Best AWS practice exams for SAA and Cloud Practitioner, compared with prices

Which one to buy, by situation

• You have finished a course and want one bank. Tutorials Dojo SAA-C03, $14.99. It has the most questions for the money here, at 401, and five modes including a 65-question final test drawn at random from the whole bank.
• You want a second opinion before booking. One month of AWS Skill Builder at $29 for the Official Practice Exam. AWS says it uses the same question style and rigour as the real exam and gives a scaled score, which is the closest you can get to a dress rehearsal.
• You have not picked a course yet. Digital Cloud Training's subscription covers Neal Davis's SAA video course, six full practice exams and a 500+ question simulator for $24.99 a month, or $149 a year.
• You learn by building. Whizlabs bundles 110+ hands-on labs and a cloud sandbox with its SAA practice exams, or use the AWS Free Tier with any course.
• You are new to IT. Start with Cloud Practitioner. AWS says candidates without IT work experience would benefit from earning it first.

Whichever you choose, take AWS's free Official Practice Question Set before you start. Twenty questions is enough to show you how long the scenarios are and how the answer options are built. The AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam guide has the domains and a study plan to wrap around the practice.

Tutorials Dojo

Tutorials Dojo sells its SAA-C03 Practice Exams 2026 for $14.99 with unlimited access for one year. The product page lists 401 questions and five modes: timed mode under exam conditions, review mode with the answer after each question, section-based tests by domain, topic-based tests by service such as EC2, S3 or DynamoDB, and a final test that draws 65 random questions from the bank. Every question has a detailed explanation, reference links to AWS documentation and a cheat sheet.

The section and topic modes are the reason it works as a main bank. After a timed test shows you are weak on, say, storage, you can drill only storage questions until the gap closes.

Tutorials Dojo offers a free 30-question SAA-C03 sampler, 15 in timed mode and 15 in review mode. Use it to check whether the explanation style suits you before you pay. Its CLF-C02 Cloud Practitioner set is also $14.99, with timed, review, section-based and final test modes.

On its CLF-C02 page, Tutorials Dojo advises repeating its exams until you consistently score 85% or higher, against a 70% pass mark inside the product. Treat 85% on questions you have not seen before as the target, not 85% on a test you have taken three times.

Tutorials Dojo also sells an SAA-C03 video course for $12.99 if you want its course and bank from one vendor.

AWS Skill Builder and the official practice exam

AWS splits its own exam prep between free and paid. The free tier includes the 20-question Official Practice Question Sets, written by AWS with detailed feedback, and a free 2-hour Exam Prep course per exam that reviews each domain with sample questions. The Individual subscription starts at $29 a month and adds the Official Practice Exam, labs, AWS Cloud Quest roles and longer exam prep courses with additional practice questions.

AWS's own four-step plan for SAA ends with "Assess your exam readiness: Take the AWS Certification Official Practice Exam". It is a full-length exam with exam-style scoring that tells you whether you passed or failed, plus feedback on each answer choice.

The practical way to use it is a single month. Subscribe two to four weeks before your exam date, take the Official Practice Exam once with answers hidden, review it, and cancel. Taking it early wastes it, because like any fixed exam it becomes a memory test the second time.

Is Skill Builder better than a Udemy course? They do different jobs. Skill Builder has the only scored mock written by AWS. A course from Stephane Maarek, Adrian Cantrill or Neal Davis teaches the material. Most people need one course and one bank, with the official mock as a final check.

Neal Davis's subscription and the Whizlabs bundle

Digital Cloud Training is Neal Davis's company. Its SAA page lists a subscription to the whole library at $24.99 a month, or $149 a year, which works out at $12.49 a month. For SAA-C03 that includes a 23-hour video course with guided hands-on exercises and 120 quiz questions, six practice exams that each match the real exam's 65 questions and 130 minutes, training and knowledge review modes, a final exam simulator that draws 65 questions from a pool of more than 500, and downloadable training notes. The subscription can be cancelled at any time.

The value case is bundling. If you have not bought a course yet, one or two months of Digital Cloud Training covers both course and practice. If you already have a course, Tutorials Dojo at $14.99 is the cheaper bank.

Whizlabs lists its SAA-C03 course with six full-length practice exams totalling 450+ questions, section quizzes, 30+ hours of video, 110+ hands-on labs and two years of access. The price did not display on its page when checked on 2 November 2026, so compare it at checkout. The labs are the main reason to pick Whizlabs over a pure question bank: SAA asks you to choose architectures, and building a few makes the trade-offs stick.

All three vendors explain answers with references, and all three are sold under their own name.

If you still need a course first

A practice bank checks what a course taught. If you have not studied yet, pick the course first.

• Stephane Maarek sells his SAA-C03 course and practice exams on Udemy. Udemy's prices change with its frequent sales, so check the price at checkout rather than trusting any quoted figure.
• Adrian Cantrill's training site, learn.cantrill.io, lists its SAA-C03 course at $40, and an Associate and Professional Solutions Architect bundle at $100. The listing credits instructor James Lee for the SAA course.
• Neal Davis teaches the Digital Cloud Training course described above, included in the $24.99 monthly subscription.

Maarek against Cantrill is the comparison people search for, and neither publishes figures that settle it. Compare the course lengths on each listing against the hours you have each week, watch any free preview lessons on each listing, and pick the teacher you can sit through for 20 or more hours. Then pair that course with Tutorials Dojo.

Avoid any site that sells "real" SAA questions. AWS says that accessing brain dumps, even unintentionally, violates its Certification Program Agreement. ExamTopics alternatives lists the legitimate free and paid options across AWS, Azure, CompTIA and Cisco.

Cloud Practitioner first, or straight to Solutions Architect

AWS positions Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) as the starting point for people with no IT or cloud background: 65 questions in 90 minutes, $100. Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) is 65 questions in 130 minutes, $150, and AWS's recommended experience is at least one year of hands-on work designing cloud solutions on AWS, though it says candidates with one to three years of general IT experience have earned it as a starting point.

Use this rule:

• No IT work experience: Cloud Practitioner first. AWS says those candidates benefit from it before SAA.
• Some IT experience: go straight to SAA. Cloud Practitioner overlaps heavily with SAA's foundations, and the $100 is better spent on practice.

There is a money reason to sequence them. Once you earn one AWS certification, AWS gives you a 50% discount on your next AWS exam, accessed from your AWS Certification Account. Passing Cloud Practitioner at $100 takes SAA from $150 to $75. The two exams together then cost $175 rather than $250. AWS certification discounts covers that voucher and the other legitimate ways to pay less.

AWS certifications are valid for three years, and passing SAA recertifies Cloud Practitioner if you hold both.

How to read your practice scores

AWS does not publish passing scores, and says they are set by statistical analysis and can change as test forms change. So use relative readiness, not a magic number.

1. Take the free Official Practice Question Set cold, to see the style.
2. After your course, sit one Tutorials Dojo timed set. Log every miss by domain.
3. Drill your two weakest domains with section-based tests until they match your strongest.
4. Sit Tutorials Dojo's 65-question final test. Aim for the 85% that Tutorials Dojo recommends on questions you have not seen.
5. In the last two to four weeks, take AWS's Official Practice Exam on Skill Builder once, for a scaled score.

The cost of skipping step 5 is easy to work out. A fail means a 14 calendar day wait and the full $150 again, with no limit on attempts but no discount on retakes. One $29 month is cheap insurance. If you have already failed once, the AWS Solutions Architect retake plan covers the next attempt, and how long to study for AWS SAA helps you set a realistic date.