Head to head
Cred Farmer vs ClaudeArchitectGuide.com: which should you use?
Cred Farmer scores higher under every reader profile published here, but ClaudeArchitectGuide.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 ClaudeArchitectGuide.com's own page and carries the date we read it. The verdict is computed from published weightings, not written by us.
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 | ClaudeArchitectGuide.com | Better fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Balanced overall | 82 | 69 | Cred Farmer |
| I want one system for all four exams | 84 | 71 | Cred Farmer |
| I only need one exam | 83 | 69 | Cred Farmer |
| I want the best free option | 83 | 78 | Cred Farmer |
| I learn from video or an instructor | 48 | 41 | Cred Farmer |
| My exam is in two weeks | 91 | 77 | Cred Farmer |
| I am preparing a team | 64 | 56 | Cred Farmer |
What each one is better at
Where ClaudeArchitectGuide.com is stronger
- Everything is free with no account whatsoever: every question, every practice mode and the full progress view are open on first visit, and the site states in its own FAQ that there is no paid tier and nothing is held back.
- The CCAR-F mock publishes its exact sampling rather than asserting realism — 65 items in 120 minutes drawn 17/12/13/13/10 across the five blueprint-weighted domains, stratified so that, in the site's words, "every objective contributes an item before any contributes a second, which is what stops a 65-item form leaving whole objectives untouched."
- The readiness figure is gated on measured performance: the timed mock is the only mode that feeds it, and the one long explained mode is excluded from it by name — "The extended run reveals the key after every answer, so its score is not a readiness signal and does not appear as one."
- Practice for CCAR-F goes well beyond a single bank: a guided 65-item untimed run with rationales, a 120-item extended run, a 21-item quick quiz, a 30-item deck targeted at your weakest objectives, 5 domain drills and 30 per-objective drills, all free.
- Exam facts are sourced and dated rather than asserted — the price table records that "Prices were last checked against Anthropic's own certification FAQ on 13 August 2026", and where no figure is published the site prints that instead of inventing one.
- The published pool structure reconciles: per-domain counts (54/36/40/40/30) and per-objective counts both sum to the stated 200, and the mock's 17/12/13/13/10 draw tracks the published domain weights.
- Value and access: scores 5/5 against our 4/5.
Where Cred Farmer is stronger
- Retention system: we score 5/5 against their 3/5.
- Certification coverage: we score 5/5 against their 4/5.
- Structured learning: we score 4/5 against their 3/5.
- Practice depth: 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 | ClaudeArchitectGuide.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.” | Practice banks for three of the four Claude exams — CCAR-P, CCAR-F and CCDV-F — 600 questions across 93 objectives. CCAO-F (Associate) is described on the /certifications reference page but has no practice bank.Evidence“Three of the four: CCAR-P, CCAR-F, CCDV-F.” |
| 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” | 200 original CCAR-F questions tagged to all 30 blueprint objectives across 5 domains. Per-domain pools are published (54/36/40/40/30, summing to 200) and per-objective counts are published for all 30 objectives, ranging 5 to 8 each. Site-wide total is 600 across the three banks.Evidence“200 original questions for the CCAR-F exam, tagged to every one of the 30 objectives in its published blueprint, with a 65-item timed mock on the real 120-minute clock and a score report that grades you objective by objective.” |
| 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” | Objective mapping for CCAR-F is detailed: a domain-weight table, per-objective question counts, one flashcards page holding 30 objective cards, 5 domain drills and 30 per-objective drills. Long-form study material is CCAR-P only — the site's single study guide (/guide) is the CCAR-P guide, four of the five blog articles are CCAR-P-titled and the fifth compares all four exams. The site states the limitation itself.Evidence“only the Professional Architect blueprint is covered in depth anywhere on this site.” |
| 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” | A 65-item timed mock on a 120-minute clock, nothing revealed until submit, scored on a 100-1000 scale against the 720 cut. The draw is stratified by objective inside blueprint-weighted domains (D1 17, D2 12, D3 13, D4 13, D5 10) and redrawn from the 200-item pool each sitting, with unlimited repeats and a countdown that runs against the wall clock so a sitting can be resumed. Four further non-mock forms exist: a guided 65-item untimed run with rationales, a 120-item extended run, a 21-item quick quiz and a 30-item targeted deck.Evidence“A full-length Foundations practice exam under real conditions: 65 questions in 120 minutes, drawn in the same domain proportions as the published CCAR-F blueprint, with nothing revealed until you submit.” |
| 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.” | 30 cards, one per CCAR-F objective, in blueprint order on a single page, each linking to that objective's practice questions. They are a read-only reference rather than a self-test: the answer side is always visible, so there is no flip-and-grade loop.Evidence“answers are shown, not hidden.” |
| 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 scheduling is published: no intervals, no review-due dates and no SRS algorithm appears on any page checked. The nearest mechanic is the mistakes deck, ordered oldest-miss-first, which retires an item after two correct answers in a row.Evidence“Mistakes deck Everything you have got wrong, oldest miss first. Two clean answers retire an item.” |
| 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 separate diagnostic mode or placement test. The cold timed mock is explicitly positioned as the diagnostic and the recommended first step, and it returns a score report that grades you objective by objective; the 21-item quick quiz is offered as a shorter temperature check.Evidence“Sitting a mock cold is a diagnostic.” |
| 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.” | A readiness figure exists and is gated on measured performance: only the timed mock feeds it, because every other mode reveals the key, and the 120-item extended run is excluded by name. Adaptive selection is limited to a 30-item targeted deck drawn from your weakest objectives; no adaptive item difficulty or IRT is claimed.Evidence“The timed mock is the only CCAR-F mode that feeds a readiness figure.” |
