data-layout problems before throwing more compute at every slow query
separate duplication, historical recovery, and secure data sharing even when all three sound like “access to older or external data”
Where candidates usually lose points
Failure pattern
Better instinct
treating a warehouse like the place data lives
a warehouse is compute; the data remains in centralized storage
solving every ingestion problem with the same path
classify the arrival pattern first: staged batch, continuous file ingest, or connectivity setup
mixing authentication, authorization, and governance into one bucket
decide whether the question is about sign-in, privilege design, or policy and audit behavior
assuming a larger warehouse fixes poor pruning
decide whether the issue is really compute, scan volume, or cached results
using clone, Time Travel, and secure share as if they are interchangeable
ask whether the real need is duplicate, recover, or expose data