The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam is 65 questions in 130 minutes, and you need 720 out of 1000 to pass. Set how you’re scoring on practice questions in each of its 4 domains and get an estimated scaled score, weighted the way AWS weights SAA-C03. Free, no signup.
How are you scoring on practice questions, per domain?
Estimated scaled score
700 / 1000
Pass mark: 720
-20 points vs pass
Borderline — could go either way
You're inside the noise band around the pass mark, and exam-day pressure usually costs a few points. Don't reschedule yet: the lever list below shows where a week of targeted drilling buys the most points.
These sliders are your guess about yourself. The free 10-question diagnostic measures it — per domain, against the same blueprint weights, no signup. Then drill the gaps with the free Solutions Architect practice questions and schedule the rest with the study plan generator.
Measure it with the free diagnostic| Domain | Weight | ≈ Scored Qs | Pts per +10% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Secure Architectures | 30% | 15 | 30 |
| Design Resilient Architectures | 26% | 13 | 26 |
| Design High-Performing Architectures | 24% | 12 | 24 |
| Design Cost-Optimized Architectures | 20% | 10 | 20 |
On SAA-C03, Design Secure Architectures is worth the most: 30% of the score, so lifting your accuracy there by 10% adds about 30 scaled points, while the same effort in Design Cost-Optimized Architectures (20%) adds about 20. That's 1.5× the return, so if two domains are equally weak, fix Design Secure Architectures first. The pass mark of 720 works out to roughly 72% blueprint-weighted accuracy on this estimate.
720 out of 1000 on AWS's scaled score. The exam has 65 questions in 130 minutes; 15 are unscored pretest items you can't identify, so 50 count. Scoring is compensatory: there is no per-domain minimum, only the overall score.
Design Secure Architectures, at 30% of the exam (about 15 scored questions). Each 10% of accuracy there is worth roughly 30 scaled points, against 20 in Design Cost-Optimized Architectures (20%).
It is a step up on every measurable axis: the pass mark is 720 instead of 700, you get 130 minutes instead of 90 for the same 65 questions, and the questions are multi-sentence architecture scenarios where two answers work but only one meets the stated constraint (cost, availability, latency). CLF-C02 is not a prerequisite, but if you have never used AWS it is a cheaper warm-up ($100 against $150).