SAP-C03 Exam Guide: New Domains, Key Dates, Cost and a Six-Week Study Plan [2026 Guide]

SAP-C03 is the new version of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional exam, and it replaces SAP-C02. Registration opened on October 27, 2026, the first SAP-C03 exams run on November 17, 2026, and the last day to sit SAP-C02 is November 16, 2026. The format stays familiar: 75 questions, 180 minutes, a 300 dollar fee, and a pass score of 720 on the 100 to 1000 scale. The blueprint underneath that format, set out in the SAP-C03 exam guide, is new: five domains instead of four, a security domain that now stands on its own at 25 percent, and generative AI and agent design written into the architecture domain. This SAP-C03 exam guide covers the dates, the domain weights, what content is new, who should still take SAP-C02, and how to prepare.

If you hold SAP-C02 study material, most of it still has value, because AWS consolidated the old skills into broader tasks rather than deleting them. What changes is where your study hours should go. Turn the plan in this guide into dated sessions with our free study timetable generator, and read the official sources linked throughout before you book, because dates near a version cutoff deserve a final check in the scheduler.

SAP-C03 Exam Guide at a Glance

SAP-C03 is the new AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam, live from November 17, 2026. It has five domains, 75 questions in 180 minutes, a 300 dollar fee, and a pass score of 720. SAP-C02 ends on November 16, 2026. Registration is already open.

Three changes matter most. First, the four SAP-C02 domains become five, reorganized around the AWS Well-Architected Framework. Second, security, compliance, and governance becomes a standalone domain worth 25 percent of the scored exam, equal to the architecture domain itself. Third, the pass score drops from 750 under SAP-C02 to 720 under SAP-C03, the biggest scoring change in the update.

Key Dates for the SAP-C02 to SAP-C03 Switch

AWS published the timeline in its September 2026 certification update, and the official comparison page confirms the same handover. The dates are close together, so read them carefully if you are mid-preparation.

Date	What happens
October 27, 2026	SAP-C03 registration opens in all currently supported languages; the full SAP-C03 exam guide is published
November 16, 2026	Last day to take SAP-C02
November 17, 2026	SAP-C03 general availability begins; from this date the Professional exam is SAP-C03

There is no overlap window and no grace period. A SAP-C02 booking must land on or before November 16, and a booking from November 17 onward is a SAP-C03 booking. If you pass SAP-C02 before the cutoff, your credential remains active through its original expiration date, per the AWS announcement, so a late SAP-C02 pass is not wasted.

SAP-C03 Exam Guide: The Five Domains and Their Weights

The official SAP-C03 exam guide weights the five domains as follows. Percentages describe the share of scored content, and scoring is compensatory: you pass the exam as a whole, not domain by domain.

SAP-C03 domain	Weight	What it tests
Domain 1: Architecture Design and Implementation Built for the Cloud	25%	Cloud-native design, serverless patterns, containers, hybrid integration, networking, data architectures, and AI and ML integration
Domain 2: Security, Compliance, and Governance	25%	Identity security, encryption and key management, governance guardrails, compliance evidence, and security controls for AI
Domain 3: Cost-Optimized Architecture Design	15%	Pricing models, data transfer and network costs, cost visibility, and storage and database cost optimization
Domain 4: Resilience, Migration, and Business Continuity	15%	Migration strategies, disaster recovery architectures, backup governance, and recovery testing
Domain 5: Operational Excellence and Automation	20%	Infrastructure automation, CI/CD and DevSecOps pipelines, observability, and automated operations

Domain 1 is where the new exam shows its character

Domain 1 carries the headline additions. It now includes a dedicated task on integrating AI and ML services into architectures: generative AI integrations with Amazon Bedrock, AI agent architectures with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, retrieval-augmented generation designs, and ML inference architectures. Around that sit durable Step Functions workflows, service mesh designs with Amazon VPC Lattice and Amazon ECS Service Connect, multi-tenant architectures, lakehouse designs with AWS Lake Formation and Apache Iceberg, and IPv6 adoption strategies.

