Head to head
Cred Farmer vs Certified-Architect.com: which should you use?
Cred Farmer scores higher under every reader profile published here, but Certified-Architect.com still wins on specific criteria listed below.
Cred Farmer publishes this comparison and is one of the two platforms in it. Every figure below links to Certified-Architect.com's own page and carries the date we read it. The verdict is computed from published weightings, not written by us.
- The site publishes two different totals for its own question bank. The practice hub headlines "1424 Total Questions" — the same numeral appears on the Chinese mirror — while the homepage, pricing page, about page and llms.txt all say "1,374 practice questions", and that same practice hub's per-domain counts (319+216+255+270+314) sum to exactly 1,374. llms.txt adds a third figure at odds with the rest: "1,374 free practice questions, one per knowledge point, with explanations", against the site's own knowledge-point counts, which total 133.
- "Free" in the title, paid after seven days for practice. The homepage title reads "Claude Certified Architect (CCA-F) Mock Exam & Study Guide — Free | Claude Certified", while the terms state: "Certified Architect offers a 7-day free trial, after which continued access to study and practice features requires a one-time pass (Starter, Standard, or Lifetime)." The 165 articles genuinely are free to read; the question bank is free for seven days.
- The community page carries roughly 41 first-person posts attributed to named individuals and handles, six of them tagged "Success Story" and several reporting their authors' own exam scores, under the header: "Architectural wisdom and exam strategies shared by Claude Certified Architect candidates." Post titles include "Domain 3 Was My Best Score — Here's Why". None carries a date or a linked profile, the page offers no way to submit a post, and a placeholder string, "No posts in this category yet.", leaks into the rendered page. Treat these as endorsements you cannot verify.
- One item on the cheat sheet points the other way from the vendor's own documentation. The "Architect's Tip" block states: "Always use top_p for creative variability over temperature when working with structured data extraction." Anthropic's API documentation advises adjusting either temperature or top_p but not both, and low temperature for deterministic extraction.
Who wins, by what you need
Each row is that profile's published weighting applied to both platforms' criterion scores. Nothing here is hand-assigned — change the weights and the winners change.
| If you say… | Cred Farmer | Certified-Architect.com | Better fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Balanced overall | 82 | 57 | Cred Farmer |
| I want one system for all four exams | 84 | 56 | Cred Farmer |
| I only need one exam | 83 | 66 | Cred Farmer |
| I want the best free option | 83 | 69 | Cred Farmer |
| I learn from video or an instructor | 48 | 37 | Cred Farmer |
| My exam is in two weeks | 91 | 68 | Cred Farmer |
| I am preparing a team | 64 | 41 | Cred Farmer |
What each one is better at
Where Certified-Architect.com is stronger
- Every one of the 165 study-guide articles and the 40 blog posts renders in full to an anonymous visitor with no account and no paywall, so you can read the entire written syllabus and judge it before spending anything. One boundary worth knowing: once you hold an account without a pass, the site's access-gate script marks the study-guide and cheat-sheet navigation as gated, though direct article URLs remain open.
- The published structure is internally consistent and checkable end to end. Per-domain article counts sum to the stated 165, per-domain question counts sum to the stated 1,374, the sitemap contains exactly 165 English study-guide article URLs, and the mock samples 60 questions at the stated domain weights of 16/11/12/12/9.
- Articles are addressed to individual knowledge-point codes such as K1.1.1, S1.2.1 and F1-1, each resolving to a live URL and grouped under named task statements, so you can work the blueprint one code at a time rather than one chapter at a time.
- Independence is disclosed in six separate places — every page footer, a homepage FAQ entry, an about-page disclaimer, the pricing page, robots.txt and llms.txt — and the site states plainly that its questions are community-written and not real exam questions, and that its 90-minute mock clock is tighter than the 120 minutes it reports for the real exam. That second point runs against its own marketing interest.
- Commercial terms are small and one-off: $9.9, $19.9 or $29.9 passes with no auto-renewal, passes that stack onto the current expiry, a 7-day refund, and a full-access trial that asks for no card.
