Claude Certification Guide
A Claude certification study plan for each exam, week by week
A Claude certification study plan is a calendar with something to show at the end of every week: a course finished, a thing built, a set of questions answered. Here it is for CCAO-F, CCDV-F, CCAR-F and CCAR-P at three experience levels, with the mock placed where it tells you something.
How to prepare for Claude certification: the shape of every week
Every week of a Claude certification study plan on this page has the same three parts, whichever exam you sit. A course: one Anthropic Academy title, finished, not started. A build: one small artefact that exercises the week's objectives in your own tools, because every exam guide says to prepare by building. Questions: a domain-filtered set on the no-account runner, and from the middle of the plan a full timed paper. Domains are grouped by the official weights in each v1.0 exam guide, so the heaviest domain gets the most days and a 3 percent domain gets an afternoon.
Course titles are as listed on the Anthropic Academy and the Partner Academy prep-courses page on 17 September 2026. Catalogues change; if a title has moved, search for it rather than skipping the week. A prep-path module is visible only behind a partner sign-in; the public Academy course for the same domain is the substitute.
Claude certification study plan by experience level
Pick the row that describes you honestly. Each exam guide publishes a recommended experience: regular professional use of Claude for CCAO-F; one to five years of software engineering and six months with Claude or a comparable model for CCDV-F; six months building with the API, the Agent SDK and Claude Code for CCAR-F; three years of architecture or platform work plus six months in production for CCAR-P. Meeting it puts you in the practitioner row, which the week tables below are written to.
| Level | Fits | Hours a week | CCAO-F | CCDV-F | CCAR-F | CCAR-P |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Newcomer | Occasional Claude use; below the guide's recommended experience | 6 to 8 | 6 weeks | 8 weeks | 8 weeks | 10 weeks |
| Practitioner | Meets the exam guide's recommended experience | 4 to 6 | 4 weeks | 5 weeks | 5 weeks | 6 weeks |
| Experienced | Daily production work with Claude, or a recent credential | 6 to 8, compressed | 2 weeks | 3 weeks | 3 weeks | 3 weeks |
Weeks are this page's estimate from each guide's domain count, weights and build list, not an official figure. Anthropic publishes no study-hour guidance and guarantees no resource.
CCAO-F week by week
Claude Certified Associate - Foundations: 60 items, 120 minutes, 720 to pass. 4 weeks at practitioner pace; the no-account CCAO-F mock supplies every question column below.
| Week | Domains (official weight) | Course to finish | Build | Questions and mocks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Prompting and Task Execution (14%) and Output Evaluation and Validation (21%) | Claude 101; AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations | A Project with instructions for one recurring task, and a checklist that verifies one output against its source | Baseline: the 30-item quick mode in untimed review; log every miss by domain |
| 2 | Product and Model Selection (12%) and Workflow Integration and Solution Design (16%) | Introduction to Claude Cowork; AI Capabilities and Limitations | A map of one team workflow: where Claude sits, where a person checks, which surface each step uses | 20 items on domains 3 and 4 through the domain filter; retest week 1 misses |
| 3 | Configuration and Knowledge Management (12%) and Governance, Risk, and Responsible Use (15%) | The configuration and governance modules of the Associate prep path | A Project knowledge set with a written rule for the data that may never be pasted in | The full no-account mock, timed: 60 items in 120 minutes; each miss becomes a one-line rule |
| 4 | Troubleshooting and Optimization (10%), then the two weakest domains again | None; re-read the guide's objectives against your error log | Fix one underperforming prompt from your own work and record what changed | The gated aligned forms on the clock; confirm the booking; stop the day before |
Newcomer. Six weeks: two weeks of Claude 101 and daily use before week 1, and the timed mock moves to week 5. Experienced. The two-week plan: domains in the first eight days, the timed mock on day 9, then repair and the gated forms.
CCDV-F week by week
Claude Certified Developer - Foundations: 53 items, 120 minutes, 720 to pass. 5 weeks at practitioner pace; the no-account CCDV-F mock supplies every question column below.
| Week | Domains (official weight) | Course to finish | Build | Questions and mocks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Applications and Integration, first half (33.1% overall) | Claude Platform 101; Building with the Claude API | A small Messages API app with a system prompt, streaming and error handling | Baseline: the 30-item quick mode in untimed review |
| 2 | Applications and Integration, second half, and Tools and MCPs (10.6%) | Introduction to Model Context Protocol | Tool use with a JSON schema, then the same tools served through one MCP server | 20 items on domains 2 and 8 through the domain filter |
| 3 | Agents and Workflows (14.7%) and Prompt and Context Engineering (11.0%) | Introduction to subagents; Introduction to agent skills | A two-step workflow with an explicit stop condition and a context budget stated in tokens | Retest weeks 1 and 2 misses; 20 fresh items on domains 1 and 6 |
| 4 | Model Selection and Optimization (16.8%) and Security and Safety (8.1%) | The model-selection and security modules of the Developer prep path | A cost and latency table for one task on three models, and a prompt-injection test against your app | The full no-account mock, timed: 53 items in 120 minutes |
| 5 | Claude Code (3.1%), Eval, Testing, and Debugging (2.6%), then repair | Claude Code 101; Claude Code in Action | A 20-case eval set with a pass or fail grader, run against the week 1 app | The gated aligned forms on the clock; confirm the booking; stop the day before |
Newcomer. Eight weeks: Building with the Claude API becomes a fortnight with the app built alongside it, and Applications and Integration gets three weeks. Experienced. Three weeks: weeks 1 and 2 merge, the mock lands on day 14 and week 5 becomes the final four days.