Domain 2 rewards governance depth

Security was a slice of every SAP-C02 domain; in SAP-C03 it is a quarter of the exam. Expect identity architectures for hybrid and multi-cloud workloads with IAM Roles Anywhere, data residency controls, compliance evidence collection with AWS Artifact, and a new task on security and responsible AI controls, which covers Amazon Bedrock Guardrails, access controls for agentic applications, and human oversight workflows for AI operations.

Domains 3, 4, and 5 are lighter but not optional

Cost and resilience sit at 15 percent each, and operations takes 20 percent. The cost domain now asks about optimizing spend for AI and ML workloads, including cross-Region inference routing. The resilience domain keeps migration and disaster recovery together, with recovery testing that uses AWS Fault Injection Service. The operations domain adds pipeline security scanning, multi-account deployment pipelines, monitoring for AI workloads such as inference latency and model drift, and controlled remediation patterns such as circuit breakers and retry with exponential backoff.

SAP-C03 Exam Guide: SAP-C02 vs SAP-C03 Side by Side

The official comparison of SAP-C02 and SAP-C03 shows the reorganization plainly. No SAP-C02 task number maps directly to a SAP-C03 task: AWS consolidated granular skills into broader tasks and re-sorted them under the new domains.

SAP-C02 domain	SAP-C02 weight	SAP-C03 domain	SAP-C03 weight
Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity	26%	Architecture Design and Implementation Built for the Cloud	25%
Design for New Solutions	29%	Security, Compliance, and Governance	25%
Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions	25%	Cost-Optimized Architecture Design	15%
Accelerate Workload Migration and Modernization	20%	Resilience, Migration, and Business Continuity	15%
(no fifth domain)		Operational Excellence and Automation	20%

According to the AWS Training and Certification blog, SAP-C03 adds 11 new skills in generative AI and agentic AI alone, covering Amazon Bedrock integrations, agent architectures with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, RAG architectures, Bedrock Guardrails, and human-oversight workflows. The same announcement lists 7 new cloud-native skills, 6 new DevSecOps and observability skills, and 3 new data and analytics skills, plus post-quantum cryptography with AWS KMS support for ML-DSA and ML-KEM.

What leaves the blueprint is small. The comparison page lists only three explicit deletions: application upgrade path, delegating to AWS, and migration-tool security. AWS adds that these concepts might still be implicit in other SAP-C03 skills, so treat the deletions as a change of emphasis, not a promise that the topics vanish.

Exam Format, Cost and Scoring

SAP-C03 keeps the Professional format that candidates know. The exam has 75 questions in total: 65 scored questions and 10 unscored questions that AWS uses to evaluate future items, and the unscored questions are not identified during the exam. Question types are multiple choice and multiple response, and multiple response questions require every correct option for credit. Unanswered questions score as incorrect, and there is no penalty for guessing, so answer everything.

You get 180 minutes, and the fee is 300 dollars. Delivery is through Pearson VUE, at a test center or online with a proctor. Results come back as a scaled score from 100 to 1000, and the minimum passing score is 720. Scoring is compensatory, which means a weak domain does not fail you on its own, but a very weak domain still drags the total down. Plan your revision so that no domain is a stranger.

The official exam guide describes the target candidate as someone with 2 or more years of experience using AWS services to design and implement cloud solutions, who provides architectural guidance across multiple applications and projects in a complex organization. There is no mandatory prerequisite certification, but the Associate level is the natural foundation for the judgment this exam tests.

SAP-C03 Exam Guide: Who Should Take SAP-C02, and Who Should Wait

The AWS announcement gives the same advice this guide gives. Take SAP-C02 by November 16 if you are already prepared and want the credential now; your certification remains active through its original expiration date. Wait for SAP-C03 if you want the credential to validate cloud-native design, generative AI integration, and modern resilience engineering alongside the traditional architecture skills.

Take SAP-C02 if your preparation is nearly finished

If your practice scores on SAP-C02 material are already at passing level and your calendar allows a booking on or before November 16, finish on the version you prepared for. The credential is the same certification, and employers see the same title. Switching blueprints in the final two weeks costs more than it gains.

