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The 8-Week AWS Solutions Architect Associate Study Plan I Actually Used (No Fluff)

certsrise — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 18:10:28 +0000

The 8-Week AWS SAA-C03 Study Plan I Used to Score 812 While Working Full-Time

Every AWS Solutions Architect Associate study plan on the internet seems to recommend the same three things:

Watch a video course
Take three mock exams
Read Adrian Cantrill’s notes

That is not a study plan. It is a resource list.

A real study plan should:

Cover the SAA-C03 exam blueprint proportionally
Fit around your actual work and personal commitments
Include hands-on practice
Leave enough time for mock exams and weak-topic revision

Here is the eight-week plan I used to pass the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam with a score of 812/1000, while working approximately 45 hours per week in a role unrelated to AWS.

Understanding the SAA-C03 Exam Blueprint

The SAA-C03 exam is divided into four domains:

Domain	Exam Weight
Design Secure Architectures	30%
Design Resilient Architectures	26%
Design High-Performing Architectures	24%
Design Cost-Optimized Architectures	20%

Assuming you study for eight weeks at approximately ten hours per week, you have around 80 total study hours.

A simple allocation based entirely on exam weight would look like this:

Domain	Approximate Study Time
Security	24 hours
Resilience	21 hours
Performance	19 hours
Cost Optimization	16 hours

However, I would not recommend allocating your time strictly according to the blueprint.

Security deserves more focused attention because it is one of the areas candidates frequently underestimate. You should also reserve the final two weeks for mock exams, gap analysis, and weak-topic drilling rather than learning entirely new content.

My actual eight-week structure looked like this:

Week	Focus
Weeks 1–2	Security and compliance
Week 3	Resilient architectures
Week 4	High-performing architectures
Week 5	Cost optimization
Week 6	First full mock and gap analysis
Week 7	Weak-topic drilling
Week 8	Final mocks, review, and rest

Week 1: Security and Compliance — IAM Foundations

Recommended study time: 10 hours

Focus on:

IAM users, groups, roles, and policies
Identity-based policies versus resource-based policies
When to use each policy type
IAM policy evaluation logic
Cross-account access using IAM roles and trust policies
Service Control Policies through AWS Organizations
IAM Access Analyzer
IAM Access Advisor

The most important IAM rule to remember is:

Explicit deny > Explicit allow > Implicit deny

Do not only memorize this rule. Practice reading actual IAM policy JSON and predicting whether a request will be allowed or denied.

Practical Exercise

In your personal AWS account, create an IAM role that grants a Lambda function read-only access to one specific S3 bucket.

Try to complete the exercise without searching for instructions.

If you can configure the role, permissions policy, and trust relationship from memory, your IAM understanding is probably strong enough for the exam.

Weekly Question Target

Complete approximately 20 IAM-focused questions.

Aim for a score of at least 80% before moving on.

Week 2: Security and Compliance — Network and Data Security

Recommended study time: 10 hours

Focus on:

Security groups versus Network ACLs
Stateful versus stateless filtering
AWS Shield Standard versus Shield Advanced
AWS WAF
AWS Firewall Manager
AWS Key Management Service
Customer-managed KMS keys
Envelope encryption
Key rotation
S3 encryption methods
CloudTrail versus CloudWatch Logs versus AWS Config
Secrets Manager versus Systems Manager Parameter Store

For S3 encryption, understand the differences between:

Encryption Type	Description
SSE-S3	AWS manages both encryption and keys
SSE-KMS	AWS KMS manages the encryption keys
SSE-C	The customer provides the encryption key
Client-Side Encryption	Data is encrypted before being uploaded

Also spend time comparing AWS Secrets Manager and SSM Parameter Store. Questions involving these two services appear frequently in SAA-style scenario questions.

Practical Exercise

Upload an object to S3 and encrypt it using:

SSE-KMS
A customer-managed KMS key

Then:

Enable key rotation
Retrieve and decrypt the object
Understand how envelope encryption works behind the scenes

Weekly Question Target

Complete approximately 25 security questions covering both Week 1 and Week 2.

Aim for at least 78% overall.

