Claude Certification Program · v1.0 · Effective July 2026 · All four tracks open

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Claude Certified Associate, Foundations (CCAO-F)

An independent community resource - not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic. Facts on this page are transcribed from the official exam guide and the Anthropic Partner Academy; the practice questions are written from scratch and none come from a real exam.

Claude Certified Associate, Foundations (exam code CCAO-F) is the entry-level exam in Anthropic's Claude certification program. It is the only one of the four exams written for people who do not write code. The exam guide names operations, marketing, project management, education and communications as the target roles. It says the exam is not for developers who build on the API.

The exam has 60 questions across seven domains and a 120-minute time limit. It is the cheapest of the four exams. All facts below come from the official exam guide, version 1.0 (July 2026), and from the Anthropic Partner Academy certification FAQ.

Exam at a glance

Exam code
CCAO-F
Questions
60, across seven domains. Multiple choice and multiple response. Each question says how many answers to pick.
Time limit
120 minutes. Plan for about 135 minutes in the seat, including check-in and a short survey.
Passing score
720 on a scale of 100 to 1,000
Valid for
12 months
Retakes
14 days after a first fail, 30 after a second, 90 after a third. Up to 4 attempts per rolling 12 months.
How it is delivered
Proctored. Online with a webcam, or at a Pearson VUE test center.
Prerequisites
None. No course is required. You get the credential by passing the exam.
Language
English only. Browser translation tools are not allowed during the exam.
Exam guide
Version 1.0, effective July 2026
Practice questions here
360, free, every answer option explained

The exam is closed book. No notes, no documentation, no AI assistants. The score report shows a pass or fail result, the scaled score, and the percent correct in each section. Only the total score decides the result, so a weak section cannot fail you on its own.

Who it is for

The guide describes a person who uses Claude as a work tool and builds Claude Projects as part of the job. Someone who has moved past simple questions and now redesigns how work gets done. The profile covers both staff inside a company and consultants who help others set things up. It assumes you know the practical limits: Claude can invent facts, context is limited, and some data should never be uploaded.

The guide also says who it is not for: developers building on the API, people designing agent systems, and machine learning or software engineering specialists. Those roles are covered by the Developer and Architect exams.

How closely you match this description is the best guide to how much study you need. If it fits you, most of the work is learning Anthropic's words for things you already do. If it does not fit you, the gap is real experience, and practice questions cannot replace it.

What the exam covers

The seven domains are not equal in size. The weights show where study time is worth spending.

Weights are the official blueprint. The last column is what this site's question bank holds for that domain, so the two can be checked against each other rather than taken on trust.
# Domain Weight ≈ questions In the bank here
2Output Evaluation and Validation21%~1378
4Workflow Integration and Solution Design16%~1060
6Governance, Risk, and Responsible Use15%~954
1Prompting and Task Execution14%~848
3Product and Model Selection12%~742
5Configuration and Knowledge Management12%~742
7Troubleshooting and Optimization10%~636
Total100%60360

Two points are easy to miss. Checking Claude's output is the biggest domain at 21%. More than one question in five asks whether an answer can be trusted: can you spot invented facts, can you spot bias, and when does a human need to review the result. Prompting is only 14%, which is much less than the exam's reputation suggests.

Governance (15%) plus output checking (21%) is 36% of the exam. Both official sample questions from these domains work the same way: the fastest option is the wrong one, and the correct answer is the one that checks first.

The rest is about the product. Choosing between Projects, research mode and artifacts. Knowing how Haiku, Sonnet and Opus differ on cost, speed and quality. Handling the context limit and knowing when to restart, summarize or save. Setting up Projects with instructions and files. Managing connectors such as Google Drive and Gmail. Fixing prompts that give poor results.

Does it count for your employer?

No, not for partner status. This is the one point where CCAO-F differs from the other three exams. Anthropic's certification FAQ lists the exams that count toward Claude Partner Network eligibility: Developer Foundations, Architect Foundations and Architect Professional. Claude Certified Associate is listed as an exam that does not count.