- The whole site is mirrored in Simplified Chinese — 229 English and 225 Chinese URLs in the sitemap, with only the payment, privacy, refund and terms pages unmirrored — so the articles, practice hub and mock are all available in both languages.
Where Cred Farmer is stronger
- Certification coverage: we score 5/5 against their 2/5.
- Diagnostics and personalisation: we score 5/5 against their 3/5.
- Retention system: we score 5/5 against their 3/5.
- Evidence and transparency: we score 4/5 against their 2/5.
- Structured learning: we score 4/5 against their 3/5.
- Mock-exam realism: we score 5/5 against their 4/5.
Feature by feature
Expand any cell to see the words we read and where we read them. If a link no longer says what we quote, the figure is out of date and we want to know.
| Cred Farmer | Certified-Architect.com | |
|---|---|---|
| Certifications covered | All four: CCAO-F, CCDV-F, CCAR-F and CCAR-P, in one account, with a study guide, question bank, mocks and flashcards for each.Evidence“Study guides mapped to every domain, four full mock exams per certification, spaced-repetition flashcards, and a readiness score that tracks you per domain.” | One exam only: Claude Certified Architect – Foundations, which the site brands CCA-F and gives the exam code CCAR-F. It covers the five published domains at their stated weights. The FAQ names CCAO-F, CCAR-P and CCDV-F and says the site currently focuses on Architect – Foundations, so candidates for those three get nothing here.Evidence“CCA-F (exam code CCAR-F) is Anthropic's foundational certification for people who design and build solutions on Claude. It covers five domains: Agentic Architecture & Orchestration (27%), Tool Design & MCP Integration (18%), Claude Code Configuration & Workflows (20%), Prompt Engineering & Structured Output (20%), and Context Management & Reliability (15%).” |
| Practice questions | 1,180 across the four banks — 300 CCAO-F, 265 CCDV-F, 300 CCAR-F, 315 CCAR-P. Roughly 300 per exam, which is mid-table here rather than the deepest bank.Evidence“1,180 Practice questions” | 1,374 practice questions. The figure is published on the homepage, the pricing page, the about page and llms.txt, and it equals the sum of the five per-domain counts on the practice hub (319+216+255+270+314). The practice hub itself headlines a different total, 1424 — the same numeral appears on the Simplified Chinese mirror — which is 50 higher than that page's own domain breakdown. The site describes the bank as domain-mapped, carrying explanations, and one question per knowledge point, though its own published knowledge-point counts total 133, so that last description cannot be literally true. The bank sits behind the account wall, so the granularity of those explanations could not be inspected.Evidence“One pass unlocks the whole site: 165 study-guide articles, 1,374 practice questions, unlimited mock exams, and your personal mistake book. 7-day free trial, then pay once — nothing auto-renews.” |
| Study material | 119 study sections mapped to the published exam objectives, plus ten written hands-on labs and a 120-card rapid-recall deck per certification. Written material only — no video and no instructor.Evidence“119 Study sections” | 165 study-guide articles, addressed to individual knowledge-point codes (K1.1.1, S1.2.1, F1-1) and grouped by domain under named task statements. The count is corroborated three ways: the about page states 165, the study hub's per-domain counts (32+30+21+26+25+31) sum to 165, and the sitemap contains exactly 165 English study-guide article URLs. Alongside them: 40 blog posts, a cheat sheet, a Foundations primer and a community page. The whole site is mirrored in Simplified Chinese — 229 English and 225 Chinese URLs, 454 in total.Evidence“Read 165 articles organized by domain. Track your reading progress and pick up where you left off.” |
| Full-length timed mocks | 20 full-length timed papers — five per certification, each at the real exam's item count and 120-minute clock (60 / 53 / 60 / 63 items). Four are scenario mock exams and the fifth is an objective mastery challenge at the same length. Note our own pages count these differently: /certifications says "four full mock exams per certification", which counts the mocks and not the mastery paper.Evidence“20 Timed mock exams” | One full-length timed mock format, with unlimited sittings on a paid pass. Each sitting is 60 questions in 90 minutes against a 72% pass mark, sampled across the five domains at the published weights (16/11/12/12/9), with question flagging and auto-submit on expiry. Papers are generated from the bank and randomised by domain weight and difficulty rather than published as distinct fixed papers, and the site itself notes its 90-minute clock is tighter than the 120 minutes it reports for the real exam.Evidence“Full 60-question simulation with 90-minute time limit. Questions sampled across all 5 domains by official weight. Pass mark: 72%.” |