CCAR-F week by week
Claude Certified Architect - Foundations: 60 items in four scenarios, 120 minutes, 720 to pass. 5 weeks at practitioner pace; the no-account CCAR-F mock supplies every question column below.
| Week | Domains (official weight) | Course to finish | Build | Questions and mocks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Agentic Architecture and Orchestration (27%) | Introduction to subagents | An agent loop that branches on the stop reason and escalates to a person on a condition written down first | Baseline: the 20-item quick mode in untimed review |
| 2 | Tool Design and MCP Integration (18%) | Introduction to Model Context Protocol; Model Context Protocol: Advanced Topics | Three or four tools whose descriptions separate near-duplicates, with errors carrying a category and a retryable flag | 10 items on domain 2 through the domain filter; retest week 1 misses |
| 3 | Claude Code Configuration and Workflows (20%) | Claude Code 101; Claude Code in Action; Introduction to agent skills | A CLAUDE.md hierarchy, one path-scoped rule, one skill and one MCP server on a real repository | 10 items on domain 3 |
| 4 | Prompt Engineering and Structured Output (20%) | Building with the Claude API | An extraction pipeline with a schema, a validate-and-retry loop and one batch run | The full no-account mock, timed: 20 items across the five domains |
| 5 | Context Management and Reliability (15%), then repair | The Architect Foundations prep courses, for the weakest domain only | A long task that writes a scratchpad file and hands a summary to a subagent | Study sections and drills for the weakest domain; the no-account mock again in review mode; never the retired forms |
Newcomer. Eight weeks: the week 1 agent loop becomes a fortnight, and Claude Code gets two weeks because the configuration hierarchy is new to most people. Experienced. Three weeks: a domain every two days for the first ten, then the mock, then repair.
CCAR-P week by week
Claude Certified Architect - Professional: 63 items, 120 minutes, 720 to pass. 6 weeks at practitioner pace; the no-account CCAR-P mock supplies every question column below.
| Week | Domains (official weight) | Course to finish | Build | Questions and mocks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Solution Design and Architecture (17%) | Claude Platform 101; Introduction to Model Context Protocol | An architecture decision record for one end-to-end system: model, integration protocol, the option rejected | Baseline: the 30-item quick mode in untimed review |
| 2 | Integration (19%) | Model Context Protocol: Advanced Topics; Building with the Claude API | A retrieval slice with citations and a check that fails on a wrong source | 20 items on domains 1 and 3 through the domain filter |
| 3 | Evaluation, Testing and Optimization (16%) and Claude Models, Prompting and Context Engineering (13%) | The evaluation module of the Architect Professional prep path | An eval harness with a regression gate and a trace a colleague could read | Retest earlier misses; 20 fresh items on domains 2 and 4 |
| 4 | Governance, Safety and Risk Management (14%) and Stakeholder Communication and Lifecycle Management (14%) | Deploying Claude Enterprise with Confidence | A risk register for the week 1 system and a one-page brief a sponsor could sign | The full no-account mock, timed: 63 items in 120 minutes |
| 5 | Developer Productivity and Operational Enablement (7%), then repair | Claude Code 101 | A runbook for the system: who is paged and what they do first | The gated aligned forms on the clock |
| 6 | The two weakest domains, second pass | None | Rebuild the weakest artefact from scratch, without the first version open | A second timed mock and the gated forms again; confirm the slot; stop the day before |
Newcomer. Ten weeks, and ask whether Architect Foundations is the better first exam: the Professional guide assumes three years of architecture work. Experienced. Three weeks: the build column is mostly things you already have, so each week here is two or three days.
When to sit the no-account mock, and when the gated forms
Three sittings, each for a different reason. Week 1, untimed, in review mode, on the runner's quick set (30 items, or 20 on CCAR-F): a baseline whose only output is a list of misses tagged by domain. One week before the plan ends, the full timed paper: it rehearses the 120-minute clock and names the domain that needs the final week. In the final week, the aligned, gated timed forms on Cred Farmer for CCAO-F, CCDV-F and CCAR-P: mapped to the current published objectives, they are the only ones that move a readiness score. The public mock never does: it is a separate inventory, and practice data is not exam data.
