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Claude Certified Architect, Professional (CCAR-P)

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 Architect, Professional (exam code CCAR-P) is the only Professional-level exam in Anthropic's Claude certification program, and the most expensive of the four. It tests judgment rather than implementation. The objectives ask you to evaluate, analyze and justify design choices, not to recall command options or file paths.

Despite the name, it is not a next step after Architect Foundations. CCAR-F is not required, and the two are separate certifications: Anthropic describes Foundations as proof that an architect can build with Claude, and Professional as proof that they can design and govern Claude solutions at enterprise scale. 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
CCAR-P
Questions
63, 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. CCAR-F is not required, and it does not upgrade to this one automatically.
Language
English only. Browser translation tools are not allowed during the exam.
Exam guide
Version 1.0, effective July 2026
Practice questions here
189, free, every answer option explained

“Professional” describes how senior the target reader is, not a ladder you must climb. You can sit this exam without holding any other Claude certification. The exam is closed book: no notes, no documentation, no AI assistants.

Who it is for

The guide targets mid-level to senior practitioners in an architect role: solution architects, AI and ML engineers, technical leads and senior engineers who turn business problems into scalable AI solutions. It suggests 3+ years in systems architecture or platform engineering, 6+ months hands-on with Claude or similar systems in production, and experience delivering whole systems from first discovery through to running them live.

The profile includes the non-technical half of the architect job: talking to stakeholders, advising clients, leading design decisions, and handling security, legal and executive conversations. Two of the seven domains, 21% of the exam, are about communication and lifecycle rather than technology.

It rules out entry-level developers, casual users, and people who have never designed a whole AI system.

What the exam covers

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
3Integration19%~1236
1Solution Design and Architecture17%~1133
4Evaluation, Testing and Optimization16%~1030
5Governance, Safety and Risk Management14%~927
6Stakeholder Communication and Lifecycle Management14%~927
2Claude Models, Prompting and Context Engineering13%~824
7Developer Productivity and Operational Enablement7%~412
Total100%63189

This is the flattest set of weights in the program. Nothing is above 19%, nothing below 7%. No domain can be safely ignored, and none dominates.

Integration, the heaviest, is where the concrete engineering sits. It covers RAG pipelines: how to chunk and index, and how to match the retrieval strategy to the shape of the data and the kind of query. It also covers the choice between MCP, API/CLI and agent-to-agent protocols. Then three things that are easy to skip: spotting capability bloat in tool and agent setup, finding gaps in authentication and authorization, and picking a way to monitor a system at scale.

The clearest signal about this exam is the verbs in its objectives. Where CCAR-F says “implement” and “configure”, this guide says evaluate, analyze, justify, select and diagnose. Domain 6 asks you to run structured discovery, explain trade-offs, manage stakeholder expectations including SLAs, and document an architecture. Domain 5 names GDPR, HIPAA and FedRAMP, human-in-the-loop validation, and bias, fairness and transparency.

On format, this is the only exam in the program reported to use three question types: standard multiple choice, multiple response (usually two correct out of five), and a scenario-matching style with dropdowns.

There is no official practice exam for this certification, and the guide holds exactly three sample questions for a 63-question exam across seven domains. That is less official signal about question style than anywhere else in the program.

Does it count for your employer?

Yes. Anthropic's certification FAQ lists Architect Professional as one of the three exams that count toward Claude Partner Network eligibility, together with Architect Foundations and Developer Foundations. Claude Certified Associate is the one exam that does not count.

Certification adds to your company's standing in the Claude Partner Network and signals to customers that the team has built a real Claude practice. Companies can see their total number of certifications in the Partner Portal, updated weekly.

One practical rule. 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.

Preparation checklist

1. Start here

2. Study the 7 exam domains - all are close in size

3. Hands-on practice - be ready to justify a choice, not recall a setting

4. Practice tests

189 CCAR-P practice questions, free

Timed practice sets and the full 63-question 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 CCAR-P 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.

With only three official sample questions and no official practice exam, a practice set is the main way to find out where you stand before booking the most expensive exam in the program.

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. This is the costliest no-show in the program. 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 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.