It still has value. It is the only exam in the program written for non-technical roles, and Anthropic describes certification in general as a signal to customers that a team has built a real Claude practice. But if the goal is to raise your company's standing in the Claude Partner Network, one of the three technical exams is the one to take.

One practical rule applies to all four exams. You must register with a work email on a domain that is recognized on your company's partner record. A certification earned on an unrecognized domain, including a subsidiary or regional domain, will not be credited to the partner account. Domain changes are made by partner-support@anthropic.com and take 7 to 10 days, so ask before you book. Companies can see their total number of certifications in the Partner Portal, updated weekly.

Preparation checklist

1. Start here

2. Study the 7 exam domains

3. Hands-on practice

4. Practice tests

360 CCAO-F practice questions, free

Domain quizzes, quick checks and the full 60-question timed simulator, weighted to the official blueprint. Every answer option carries its own explanation of why it is - or is not - correct, so a lucky guess reads the same as a wrong answer.

Open the CCAO-F question bank → Try 7 questions without an account →

The question bank is free. It asks for an account only because the quiz engine has to store answers to score them and show which domains are weak. The 7-question sample needs nothing.

Note on official practice material. The practice exam that ran on the old platform was retired when the program moved to Pearson VUE. The exam guide's sample questions are now the only official example of question style.

Registration, retakes and rules

Who can register. Certification is open only to people at Claude Partner Network organizations. Registration needs a partner work email on a recognized company domain. Personal email addresses do not work, and there is no public registration route.

Booking. Register and pay on the Partner Academy first, then use the emailed link to schedule with Pearson VUE, either online or at a test center. A registration stays valid for 5 years, so you can pay now and sit the exam later.

Price and discounts. Discounts follow your company's partner tier. Registered-tier partners pay full price. Select, Preferred and Global Premier partners get 50% off automatically at checkout. Through 31 August 2026, Global Premier partners get 100% off; after that date the standard 50% applies. Discounts also apply to retakes.

Cancelling. You can reschedule or cancel free of charge up to 24 hours before your appointment, with a full refund. Inside 24 hours, or if you do not show up, you lose the fee. Cancelling in Pearson VUE only frees the time slot; it does not issue a refund. To get money back, email certifications-support@anthropic.com.

Retake rules.

On exam day. Bring a valid, unexpired, government-issued photo ID. The name must match your registration exactly. To fix a name, email certifications-support@anthropic.com before you book. Your desk must be clear: no phone, watch, headphones, notes or second screen. Run Pearson's system test on the computer you will use. If a managed work device blocks the exam, take it at a test center instead. Ask for accommodations at least 10 days ahead. Full rules are in the certification policies.

Results and badge. You see your score on screen at the end. If you pass, Credly emails you an invitation to claim the badge, usually within minutes for online exams. Adding a personal email to your Credly profile keeps your badges if you change jobs.

Renewal. The credential lasts 12 months. Renewing on time means reviewing what has changed and taking a short free assessment on the Partner Academy, with no proctor and no fee. If you let it lapse, you sit the full exam again at full price.

Appeals. You can appeal within 14 days of being told about a decision, or within 14 days of your exam date for a concern about a result. Appeals go to Pearson VUE. Reporting a problem with a question never counts against you, but one disputed question does not by itself change a pass or fail.

References

Help keep this current

Exam guides get reissued, scenarios get swapped, and the people who know what a sitting is actually like are the ones who just had one. This page is meant to keep changing.

Already passed? Send what was worth knowing: a weighting that felt off, a topic the guide underplays, a detail that mattered on the day. Not exam questions - sharing those breaks the agreement you signed at registration, and it would make this page worthless as preparation anyway. Everything else helps whoever sits it next.

Still preparing? What is on this page comes from the official guide and from people who have actually sat the exam, not from a scrape. If something is unclear, or you hit something the guide does not answer, ask - the answer comes back onto the page, so the next reader gets it too.

Either way: admin@termidy.com.

This page is written from the official exam guide (version 1.0, effective July 2026) and the Anthropic Partner Academy FAQ, with input from people who have taken the exam.