CCAR-F is the exception
The gated CCAR-F timed forms are a retired seven-domain build and are excluded from readiness. For that exam the final week is study sections and drills on the weakest of the five official domains, and the 20-item public mock sat again in review mode. The live exam presents four scenarios from a bank of six; nothing here is built as those scenarios or described as a copy of them.
The 720 target and the raw-to-scaled caveat
Every Claude exam reports a scaled score from 100 to 1,000 and passes at 720. The scaling comes from a standard-setting study and is not published, so no practice percentage converts to it: 48 of 60 on a mock is 80 percent raw, not 800 scaled. The score report also shows percent correct per domain, and the guides say plainly that those percentages do not decide the result. Use a mock to find the weakest domain and rehearse the clock, and treat any "you are ready" message from any tool as a guess. The passing score explainer goes deeper.
Claude certification preparation starts with registration
Do the paperwork in week 1, because the slowest part is not yours to hurry. The exams are open to people at Claude Partner Network organisations, registering with a work email on a recognised company domain; a personal address fails at sign-in, and a missing domain takes Anthropic 7 to 10 days to add. Joining is free at the Registered tier, with a minimum commitment to 10 certified practitioners. A paid registration is valid for five years, so book the Pearson VUE slot for the week after the plan ends and move it, if you must, with 48 hours' notice. The eligibility and registration guide has every step, and the cost guide has the fees by tier.
Every plan, cheat sheet and runner in one place
The two-week plans are the compressed form of this page's experienced row, written out day by day; the cheat sheets are the final week's decision rules per domain; the runners are the no-account mocks the tables schedule. The study hub explains the routine underneath all of them.
| Exam | Two-week plan | Cheat sheet | Timed mock, no account |
|---|---|---|---|
| CCAO-F | Two-week CCAO-F plan | CCAO-F cheat sheet | CCAO-F mock |
| CCDV-F | Two-week CCDV-F plan | CCDV-F cheat sheet | CCDV-F mock |
| CCAR-F | Two-week CCAR-F plan | CCAR-F cheat sheet | CCAR-F mock |
| CCAR-P | Two-week CCAR-P plan | CCAR-P cheat sheet | CCAR-P mock |
Key takeaways
- Group the domains by official weight and give each group a week; the heaviest domain gets the most days.
- Every week: finish one Academy course, build one artefact, answer one domain-filtered set.
- Baseline untimed in week 1; the full timed paper one week before the end, never first on the last day.
- No mock percentage converts to the 720 scaled cut; only the gated blueprint-aligned forms move a readiness score.
- Register in week 1: the domain check and the Pearson account take days you cannot get back.
Take the week-one baseline now
The mock runs in the browser with no account: pick untimed review, work the quick set, and write down the domain with the most misses. That list is week 2's reading.
Start the CCAO-F mock, no accountFrequently asked
Quick answers to the follow-up questions.
How long does it take to prepare for Claude certification?
At four to six hours a week, a candidate who meets the exam guide's recommended experience needs about four weeks for CCAO-F, five for CCDV-F or CCAR-F and six for CCAR-P. Newcomers should plan six to ten; daily builders can compress any of them into two or three.
How do I prepare for the Claude certification exam?
Read the official exam guide for your code first, because its weights decide how many days each domain gets. Then run one week per domain group: finish the Academy course, build one small thing that exercises the objectives, answer questions on that domain. Sit a full timed mock before the final week and spend that week on the misses.
Is there a Claude certification exam prep plan for beginners?
Yes: the newcomer row on this page. It adds two weeks of daily Claude use and the introductory Academy course before the domain weeks start, and moves the first timed mock later. For a beginner with no development background, CCAO-F is the exam whose guide requires no API experience.
How many hours a week should I study for a Claude certification?
Four to six hours a week is enough for a practitioner who meets the recommended experience: about one hour of course, two of building, one or two of questions and review. Newcomers need six to eight. Below three hours a week, week 1 is forgotten by the time of the mock.
Which Anthropic Academy courses should I take for Claude certification?
The public Anthropic Academy titles this page schedules are Claude 101, Claude Platform 101, Claude Code 101, Claude Code in Action, Building with the Claude API, Introduction to Model Context Protocol, Model Context Protocol: Advanced Topics, Introduction to subagents and Introduction to agent skills. The Partner Academy adds a prep-course path per certification.
Can I prepare for Claude certification in two weeks?
If you meet the exam guide's recommended experience and can give it six to eight hours a week, yes for CCAO-F, and three weeks is realistic for the other three. The four two-week plans linked here are that compressed version. Below the recommended experience, two weeks leaves no time to build anything.
What score do I need on a practice test before I book the exam?
No practice percentage converts to the 720 scaled cut, because the scaling comes from a standard-setting study and is not published. Use mocks to find the weakest domain and rehearse the clock, not as a booking rule. Book when registration is done and the study weeks are in your calendar.
Checked against the official exam guides on .
Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Anthropic or Pearson VUE. Details are summarised from publicly published program information and can change. Always confirm against the official exam guide before booking.