Wait for SAP-C03 if you are starting now

A preparation cycle that starts today will finish after November 17 for most candidates, which means the exam at the end of it is SAP-C03. Study the new blueprint from day one. In particular, do not build a plan around the old organizational complexity domain: its content survives, but scattered across the new domains, and the new AI integration tasks have no SAP-C02 equivalent to revise from.

Developers have a parallel decision

The Developer Associate exam changes on the same registration date, with DVA-C03 delivery beginning December 1, 2026 and the last DVA-C02 day on November 30. If you are sequencing the two credentials, our AWS DVA-C03 vs DVA-C02 guide walks through that decision with the same dates and domain detail.

A Six-Week SAP-C03 Study Plan

This plan assumes 8 to 10 study hours a week and a working Associate-level foundation. It weights the weeks by the domain percentages, and it reserves the final week for timed practice under exam conditions: 75 questions in 180 minutes is a pacing test as much as a knowledge test.

Week	Focus	Build or finish
Week 1	Domain 1 foundations: cloud-native design, serverless patterns, containers, networking	Deploy a serverless pipeline and a container service behind a load balancer
Week 2	Domain 1 AI integration: Bedrock, AgentCore, RAG design, Guardrails	Build a small RAG application with a knowledge base and a guardrail attached
Week 3	Domain 2: identity, encryption, post-quantum KMS, governance, AI controls	Design a multi-account landing zone with SCP guardrails and centralized logging
Week 4	Domain 5: IaC automation, DevSecOps pipelines, observability, remediation patterns	Ship a multi-account pipeline with image scanning and a runbook automation
Week 5	Domains 3 and 4: cost optimization, AI workload costs, migration, disaster recovery, recovery testing	Run a fault injection experiment and write the recovery report
Week 6	Timed rehearsal: two full practice runs, weak-domain repair, booking	Two 180-minute practice exams, then book while the material is fresh

Compress the plan if you design on AWS daily, and stretch week 2 if AI integration is new territory for you. Do not cut week 6: Professional-level questions are long scenarios, and candidates who have never sat a three-hour paper run out of time before they run out of knowledge.

What SAP-C03 Does Not Test

The official exam guide lists the knowledge that is out of scope, and the list saves real study time. SAP-C03 does not test in-depth operating system knowledge, AI and ML model training, fine-tuning, or data science workflows, security incident forensics and detailed threat investigation, or application code development and debugging. You design the architecture around these specialties and choose the controls; you are not examined as the specialist who performs them.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does SAP-C03 become available?

Registration opened on October 27, 2026, and general availability begins on November 17, 2026, in all currently supported languages. SAP-C02 remains available until November 16, 2026.

What is the SAP-C03 pass score?

The minimum passing score is 720 on the scaled range of 100 to 1000, per the official exam guide. That is lower than the SAP-C02 pass score of 750, and scoring is compensatory across the five domains.

How much does SAP-C03 cost, and how long is the exam?

The fee is 300 dollars, and the exam runs 180 minutes with 75 questions: 65 scored and 10 unscored. Delivery is through Pearson VUE, at a test center or online with a proctor.

Does a SAP-C02 certification expire when SAP-C03 launches?

No. Per the AWS announcement, a credential earned on SAP-C02 remains active through its original expiration date. The launch changes which exam new candidates sit, not the validity of credentials already earned.

Is SAP-C03 harder than SAP-C02?

It tests a broader role rather than a strictly harder one. The architectural judgment is the same, but the blueprint adds AI integration, agent design, and post-quantum cryptography, and it reorganizes every domain. Candidates whose daily work already includes Bedrock and multi-account governance will find it fair; candidates revising from old SAP-C02 notes will find gaps exactly where the new tasks sit.

Sources

Exam facts, domain weights, the pass score, and the out-of-scope list in this guide come from the official SAP-C03 exam guide and the official comparison of SAP-C02 and SAP-C03 on AWS documentation. Dates, price, duration, and the new-skills counts come from the AWS Training and Certification announcement, Certification updates from AWS Training and Certification: September 2026. The SAP-C02 pass score of 750 is from the official SAP-C02 exam guide.