Exam guide
What the Claude Certified Associate – Foundations exam covers, how it is scored, and how to spend the weeks you have.
Format
60 items in 120 minutes, proctored. Multiple-choice and multiple-response — each item states how many responses to select. Every item is a realistic workplace situation asking for the soundest judgement.
Scoring
Criterion-referenced: you are measured against a fixed standard, not other candidates. Results are scaled 100–1,000 with a cut score of 720. Percent-correct by domain appears on your report but does not decide pass or fail.
Readiness signal
Consistent 80%+ across full-length sets with no domain below 70%, over at least two separate sittings. Retake waits are 14, 30, then 90 days, so it is worth being genuinely ready.
Official domains and weights
Listed in the exam guide's own domain order. Weights are the approximate proportion of scored items drawn from each domain.
| # | Domain | Weight | Questions in a 60-question set |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Prompting and Task Execution Structuring instructions, examples, and constraints that hold up. | 14% | 8 |
| 2 | Output Evaluation and Validation Judging correctness, grounding claims, and catching silent failure. | 21% | 13 |
| 3 | Product and Model Selection Matching surface and model to latency, cost, and accuracy needs. | 12% | 7 |
| 4 | Workflow Integration and Solution Design Fitting Claude into real processes with clear handoffs and review points. | 16% | 10 |
| 5 | Configuration and Knowledge Management Projects, context, files, and keeping shared knowledge current. | 12% | 7 |
| 6 | Governance, Risk, and Responsible Use Policy, data handling, disclosure, and the limits of acceptable use. | 15% | 9 |
| 7 | Troubleshooting and Optimization Diagnosing weak results and improving them methodically. | 10% | 6 |
How to prepare
There is no required course, and no resource guarantees a pass — the credential is awarded on exam performance alone. What follows is the preparation the official guide points to, translated into practice.
Our five practice modes are the route we have tested for both tracks, and they work in sequence: Flash to find your gaps, Focused to repair the weakest domains, Foundation to consolidate, Finals to build full 60-item, 120-minute stamina, and the Exam to rehearse the real thing once five Finals sets are passed. Working them in that order means you meet every scored objective at the exam's own weighting, under the exam's own clock — which is exactly what turns steady practice scores into a passing result on the day.
- 1
Self-assess against every objective
Work down the blueprint below and mark each published task statement as confident, shaky, or unknown. The exam writes its items directly against these objectives, so an honest self-assessment is the whole study plan in miniature.
- 2
Learn the item format, not just the content
Items are multiple-choice and multiple-response, and each one states how many responses to select. Every question is a realistic situation asking for the soundest judgement — practise choosing between four defensible-looking options, not reciting definitions.
- 3
Practise prompting hands-on
Structure prompts, decompose tasks, and iterate to improve outputs across the task types the guide names: analysis, research, drafting, and brainstorming.
- 4
Build a real workflow end to end
Configure a Project with instructions and knowledge sources, produce outputs, then evaluate them for accuracy, completeness, and bias. Configuration and Output Evaluation together carry a third of the exam.
- 5
Rehearse responsible-use judgement
Decide, quickly and repeatedly: is this data sensitive, is this an appropriate use case, and is this the point where a human must review or the work must be escalated to an Architect or Developer?
- 6
Practise model and feature selection out loud
For each task, justify the Claude product feature and the model tier you would pick on cost, speed, and quality, and say how you would handle context limits — restart, summarise, or persist.
Reference reading
Whenever a step above needs more depth, these are the references we wrote for it.
Study plan generator
Tell us how long you have and how often you can study. The schedule splits your days across the official domains by their exam weight, with extra days on whatever you flag as weakest.
Four weeks gets you one full pass over every domain. You'll cover everything once — mastery is still optional at this pace.
How many days a week can you realistically study?
Which domains feel weakest? (optional — pick up to 2)