Week 3: Designing Resilient Architectures

Recommended study time: 10 hours

Focus on:

Multi-AZ versus multi-region architectures
Recovery Time Objective and Recovery Point Objective
RDS Multi-AZ versus Read Replicas
DynamoDB Global Tables
Auto Scaling policies
Elastic Load Balancer types
Route 53 routing policies
CloudFront with S3
Disaster recovery strategies

Services and Concepts to Compare

RDS Multi-AZ vs Read Replicas

Feature	Multi-AZ	Read Replica
Primary purpose	High availability	Read scaling
Synchronous replication	Yes	Usually no
Automatic failover	Yes	No automatic application failover
Can serve read traffic	Standby generally cannot	Yes

Elastic Load Balancers

Understand when to use:

Application Load Balancer
Network Load Balancer
Gateway Load Balancer

Route 53 Routing Policies

Know the purpose of:

Simple
Weighted
Latency-based
Failover
Geolocation
Geoproximity
Multivalue answer

Disaster Recovery Strategies

Study the trade-offs between:

Backup and restore
Pilot light
Warm standby
Multi-site active-active

You should understand how cost, complexity, RTO, and RPO change across these strategies.

Practical Exercise

Create two static websites in S3 buckets located in different AWS regions.

Use Route 53 failover routing to direct traffic to the secondary website when the primary endpoint becomes unavailable.

Then deliberately break the primary endpoint and verify that DNS traffic switches to the secondary site.

Weekly Question Target

Complete approximately 25 resilience-focused questions.

Target at least 78%.

Week 4: Designing High-Performing Architectures

Recommended study time: 10 hours

Focus on:

EC2 instance families
EBS volume types
ElastiCache
CloudFront
AWS Global Accelerator
Aurora
Messaging and event services

EC2 Instance Families

Understand the common workload categories:

General purpose
Compute optimized
Memory optimized
Storage optimized
Accelerated computing

Do not memorize every instance name. Learn how to identify the correct instance family from a workload description.

EBS Volume Types

Compare:

Volume Type	Best For
gp3	General-purpose SSD workloads
io2	High-performance, mission-critical databases
st1	Throughput-heavy, frequently accessed workloads
sc1	Low-cost, infrequently accessed workloads

Understand the difference between IOPS, throughput, latency, and cost.

Caching and Global Delivery

Study:

Redis versus Memcached
Redis cluster mode enabled versus disabled
CloudFront cache behavior
Origin selection
Signed URLs
Signed cookies
Global Accelerator versus CloudFront

CloudFront and Global Accelerator solve different problems. CloudFront is primarily a content delivery network, while Global Accelerator improves the availability and performance of applications using AWS’s global network.

Databases

Compare:

Standard Amazon Aurora
Aurora Serverless v2
Traditional Amazon RDS engines

Messaging Service Selection

Be able to choose between:

Amazon SQS
Amazon SNS
Amazon EventBridge
Amazon Kinesis

A simple mental model:

Service	Typical Use
SQS	Message queues and decoupling
SNS	Push-based fan-out
EventBridge	Event routing and application integration
Kinesis	High-volume streaming data

Practical Exercise

Take a workload such as:

An application needs low-latency global access to frequently read user-profile data.

Design a solution using an appropriate combination of:

Database or storage service
Caching layer
Content delivery or global networking service

Write one paragraph explaining why each service belongs in the architecture.

Weekly Question Target

Complete approximately 25 performance-focused questions.

Target at least 78%.

Week 5: Designing Cost-Optimized Architectures

Recommended study time: 8 hours

This can be a slightly lighter week because you should already have built consistent study momentum.

Focus on:

Compute Savings Plans
EC2 Instance Savings Plans
Reserved Instances
Spot Instances
S3 storage classes
S3 Intelligent-Tiering
Cost Explorer
AWS Budgets
AWS Cost Anomaly Detection
AWS Compute Optimizer
Data-transfer costs

Compute Pricing Models

Compare:

Compute Savings Plans
EC2 Instance Savings Plans
Standard Reserved Instances
Convertible Reserved Instances
Spot Instances

For Spot Instances, understand:

Appropriate workloads
Interruption handling
Spot Fleet
Mixed instance policies
EC2 Auto Scaling with Spot capacity

S3 Storage Classes

Know the progression:

S3 Standard
→ S3 Standard-IA
→ S3 One Zone-IA
→ S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
→ S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval
→ S3 Glacier Deep Archive

For each storage class, understand:

Retrieval time
Storage cost
Retrieval charges
Minimum storage duration
Availability and resilience characteristics

Also understand when S3 Intelligent-Tiering is appropriate.

Do Not Ignore Data-Transfer Costs

Data transfer is frequently overlooked when designing cost-optimized architectures.

Pay particular attention to:

Cross-region transfer
Availability Zone transfer
Internet egress
NAT Gateway processing
CloudFront pricing
Transfers between AWS services

Practical Exercise

Consider the following workload:

A company stores 100 TB of application logs. Logs from the most recent 30 days are accessed frequently. Older logs are accessed approximately once per month for audits.

