Guides

AWS Certification Path 2026: Which Exam to Take First (India Guide)

By Ravindra Bagale, AWS & DevOps trainer · LinkedIn · Published: 16 October 2026 · Last updated: 17 October 2026

The usual AWS certification path is: Cloud Practitioner (if you are new to cloud) → an Associate exam for your role (Solutions Architect, Developer, SysOps/CloudOps, Data Engineer or Machine Learning Engineer) → a Professional or Specialty exam later. No exam has a required prerequisite. Most students in India who want a cloud or DevOps job do best starting with Solutions Architect – Associate, backed by hands-on labs.

A live example first

Let us plan for one real kind of learner. Sneha, a final-year B.Sc. IT student in Pune, wants a junior cloud support job. She knows basic Linux from college but has never used AWS.

1. Weeks 1–2: create a free-tier account, set a billing alarm, and launch an EC2 instance with nginx.
2. Weeks 3–4: study for Cloud Practitioner using the official exam guide and AWS Skill Builder free courses.
3. Week 5: take Cloud Practitioner.
4. Weeks 6–12: build a VPC with public and private subnets, an ALB, an Auto Scaling group, RDS MySQL and S3 static hosting.
5. Week 13: take Solutions Architect – Associate.
6. Week 14: put the project on GitHub with a diagram and a short README.

By the interview she can say "I passed SAA, and here is the three-tier app I built", which is much stronger than a badge alone.

How the levels fit together

AWS updates exam names, codes and fees from time to time. Check the official AWS Certification page before you book, and note the INR amount and tax shown at checkout.

How do I choose step by step?

1. Write down the job title you want (look at 10 real job posts on Naukri or LinkedIn).
2. Note which AWS certificates those posts mention.
3. Choose the matching Associate exam from the table above.
4. If AWS is completely new to you, add Cloud Practitioner first.
5. Download the official exam guide and note the domains and their weights.
6. Do a hands-on lab for every domain.
7. Take an official practice question set on AWS Skill Builder.
8. Book the exam about two weeks ahead, so you have a firm date.

Paths by role, one at a time

Cloud / infrastructure engineer

Solutions Architect – Associate covers EC2, VPC, S3, IAM, RDS, load balancing and high availability, which are the topics in most cloud support and engineer interviews. Later, Solutions Architect – Professional proves you can design multi-account, large systems.

Developer (Java, Node.js, Python, .NET)

Developer – Associate focuses on Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, SQS/SNS, the SDKs and CI/CD with CodePipeline. Write a small serverless API in your own language as practice.

DevOps / SRE

Start with Solutions Architect – Associate or SysOps/CloudOps – Associate, then DevOps Engineer – Professional. Pair it with Terraform and Kubernetes skills (the CKA exam is from the Linux Foundation, not AWS).

Data and AI

Data Engineer – Associate covers Glue, Redshift, Athena, Kinesis and S3 data lakes. AI Practitioner (Foundational) and Machine Learning Engineer – Associate cover Bedrock and SageMaker.

Security

Build the Associate base first, then Security – Specialty (IAM, KMS, CloudTrail, GuardDuty, Security Hub, incident response). Our cloud security interview questions page pairs well with it.

What the exam day is like

1. You get about 65 questions in 130 minutes for Associate exams (multiple choice and multiple response).
2. The passing score is shown on a scaled 100–1000 range (720 for Associate).
3. At home, you need a clean desk, a webcam and a stable connection; the proctor checks your room.
4. Results usually arrive by email within 5 working days, along with a digital badge.

Real example: why hands-on beats memorising

AWS's own exam guides describe scenario-style questions: "a company needs…, which solution is MOST cost-effective?" You cannot pass these by learning definitions. For example, a question about a web app that must survive one Availability Zone failing expects you to know you need instances in at least two AZs behind a load balancer, and RDS Multi-AZ. If you have built that once in the Mumbai region, the answer is obvious.

Mistakes to avoid

1. Collecting badges without projects. Interviewers ask "what did you build?"
2. Using leaked "dumps". That breaks the AWS candidate agreement and can get your certificates revoked.
3. Skipping the billing alarm while you practise. Set one on day 1.

Summary table