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All four Claude certifications · updated 2026-09-28

Claude Certifications Compared: Architect, Associate and Developer exams side by side

All four Claude certifications compared - CCAR-F, CCAR-P, CCAO-F and CCDV-F. Questions, time, pass mark, domains, who each exam is for, and which one to take first.

An independent community resource - not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic. Exam facts are transcribed from the four official exam guides (Version 1.0, July 2026).

The four exams at a glance

Anthropic's Claude Certification Program has four credentials. Three are Foundations exams for three different roles; the fourth is the Professional exam for architects. Foundations and Professional are parallel tracks, not steps: you can sit the Professional exam without holding the Foundations one.

Every exam is 120 minutes, scored on a 100 to 1,000 scale with a pass mark of 720, valid for 12 months, delivered by Pearson VUE online or at a test centre, and open only to people at Anthropic partner organisations who register with a work email. The differences are in what they test and who they are for.

Which exam should you take?

You use Claude at work but do not write code. Operations, marketing, project management, education, communications, support. Take Claude Certified Associate - Foundations (CCAO-F). It tests how you prompt, how you check Claude's answers, which product and model to use, how to set up Projects and connectors, and responsible use. No API, no code. It is the one exam that does not count toward partner-network eligibility, which matters to your employer, not to you.

You build applications on the Claude API. You write Python or TypeScript, you have shipped something that calls the Messages API, and you know what a tool call is. Take Claude Certified Developer - Foundations (CCDV-F). Its biggest domain, Applications and Integration, is a third of the exam; the rest covers agents, Claude Code, evaluation, model selection, prompting, security and MCP.

You design systems with Claude and decide the trade-offs. You have six months or more of hands-on work with the Agent SDK, Claude Code and MCP, and you choose between architectures rather than implementing one. Take Claude Certified Architect - Foundations (CCAR-F). It is the oldest exam, the most detail-heavy, and the only one built from scenarios. Our free CCAR-F study guide covers every task statement.

You are a senior architect responsible for enterprise implementations. Governance, integration at scale, evaluation programmes, stakeholder communication, lifecycle management. Take Claude Certified Architect - Professional (CCAR-P). Despite the name, many candidates find its questions broader and less detail-bound than Foundations.

A decision path

1. Do you write code against the Claude API? If no, CCAO-F. If yes, continue.
2. Do you mostly build features, or mostly design systems and choose between approaches? Features: CCDV-F. Design: continue.
3. Is your work about one system's architecture, or about programmes, governance and organisations? One system: CCAR-F. Programmes: CCAR-P.
4. Not sure between CCAR-F and CCAR-P? Read the six CCAR-F scenarios. If they describe your day, take CCAR-F first.

How the four differ in content

CCAO-F is the only exam about using Claude rather than building with it. Output evaluation alone is 21% of it: can you spot an invented fact, when does a human need to review the result. Prompting is only 14%.

CCDV-F has eight domains and the most uneven weights in the programme: Applications and Integration is 33.1%, while Claude Code is 3.1% and Eval, Testing and Debugging is 2.6%. Study time should follow the weights.

CCAR-F has five domains and 30 task statements, and every question sits inside one of six published scenarios, four of which appear on your exam. Agentic Architecture and Orchestration is 27%, the largest single domain in any Claude exam.

CCAR-P has seven domains, none above 19%: solution design, prompting and context engineering, integration, evaluation, governance and safety, stakeholder communication, developer productivity.

Registration and rules, identical across all four

• Eligibility. Anthropic Partner Network organisations only. Register with a work email on a recognised company domain; personal addresses do not work.
• Booking. Register and pay on the Anthropic Partner Academy, then schedule with Pearson VUE. Cancel or reschedule up to 24 hours before the appointment.
• Retakes. 14 days after a first fail, 30 after a second, 90 after a third. Up to four attempts per rolling 12 months, per exam.
• Renewal. Credentials last 12 months. Renew on time with a free, non-proctored assessment; lapse, and it is the full exam again.
• Fees. Set by Anthropic and discounted by partner tier, so the list price is not what most candidates pay. The exact figures are on each certification's page in the Partner Academy.

Every one of these rules is covered in more detail on the individual exam pages: CCAR-F, CCAR-P, CCAO-F, CCDV-F.

Free preparation here

• Study guides. Lessons mapped to every official task statement, starting with the CCAR-F study guide. More tracks are in preparation; see all study guides.
• Practice questions. 1,068 across the four exams, every answer option explained. The samples on each exam page need no account; the full banks and timed simulators need one, only so the quiz engine can score you.
• Articles. Study plans, scoring, registration and exam-day advice.

Frequently asked questions