Design an S3 lifecycle policy and estimate the approximate monthly cost.

The exact estimate matters less than demonstrating that you understand the cost trade-offs.

Weekly Question Target

Complete approximately 20 cost-optimization questions.

Aim for at least 80%. This domain is often more straightforward than the others once you understand the available pricing models.

Week 6: First Full Mock and Gap Analysis

Recommended study time: 12 hours

Allocate approximately:

2 hours and 10 minutes for the mock
3 to 6 hours for detailed review
Additional time for revisiting weak concepts

Take one complete 65-question mock exam under real exam conditions.

That means:

No pausing
No searching online
No checking notes
A strict 130-minute limit

Your first mock score is not the most important result.

Your gap map is.

Review Every Uncertain Answer

Review:

Every incorrect answer
Every correct answer you were unsure about
Every question where you guessed between two services

Do not simply read the explanation and continue.

Write down:

Which service you selected
Which service was correct
Why your answer was wrong
Which clue in the question should have changed your decision

Categorize Each Mistake

1. Concept Gap

You do not properly understand the service.

Action: Read the relevant AWS documentation and create a short summary.

2. Application Gap

You understand the service but selected the wrong solution for the scenario.

Action: Complete more scenario-based questions.

3. Distractor Confusion

Two services appeared equally suitable.

Action: Create a comparison flashcard showing when to use each service.

For example:

CloudFront vs Global Accelerator
SQS vs EventBridge
RDS Multi-AZ vs Read Replica
Secrets Manager vs Parameter Store
Security Groups vs NACLs

Week 7: Weak-Topic Drilling

Recommended study time: 12 hours

Use your gap map from Week 6 to identify your weakest domains.

Complete three or four focused mini-mocks containing approximately 25 questions each.

Avoid repeatedly taking complete mock exams without analyzing your weaknesses. Focused practice usually produces better improvement at this stage.

This is where adaptive practice platforms can be useful. A static question bank presents broadly similar questions to every learner. An adaptive platform can increase the difficulty and frequency of questions from your weakest topics.

Full Disclosure

I run a certification-preparation platform called CertsRise, and this stage of my preparation is one of the reasons I built it.

I became frustrated with static question banks that did not adjust based on my performance.

For adaptive SAA-C03 weak-topic practice, you can explore:

👉 AWS SAA-C03 preparation on CertsRise

The SAA preparation package is available for a one-time payment of $19.

You can also use a static question bank such as Tutorials Dojo. The platform matters less than the method:

Identify your weak areas, practise them deliberately, and review every mistake.

Week 8: Final Mocks, Review, and Rest

Recommended study time: 15 hours, followed by complete rest

Suggested schedule:

Day	Activity
Monday	Take the second full mock
Wednesday	Take the third full mock
Thursday	Review Wednesday’s incorrect answers
Friday	Rest
Saturday	Rest
Sunday	Light preparation only; confirm exam logistics
Monday	Take the exam

Target Scores

Second full mock: 78% or higher
Third full mock: 82% or higher

After the third mock, stop trying to learn large new topics.

Review only:

Incorrect answers
Comparison notes
Important architecture patterns
Services you consistently confuse

Rest Is Part of the Study Plan

Do not spend the final night cramming.

Sleep supports memory consolidation. Cramming the night before the exam often leaves you both tired and anxious.

Two rested days can help more than another ten hours of unfocused revision.

Exam-Day Tactics

Manage Your Time

You have:

130 minutes ÷ 65 questions = 2 minutes per question

If you have spent more than approximately two and a half minutes on one question, select the best available answer, flag it, and continue.

Use the Review Flag

On your first pass:

Answer every question
Flag anything you are not at least 90% confident about
Avoid spending too long on one scenario

On your second pass:

Revisit flagged questions
Look for architecture clues you may have missed
Change an answer only when you have a specific reason

Read Every Option

AWS distractors are designed to exploit the following pattern:

Recognize a keyword → immediately select the matching service

Do not fall into this trap.

Read all four options before answering, even when the first option looks correct.

Trust Your Initial Reasoning

When you narrow the answer down to two options and still cannot decide, your first reasoned choice is often better than an anxious last-minute change.

Do not change an answer unless you can identify a clear technical reason.

What I Would Do Differently

After completing the exam, I would change three things about my preparation.

1. Spend More Time on Security

I would devote three weeks to security rather than two.

Security questions often combine multiple services, such as:

IAM
KMS
S3 bucket policies
Organizations
CloudTrail
VPC controls

The individual concepts are not always difficult, but the scenarios can be subtle.