| Flashcards | Yes — a 120-card rapid-recall deck per certification, served through a spaced-repetition drill rather than as a static list.Evidence“Flashcard drills resurface each concept right before you'd forget it.” | No flashcard feature is published. /flashcards, /flashcards/ and /cca-f-flashcards/ all return 404, no flashcard, card or Anki URL appears among the 454 sitemap entries, and the feature list the terms page gives for the site omits them.Evidence“It offers a 7-day free trial and one-time paid passes (see Payments and refunds below). The site offers practice questions, knowledge articles, mock exams, progress tracking, and a community space.” |
| Spaced repetition | Yes — an SM-2 scheduler, scheduling each card individually from a four-way rating, with lapses requeued inside the same session.Evidence“Study guides mapped to every domain, four full mock exams per certification, spaced-repetition flashcards, and a readiness score that tracks you per domain.” | No spaced-repetition scheduler or interval-based recall is advertised on any public page. Review is a manual mistake book: wrong answers are saved and the learner marks them mastered. An account-gated /study-plan route exists that redirects to login and could not be inspected, so this describes the published surface rather than everything behind the account wall.Evidence“Every wrong answer is saved. Review explanations, mark questions as mastered, and link back to study materials.” |
| Diagnostics | Objective-level mastery tracking with weak-domain routing: a missed question feeds a targeted drill by objective, by domain, or from your own misses, ordered confidently-wrong first.Evidence“Study guides mapped to every domain, four full mock exams per certification, spaced-repetition flashcards, and a readiness score that tracks you per domain.” | No diagnostic or placement assessment is advertised on any public page. What is published is after-the-fact: a progress dashboard carrying exam scores, reading progress and per-domain performance, a mistake book that links wrong answers back to study materials, and practice modes including Quick Practice, Advanced Practice, Redo Mistakes and per-domain practice. A /study-plan route exists but is account-gated — it returns a 302 to /auth/login, is disallowed in robots.txt and is absent from both the sitemap and llms.txt — so what it does could not be verified.Evidence“Track your exam scores, reading progress, domain performance, and set your target exam date.” |
| Readiness / adaptive path | A per-certification readiness score. Performance is 60% and preparation 40%, but an evidence gate caps the total: if your mock scores sit below the pass mark, preparation cannot lift you past "almost ready" however much you read. Only the first sitting of each distinct paper counts, drills and self-rated confidence are excluded, and a study section is only marked complete when you answer its checkpoint questions correctly — there is no "mark as complete" button.Evidence“Our readiness engine calculates a precise, real-time score based on your study history and mock test performance.” | No adaptive difficulty and no readiness score is advertised publicly. Selection is explicitly random: domain practice serves one random question per knowledge point with different questions each sitting, and the mock randomises by domain weight and difficulty. No public page describes question selection responding to the learner's performance. The account-gated /study-plan route was not inspected.Evidence“Different questions each time you practice” |
| Free tier | Everything is free during open beta — all four certifications, every study section, every mock and every drill. An account is required.Evidence“Right now, Cred Farmer is completely free while we are in open beta.” | Two separate free surfaces. All 165 study-guide articles and 40 blog posts render in full to anonymous visitors — no account, no paywall, verified end to end on sampled articles. Practice, mock exams, the mistake book and progress tracking sit behind a 7-day full-access trial that needs an account but no card. One boundary: for a signed-in user holding no pass, the site's own access-gate script marks the study-guide and cheat-sheet navigation as gated, so direct article URLs stay open while in-app navigation to them does not.Evidence“Every account gets a 7-day free trial — no card required.” |
