TL;DR
SAA-C03 remains the current AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam with no exam-level retirement announced: 65 questions (50 scored plus 15 unscored), 130 minutes, pass at 720 on a 100 to 1000 scale, across four design domains led by secure architectures at 30%. The Italian-language version ends after 31 December 2026, which is a language retirement, not an exam retirement. Study architecture trade-offs, not service trivia.
By SecLern Editorial. Published 2026-10-18. Exam facts checked 2026-10-17 against the AWS certification exam page and the official SAA-C03 exam guide. Third-party replacement rumors are addressed and dismissed below with sources.
Current status, stated plainly
As of our check, AWS has announced no exam-level retirement or successor for SAA-C03; the official coming-soon page lists nothing for this exam. That is a verified absence with one caveat: the coming-soon page looked stale at our check, so re-confirm before booking and treat any blog claiming a replacement as rumor until AWS prints it. What does exist is a language-level retirement: the Italian version ends after 31 December 2026. If you test in Italian, plan accordingly; if you test in any other offered language, it affects you not at all. Do not let the two facts merge in your head. And keep this exam away from the Professional-level news: SAP-C02 moving to SAP-C03 (registration late October 2026, availability mid-November) is a different exam at a different level, and cross-associating it with SAA-C03 is the most common factual error in associate-exam coverage.
Format: 65 questions, 130 minutes, 720 to pass
The exam guide states 65 questions per sitting: 50 scored plus 15 unscored, with the whole-exam compensatory scoring that AWS uses (strength in one domain offsets weakness in another, within limits). Whether all 15 unscored items appear in every form is unverified, so expect up to 65 and pace for 65. Duration is 130 minutes, the scale runs 100 to 1000, and the pass mark is 720. Question types are multiple choice (one correct, three distractors) and multiple response (two or more correct from five or more options). There is no performance or lab section on this exam, so every point comes from reading architecture scenarios carefully. Two minutes per question is the headline budget, but scenario stems with long exhibits deserve three and short definition checks deserve thirty seconds; the time management guide two-pass method works here with the sim steps removed. Results arrive within days, and the credential stays active for three years.
The four design domains
All four domains ask you to design, which is the whole character of the exam: given requirements and constraints, pick the architecture that fits best.
- Design Secure Architectures: 30%. The lead domain. Identity and access control, data protection in transit and at rest, network isolation with VPC design, detective controls and logging. Private addressing, DNS, and TLS behavior recur, so know them cold rather than as background.
- Design Resilient Architectures: 26%. Multi-AZ and multi-Region patterns, decoupling with queues and event flows, backup and disaster recovery tiers, scaling under failure. Every answer here trades cost against recovery objectives; learn to spot which constraint the stem emphasizes.
- Design High-Performing Architectures: 24%. Compute, storage, and database selection for performance: instance families, caching layers, read replicas, storage tiers. The exam loves the second-best answer that performs but ignores the stated constraint, so read constraints twice.
- Design Cost-Optimized Architectures: 20%. Right-sizing, purchasing models, lifecycle policies, data transfer costs, and cost-aware database choices. Smallest domain, highest points-per-hour if you learn pricing logic instead of memorizing prices (prices change; logic does not).
Weight your weeks 30/26/24/20 and drill with the constraint-first habit: requirements, constraints, then services. Start from the SAA study hub.
How SAA questions actually read
Stems describe a company, a workload, numeric targets, and a constraint sentence buried mid-paragraph. The constraint sentence decides: a latency number picks the caching answer, a recovery number picks the multi-AZ answer, a budget line picks the lifecycle-policy answer. Train by underlining the constraint before reading the options; options-first reading lets the attractive distractor set the agenda. Multiple-response items punish partial knowledge, so only select choices you can defend from the stem, and leave a choice blank when the stem gives it no support. Memorize service capabilities as envelopes (what each service does well and badly) rather than feature lists, because the exam tests fit, not recall. Paraphrase, never copy, from AWS docs in your notes: the docs are all-rights-reserved, so your notes should be your own sentences with a link back, a habit our study notes flow already encourages.
A six-week plan shape
Weeks 1 to 2: secure architectures, with VPC design and access control as daily whiteboard work. Weeks 3 to 4: resilient plus high-performing, paired because scaling and recovery share patterns. Week 5: cost optimization plus mixed-domain scenario sets. Week 6: full timed sittings, patch-only review of misses, and re-drills of the constraint-first habit. Throughout, keep one page per domain of trade-off rules in your own words (when multi-AZ beats read replicas, when caching beats bigger instances, when lifecycle beats bigger disks). Book when two fresh full sittings clear your comfort zone a week apart, per readiness explained. If networking fundamentals wobble, the Network+ plan subnetting week transfers directly to VPC work. A final word on whitepapers: AWS documentation is excellent and all-rights-reserved, so read it deeply but write notes in your own sentences with links back. The Well-Architected Framework maps neatly onto the four domains and doubles as a review checklist in week six. Run each pillar against your weakest domain and close whatever gap it names. Paraphrase, link, move on.
The four distractor patterns
SAA wrong answers fall into four families, and naming them speeds elimination. First, the constraint ignorer: an architecture that performs beautifully while violating the one stated limit (multi-Region active-active for a workload with no availability requirement beyond a single Region, or provisioned capacity where serverless fits the spiky pattern). Second, the over-engineer: two advanced services where one managed service suffices, usually betrayed by cost or complexity words in the stem. Third, the under-protector: the cheapest option that drops encryption, backup, or multi-AZ placement the stem explicitly required; it reads well until you check it against the requirements line by line. Fourth, the migration mismatch: a correct steady-state architecture offered for a migration question (or vice versa), missing the transfer, downtime, or sequencing constraint. Train against all four by justifying every practice answer in one sentence that names the constraint it satisfies; if you cannot name one, you picked a distractor. Over two weeks this habit converts option-first guessing into constraint-first design, which is the entire exam in one sentence. Keep a tally of which family catches you most often and drill that family deliberately, because the exam will find your favorite trap and set it repeatedly.
Sources
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam page (status, languages including Italian note, validity)
- AWS SAA-C03 exam guide (65 questions with 50 scored, domains, scoring, format)
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