2. Avoid Repetitive Mock Banks

I would skip the second Whizlabs question bank.

In my experience, there was significant overlap with the first bank, which reduced its value.

3. Add More Hands-On Practice During Performance Week

Performance concepts become much easier to remember after you have actually:

Resized an EC2 instance
Changed an EBS volume
Configured caching
Worked with load balancers
Tested CloudFront behavior

Hands-on experience makes scenario questions more intuitive.

TL;DR

Eight weeks at approximately ten hours per week can be enough for a full-time professional starting with basic AWS knowledge.
Start with security, then study resilience, performance, and cost optimization.
Take your first complete mock in Week 6.
Convert every mistake into a gap map.
Spend Week 7 drilling weak topics.
Use Week 8 for confidence-building mocks and rest.
Your mock scores during the final two weeks are usually more meaningful than your total number of study hours.

My approximate time allocation was:

Area	Share of Study Time
Security	25%
Resilience	20%
Performance	20%
Cost Optimization	12%
Mocks and Review	23%

The core sequence is:

Learn the concepts
→ Take a mock
→ Analyse the gaps
→ Drill weak topics
→ Take confidence mocks
→ Rest
→ Take the exam

Generate a Personalised SAA-C03 Study Plan

For a customised version of this schedule based on your available study hours and target exam date, try the free:

👉 CertsRise AWS Study Plan Generator

It generates a week-by-week schedule based on:

Your target exam date
Available study hours per day
Existing experience level
Remaining preparation time

It takes around 30 seconds and does not require signup—only an email address.

Questions are welcome in the comments. I read and respond to them.

AWS SAA vs Azure AZ-104: An Honest 2026 Comparison...

certsrise — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:52:13 +0000

AWS SAA-C03 vs Azure AZ-104: Which Cloud Cert Should You Take First in 2026?

I got AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) in March and Azure Administrator (AZ-104) in September — same year, same “cloud engineer” job title on both sides.

If you’re staring at these two exams trying to figure out which one to sink 8 weeks into, this is the honest take I wish someone had given me.

The one-sentence answer

Take the cert your current employer runs.

If you’re job-hunting cold, take AWS SAA first — it opens more doors globally in 2026.

That’s the answer. If you want the reasoning, keep reading.

Comparison at a glance

Area	AWS SAA-C03	Azure AZ-104
Vendor	AWS	Microsoft
Tier	Associate	Associate
Questions	65	40–60
Duration	130 minutes	100 minutes
Pass score	720 / 1000	700 / 1000
Cost	$150	$165
Prerequisites	None, but 1 year AWS experience recommended	None, but 6 months Azure experience recommended
Job listings mentioning it	~48K	~29K
Average base salary, US	$120K–180K	$95K–140K

The salary gap is not because AWS is automatically “better.”

It is mostly because the AWS talent market is more mature. There are more senior architects with SAA in their profiles, more AWS-heavy job descriptions, and more premium roles filtering through AWS keywords.

If Microsoft continues gaining cloud mindshare over the next few years, AZ-104 could close some of that gap.

What AWS SAA-C03 actually tests

The AWS SAA-C03 exam is built around architecture judgment.

AWS SAA-C03 blueprint

Domain	Weight
Design Secure Architectures	30%
Design Resilient Architectures	26%
Design High-Performing Architectures	24%
Design Cost-Optimized Architectures	20%

Everything is scenario-based.

You are usually placed in the role of a solutions architect at a fictional company. You are asked to pick the best-fit service or architecture for a described workload.

The tricky part is this:

Most answer options technically work.

The exam is not asking, “Which option is possible?”

It is asking:

Which option is the most secure, resilient, performant, or cost-optimized for this exact scenario?

The hardest domain is usually Design Secure Architectures.

Even candidates who know EC2, S3, Lambda, and RDS well can struggle here because AWS security requires deeper understanding of:

Shared Responsibility Model
IAM policies
Resource-based policies
Service Control Policies
Cross-account access
Encryption choices
Identity inheritance

SAA is less about memorizing service names and more about choosing the best architecture under constraints.

What AZ-104 actually tests

AZ-104 is more operational and hands-on.

AZ-104 blueprint

Domain	Weight
Manage Azure identities and governance	20–25%
Implement and manage storage	15–20%
Deploy and manage Azure compute resources	20–25%
Configure and manage virtual networking	20–25%
Monitor and maintain Azure resources	10–15%

Azure Administrator expects you to know how Azure is actually managed.