| 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.” | Everything is free, and not as a free tier over a paid product: the site states there is no paid tier at all and nothing is held back. No /pricing page exists (HTTP 404). The one page that could plausibly have hidden a paid product, /courses, is a reference page comparing Anthropic's free courses with its paid certifications.Evidence“All of it. Every question, every practice mode and the whole progress view are free with no account and no sign-up. There is no paid tier and nothing is held back.” |
| 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.” | $0. No paid product, no upsell and no pricing page — /pricing returns HTTP 404. The dollar figures that appear on the site ($99 to $175) are Anthropic's own exam fees, not this site's.Evidence“Free, and yours alone. No account, no sign-up, and your answers stay in this browser.” |
| 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).” | No. There is no account, no sign-up and no login route at all. Every mode including the full progress view is reachable on first visit; progress is written to the browser's local storage, kept separately per exam, and never uploaded.Evidence“In your browser's local storage, per exam.” |
| Team support | Not published | None. No teams, seats, cohorts, manager dashboard or organisation billing appears on any page checked, and the architecture rules it out: there is no account system and all state is per-browser. /teams, /login, /signup and /account all return a real HTTP 404.Evidence“Your answers, scores and bookmarks are written to this browser's local storage and are never uploaded.” |
| 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.” | Prominent and repeated: a dedicated homepage FAQ answer, a 'Free · unofficial · no sign-up' badge above the fold, and a sitewide footer disclaimer on every page stating no affiliation, that the questions are original rather than recalled from a sitting, and that data stays in the browser. The author is named (Junaid Muhammad) with LinkedIn and GitHub links.Evidence“No. This is an independent, unofficial study resource with no affiliation with, sponsorship by, or endorsement from Anthropic.” |
Which to choose
Choose ClaudeArchitectGuide.com if…
- You want to start practising in the next minute without creating an account. Cred Farmer is free but puts every question behind a Google or GitHub sign-in; this site has no login route at all, and the full progress view works on first visit.
- You do not want a study record on somebody else's server. Answers, scores and bookmarks are written to your browser's local storage and are never uploaded, where Cred Farmer stores your progress server-side against an account.
- You are revising on a locked-down, shared or work machine where you cannot or would rather not sign in to a third-party service — nothing here requires an identity.
- You have already worked through a fixed set of mock papers and want fresh forms rather than re-sitting the same ones: the CCAR-F mock is redrawn from the 200-item pool on every sitting with unlimited repeats, while Cred Farmer ships five fixed papers per exam that you can exhaust.
- You want to see exactly how a mock is sampled before you trust its score — the per-domain draw and the objective-rotation rule are both published, item by item.
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 ClaudeArchitectGuide.com does not offer
- Publishes no CCAO-F practice bank — the Associate exam is described on the certifications reference page only.
- Publishes no CCAR-F study guide; the site's single long-form guide covers CCAR-P, and the site says so itself.
- Publishes no spaced-repetition scheduling and no scheduled review across the syllabus — the mistakes deck is the only re-serve mechanic.
- The 30 CCAR-F flashcards display their answers rather than hiding them, so there is no flip-and-grade self-test loop.
- No account means no cross-device sync and no recovery: progress lives only in the local browser, and clearing browser data clears it permanently.
- No team, seat, cohort or manager-reporting features of any kind; /teams and /login return HTTP 404.
- Publishes one mock format per exam page rather than a set of separate fixed papers — repeat sittings are fresh draws from the same 200-item pool.
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://claudearchitectguide.com — Homepage: coverage of three of the four exams, the 600-question / 93-objective site total, the no-paid-tier and no-sign-up statements, and the independence FAQ answer.
- https://claudearchitectguide.com/ccar-f — CCAR-F hub: the 200-question bank tagged to 30 objectives, the domain-weight table and per-objective counts, the mistakes-deck mechanic, and the local-storage and no-sign-up statement.
- https://claudearchitectguide.com/ccar-f/exam — Timed mock specification (65 items / 120 minutes / blueprint-proportioned draw / nothing revealed until submit), the mock-as-diagnostic framing, and the readiness gating.
- https://claudearchitectguide.com/ccar-f/flashcards — The single flashcards page holding 30 objective cards, and its statement that answers are shown rather than hidden.
- https://claudearchitectguide.com/ccar-f/extended — The 120-item extended run and its explicit exclusion from the readiness figure.
- https://claudearchitectguide.com/certifications — Reference table covering all four exams, the dated price sourcing and 'not published' policy, and the concession that only the Professional Architect blueprint is covered in depth.
- https://claudearchitectguide.com/guide — The site's only long-form study guide, titled for Claude Certified Architect — Professional, establishing that the long-form material is CCAR-P.
- https://claudearchitectguide.com/sitemap.xml — 138 URLs; per-objective drill URLs counted independently to confirm 30 (CCAR-F) + 38 (CCAR-P) + 25 (CCDV-F) = 93 objectives, and the absence of any CCAO-F bank.
All read on 3 September 2026. Found something wrong? Email hello@credfarmer.com and it will be corrected.
Common questions
Is ClaudeArchitectGuide.com better than Cred Farmer?
Cred Farmer scores higher under every reader profile published here, but ClaudeArchitectGuide.com still wins on specific criteria listed below. Under the balanced weighting, ClaudeArchitectGuide.com scores 69 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 ClaudeArchitectGuide.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 ClaudeArchitectGuide.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 ClaudeArchitectGuide.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.
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Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Anthropic or Pearson VUE.