Why domain weightings matter
The AWS SAA-C03 exam has four domains, and they are not equally weighted. Spending equal time on each domain is one of the most common and costly preparation mistakes. The domain weightings tell you exactly where the marks are — and where to spend your limited study time to maximise your score.
AWS publishes the official domain weightings in the exam guide. Here is the complete breakdown for SAA-C03:
The highest-weighted domain at 30% — almost a third of your total score. Covers secure application designs, secure access to AWS resources, and data protection strategies. IAM is tested deeply: roles, policies, permission boundaries, and the principle of least privilege. VPC security architecture including public vs private subnets, security groups vs NACLs, and network flow is heavily examined.
At 26%, this domain covers designing scalable and loosely coupled architectures and disaster recovery solutions. Key concepts: Multi-AZ vs Multi-Region, RTO and RPO trade-offs, warm standby vs pilot light vs active-active DR strategies, Auto Scaling group configurations, and Elastic Load Balancer types (ALB, NLB, CLB) and their use cases.
Covers high-performing storage, compute, database, and networking solutions. The key skill tested here is selecting the right service for performance requirements — when to use ElastiCache vs DynamoDB DAX, when to use CloudFront for latency reduction, and which EC2 instance family fits which workload (compute-optimised, memory-optimised, storage-optimised).
The lowest-weighted domain at 20%, but still one in five marks. Covers cost-effective storage solutions, compute options, and database services. EC2 purchasing options — On-Demand, Reserved (Standard vs Convertible), Spot, Dedicated Host, Dedicated Instance — are tested in scenarios where you must identify the most cost-effective choice for a given workload pattern.
Domains 1 and 2 together account for 56% of your score. If you run out of preparation time, these two domains are where every extra hour returns the most marks. Never deprioritise Domain 1 — security is AWS's most examined topic at every certification level.
Recommended study plan by domain
The topics most candidates get wrong
Based on the domain weightings and common failure patterns, these are the topics where most SAA-C03 candidates lose marks:
- Security group vs NACL — security groups are stateful, NACLs are stateless. This distinction appears in multiple questions.
- ALB vs NLB — Application Load Balancer for HTTP/HTTPS and host/path-based routing; Network Load Balancer for TCP/UDP and ultra-low latency or static IP requirements.
- RDS Multi-AZ vs Read Replica — Multi-AZ is for availability (synchronous standby), Read Replicas are for read performance (asynchronous replication). They serve different purposes.
- S3 storage class selection — Intelligent-Tiering vs Standard-IA vs Glacier Instant Retrieval — the right answer depends on access frequency and retrieval time requirements.
- EC2 purchasing options — candidates confuse when to use Reserved Instances vs Savings Plans vs Spot in cost-optimisation scenarios.
Practice questions by domain on GetCert
GetCert's 64 SAA-C03 practice questions cover all four domains with the same scenario-based format as the real exam. Full explanations for every question explain not just what the correct answer is, but why the other options are wrong — which is how you build the judgment the exam tests.
64 SAA-C03 practice questions — R100
All four domains covered. Scenario-based format. Full explanations. 3 months access including CLF-C02 and SAP C_ACT_2403.
Start practising now →