You may see:

Multiple-choice questions
Drag-and-drop questions
Hot-area questions
Case studies
Portal-based scenarios
PowerShell or Azure CLI-style tasks

The hardest domain is usually Configure and manage virtual networking.

Common failure points include:

VNet peering
VPN Gateway SKUs
NSG effective security rules
Route tables
Private endpoints
Load balancers
Application Gateway
DNS integration

AZ-104 is closer to real admin work. You are not just choosing a service; you are often expected to know how to configure or troubleshoot it.

Which exam is harder?

Different kind of hard.

AWS SAA-C03 is harder to reason through

The question stems are longer.

The distractors are more plausible.

The right answer is often one of several valid answers, but it happens to be the most secure, most resilient, or most cost-effective for that situation.

You are doing architecture judgment under time pressure.

AZ-104 is harder to memorize

AZ-104 has more granular service knowledge.

You need to recognize commands, portal paths, configuration details, and administrative behavior.

It is less abstract than SAA, but more detail-heavy.

So the real answer is:

If you are good at reasoning through scenarios, SAA may feel manageable.
If you are good at hands-on configuration and memorization, AZ-104 may feel manageable.
If you have never worked in either cloud, both will feel harder than the vendors suggest.

Prep time: real numbers, not vendor optimism

AWS and Microsoft often imply that these exams can be prepared for quickly.

That may be true if you already work with the platform.

For someone starting from scratch, the realistic numbers are higher.

Situation	Realistic prep time
SAA if you already know AWS	4–6 weeks at 10 hrs/week
SAA from scratch	8–12 weeks at 10 hrs/week
AZ-104 if you already know Azure	3–5 weeks at 10 hrs/week
AZ-104 from scratch	6–10 weeks at 10 hrs/week

The gap exists because AZ-104 has a smaller, more defined surface area.

SAA covers a much broader AWS ecosystem. You are often choosing between services you may never have used deeply.

Which pays more in 2026?

Typical US base salary ranges:

AWS SAA-holder roles

Role	Approx. base salary
Cloud Engineer	$115K
Solutions Architect	$140K
Senior Cloud Engineer	$165K

AZ-104-holder roles

Role	Approx. base salary
Azure Administrator	$100K
Cloud Engineer, Azure	$115K
Senior Azure Administrator	$135K

Typical India salary ranges:

Certification	Approx. range
AWS SAA	₹18–35 LPA
Azure AZ-104	₹12–24 LPA

The AWS salary band is generally higher, but this needs context.

The gap only matters if you are realistically competitive for both AWS and Azure roles.

If your current employer runs Azure, your local market is Azure-heavy, and your internal mobility depends on Microsoft cloud skills, then AZ-104 may be the smarter move.

Taking SAA just to chase a higher salary band may require switching companies, domains, cities, or even countries.

That is a much bigger decision than choosing a certification.

The order I would take them in 2026

If you are job-hunting

Take AWS SAA-C03 first.

It has a larger market, better global portability, and stronger recognition across cloud engineering and solution architecture roles.

If your employer runs Azure

Take AZ-104 first.

You will actually use it. A cert plus internal project experience is usually stronger than a cert plus a cold job hunt.

If you want both eventually

Take SAA first, then AZ-104.

SAA teaches broader cloud architecture reasoning. Once that mental model is built, AZ-104 becomes easier because you are mapping Azure services onto concepts you already understand.

What I used for practice

Full disclosure: I run a small cert-prep site called CertsRise.

When I was preparing, I built adaptive AI mock exams for both certifications because most static question banks do not recalibrate based on weak topics.

If you want to see the head-to-head domain breakdown, I have put it here:

AWS SAA vs AZ-104 comparison

We also publish per-cert study timelines where weeks are distributed proportionally to blueprint weights:

Non-affiliate resources I would also recommend:

AWS SAA-C03

Adrian Cantrill’s video course — detailed and architecture-focused
Stephane Maarek on Udemy — cheaper, concise, and solid for exam prep

Azure AZ-104

John Savill on YouTube — free and excellent
Microsoft Learn official paths — important for blueprint alignment

TL;DR

Take SAA-C03 if you want maximum career optionality, higher pay potential, and global portability.
Take AZ-104 if your current job runs Azure or you prefer hands-on admin-style exams.
If you plan to do both, take SAA first.
Plan for roughly 2× the vendor’s claimed prep time.
Do not stack both exams in 3 months unless you already have strong cloud experience. Burnout is real.

If you are deciding between another pair — like AWS SAA vs GCP ACE or AWS SA Pro vs AZ-305 — let me know. I may write a follow-up.