| Price | $0 while in open beta. No paid tier is published, and no pricing is announced for after the beta.Evidence“Free while in open beta.” | Three one-time passes, nothing auto-renewing: Starter $9.9 for 6 months, Standard $19.9 for 12 months (marked "Most popular"), and Lifetime $29.9 forever including all updates. Passes stack — a new pass adds its duration to the current expiry — and a full refund is available within 7 days by email.Evidence“Start with a 7-day full-access trial — no card required. After that, one-time passes from $9.9; nothing auto-renews.” |
| Account required | Yes for study, practice and mocks — a free account via Google or GitHub sign-in. The blog, the certification guides and this comparison are open with no account.Evidence“To maximize security, we only use OAuth (Google and GitHub).” | Split. Study-guide articles and blog posts are readable with no account at all. Practice, mock exams, the mistake book, progress tracking and /study-plan require one — those routes redirect to /auth/login. Sign-in offers Google alongside email and password: the Google button is client-hydrated from a live /api/auth/providers call that returns {"google":true}, so it is absent from the server-rendered HTML but present on the page a real browser loads. The terms require a working email address.Evidence“You must provide a real email address so that password reset still works.” |
| Team support | Not published | Not published |
| States independence from Anthropic | Yes — stated in the footer of every page and repeated on the certification pages.Evidence“Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Anthropic or Pearson VUE.” | Stated in six separate places: the footer of every page, a dedicated homepage FAQ entry, a Disclaimer block on the about page, the pricing page, robots.txt and llms.txt, with an outbound link to Anthropic Academy as the vendor's own channel. The site also states outright that its questions are written by the community and are not real exam questions, and that its 90-minute mock clock is tighter than the real exam's.Evidence“Independent fan site built by the community to help candidates prepare for the Claude certification. Not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Anthropic. Claude is a trademark of Anthropic, PBC.” |
Which to choose
Choose Certified-Architect.com if…
- You are sitting CCAR-F and want to read the complete written syllabus — 165 knowledge-point articles — before creating any account. Cred Farmer's material is free but sits behind a signup, so you cannot evaluate it first the way you can here.
- You study in Simplified Chinese. The entire site is mirrored, articles, practice hub and mock alike, at 225 Chinese URLs. Cred Farmer publishes in English only.
- You want study material addressed to one knowledge-point code at a time (K1.1.1, S1.2.1) so you can tick the blueprint off code by code. Cred Farmer organises its curriculum as domain chapters, which is a coarser unit to work through.
- You want a one-off purchase you own outright with no account dependency for the reading material — $29.9 lifetime, nothing auto-renewing, passes that stack — rather than access that depends on keeping an account with us.
Choose Cred Farmer if…
- You expect to sit more than one Claude certification and would rather not rebuild your study setup for each.
- You have booked an exam and want an honest read on whether you would pass, from a score that will not flatter you for reading more.
- You want spaced repetition and objective-level weak-area routing without paying for them.
- You want the full preparation loop — study, timed mocks, retention and diagnosis — in one place rather than assembled from three free sites.
What Certified-Architect.com does not offer
- Covers one certification only. CCAR-F is supported; the FAQ names CCAO-F, CCAR-P and CCDV-F and states the site currently focuses on Architect – Foundations.
- No flashcards. /flashcards, /flashcards/ and /cca-f-flashcards/ all return 404, no flashcard or Anki URL appears among the 454 sitemap entries, and the terms page's own feature list omits them.
- No spaced-repetition scheduler is advertised. Review is a manual mistake book in which the learner marks items mastered, with no interval scheduling published.
- No adaptive difficulty and no automatic weak-area routing is advertised. Domain practice serves a random question per knowledge point, and re-review is manually triggered through Redo Mistakes and the mistake book rather than scheduled for you.
- No diagnostic or placement assessment is advertised on any public page. An account-gated /study-plan route exists — it redirects to login, is disallowed in robots.txt and is absent from the sitemap — and could not be inspected, so what it offers is unknown rather than confirmed absent.
- No team, enterprise or multi-seat offering of any kind. Pricing is three individual passes, and the sitemap contains no team, seat, business or organisation URL.
- The mock runs a 90-minute clock against the 120 minutes the site itself reports for the real exam, and sittings are generated from the bank rather than published as distinct fixed papers.
- Practice, mocks, the mistake book and progress tracking all require an account; only the written corpus is readable anonymously.
Observable gaps in what the site publishes, not judgements about quality. We have run no blind review of anyone's questions, including our own, so nothing here compares how good the content is — only what each platform offers.
Sources
- https://certified-architect.com/ — Homepage FAQ giving the CCA-F / CCAR-F exam code, the five domains and their weights, the single-exam scope, and the footer non-affiliation notice.
- https://certified-architect.com/pricing/ — Pass ladder, the no-card 7-day trial, the 1,374-question figure and the independence line.
- https://certified-architect.com/about/ — 165 articles, mistake tracking, progress dashboard with domain performance and target exam date, the price summary and the disclaimer block.
- https://certified-architect.com/cca-f-practice-questions/ — Mock specification (60 questions, 90 minutes, 72% pass mark, weighted sampling), the practice modes, and the conflicting "1424 Total Questions" headline.
- https://certified-architect.com/cca-f-practice-questions/domain/1/ — Per-domain practice: one random question per knowledge point, different questions each sitting.
- https://certified-architect.com/cca-f-study-guide/ — Study-guide hub with per-domain article counts, knowledge-point counts and exam weights.
- https://certified-architect.com/terms/ — The site's own feature enumeration, the real-email requirement, the paywall after the trial, and community authorship of the questions.
- https://certified-architect.com/community/ — The ~41 attributed first-person posts, the six "Success Story" tags and the leaked empty-category placeholder.
- https://certified-architect.com/cca-f-cheat-sheet/ — The "Architect's Tip" block containing the top_p guidance.
- https://certified-architect.com/auth/login — Sign-in page; the Google button is hydrated client-side from /api/auth/providers, which returns {"google":true}.
- https://certified-architect.com/llms.txt — The "1,374 free practice questions, one per knowledge point" line, the 40-post blog count and the non-affiliation statement.
- https://certified-architect.com/robots.txt — The non-affiliation comment and the disallow entries for /study-plan, /profile and /mistakes.
- https://certified-architect.com/sitemap-0.xml — 454 URLs: 229 English and 225 Chinese, including exactly 165 English study-guide articles and 40 blog posts, and no flashcard or team URL.
All read on 3 September 2026. Found something wrong? Email hello@credfarmer.com and it will be corrected.
Common questions
Is Certified-Architect.com better than Cred Farmer?
Cred Farmer scores higher under every reader profile published here, but Certified-Architect.com still wins on specific criteria listed below. Under the balanced weighting, Certified-Architect.com scores 57 and Cred Farmer scores 82 out of 100. The weightings are published and adjustable, so the honest answer depends on which exam you are sitting and what you can spend.
Is this comparison independent?
No. Cred Farmer publishes it and is one of the two platforms in it. That is why the rubric is published, every figure links to Certified-Architect.com's own pages with the date it was checked, and the verdict above is computed from those published weightings rather than written by us.
Is Certified-Architect.com an official Anthropic product?
No. Neither is Cred Farmer. Anthropic publishes the exam guides and Pearson VUE delivers the exams; every platform in this comparison is independent of both.
How current are these figures?
Everything here was read on Certified-Architect.com's own site on 3 September 2026. Prices, question counts and free tiers change without notice — follow the source links before you rely on a figure, and email hello@credfarmer.com if you find one out of date.
Other comparisons
Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Anthropic or Pearson VUE.