Cheat Sheet New CLF-C03

AWS CLF-C03 Cheat Sheet 2026: 1-Page Domain Summary

Q: Is CLF-C03 the same as CLF-C02?

CLF-C03 replaced CLF-C02 in late 2024. The four domains and weightings are the same, but CLF-C03 includes updated content covering newer AWS services like Bedrock, Q, and advanced cost optimization tools. If you studied for CLF-C02, most of your knowledge transfers — but review the updated exam guide.

Q: What should I memorize for the AWS Cloud Practitioner CLF-C03 exam?

Memorize the six Well-Architected pillars, the Shared Responsibility Model, core service purposes (EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, VPC), the four pricing models, support plan tiers, and the difference between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

Q: How many services do I need to know for CLF-C03?

You need to recognize roughly 70-90 services by name and primary purpose. CLF-C03 adds some newer services vs CLF-C02, but you still do not need deep configuration knowledge for any of them.

Q: Can I use a cheat sheet during the CLF-C03 exam?

No. The exam is closed-book and proctored. This cheat sheet is for pre-exam review only — study it the night before and the morning of your exam.

Q: What are the four CLF-C03 domains and their weightings?

Domain 1: Cloud Concepts (24%), Domain 2: Security and Compliance (30%), Domain 3: Cloud Technology and Services (34%), Domain 4: Billing, Pricing, and Support (12%). Security and Technology are the two largest domains.

Updated July 2, 2026 | 7 min read

Table of Contents

Domain 1: Cloud Concepts (24%)
Domain 2: Security & Compliance (30%)
Domain 3: Cloud Technology & Services (34%)
Domain 4: Billing, Pricing & Support (12%)
Well-Architected Framework (6 Pillars)
Shared Responsibility Model
Support Plans at a Glance
Pricing Models Cheat Sheet

CLF-C03 is the current AWS Cloud Practitioner exam — it replaced CLF-C02 in late 2024. This cheat sheet covers everything you need for the updated exam, including newer services like Amazon Bedrock and AWS Q that were added in CLF-C03. Bookmark this page and review it the night before your exam.

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30Q Quick Drill

Domain 1: Cloud Concepts (24%)

This domain tests your understanding of why cloud computing exists. Expect questions on cost savings, scalability, and the differences between cloud, hybrid, and on-premises deployment models. CLF-C03 places more emphasis on the business value of cloud and cloud economics than CLF-C02 did.

Cloud Value Proposition: Trade capital expense (capex) for variable expense (opex). Pay only for what you use.
Economies of Scale: AWS serves millions of customers → lower per-unit cost than any single company can achieve alone.
Deployment Models: Cloud (fully AWS), Hybrid (on-prem + cloud), On-Premises (fully self-managed).
Service Models: IaaS (EC2, VPC), PaaS (Elastic Beanstalk, RDS), SaaS (recurring software delivered via cloud).
Global Infrastructure: Regions (geographic areas) → Availability Zones (isolated data centers, min 2 per region) → Edge Locations (CloudFront CDN).
High Availability vs Fault Tolerance: HA = system recovers quickly from failure. FT = system is designed to not fail at all (e.g., multi-AZ).

Domain 2: Security & Compliance (30%)

Security is the largest domain on the exam. The shared responsibility model appears in nearly every test. Focus on who manages what (AWS vs. customer), the basics of IAM, and the difference between encryption at rest and in transit. CLF-C03 adds more emphasis on AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO) and Amazon Q security features.

IAM: Users, Groups, Roles, Policies. Principle of least privilege. Never use root account for daily tasks.
IAM Identity Center: Formerly AWS SSO. Centralized access management for multiple AWS accounts and business apps.
MFA: Multi-factor authentication required for root and recommended for all IAM users. Virtual MFA (app) or hardware MFA.
Encryption: At rest (SSE-S3, SSE-KMS, SSE-C) and in transit (TLS/SSL). KMS manages keys. CloudHSM for dedicated hardware.
Compliance: SOC, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001. AWS is responsible for the cloud; you are responsible for in the cloud.
AWS Organizations: Consolidated billing, SCPs (Service Control Policies), multi-account management.
AWS Artifact: On-demand access to AWS compliance reports and agreements.
AWS WAF & Shield: WAF = web application firewall (Layer 7). Shield = DDoS protection (Standard is free, Advanced is paid).
Amazon Macie: Uses ML to discover and protect sensitive data (PII) in S3.
AWS Secrets Manager: Rotate, manage, and retrieve database credentials and API keys.

Domain 3: Cloud Technology & Services (34%)

This is the biggest and most detailed domain. You do not need to know how to configure services — you need to know what each service does and when to use it. CLF-C03 adds newer services like Amazon Bedrock (generative AI) and AWS Q (AI assistant). Pay special attention to storage classes and database use cases.

Compute

EC2: Virtual servers. Instances, AMIs, EBS volumes, Security Groups (stateful), NACLs (stateless).
Lambda: Serverless compute. Event-driven, pay per invocation, auto-scaling, no infrastructure to manage.
Elastic Beanstalk: PaaS for deploying web apps. Handles infrastructure automatically.
ECS / EKS: Container orchestration. ECS is AWS-native; EKS is managed Kubernetes.
AWS Fargate: Serverless compute for containers. No EC2 management needed.
AWS Outposts: Run AWS services on-premises for hybrid workloads.

Storage

S3: Object storage. Standard, Express One Zone, Standard-IA, One Zone-IA, Glacier Instant, Glacier Flexible, Glacier Deep Archive. 11 nines durability.
EBS: Block storage for EC2. gp3 (general), io2 (high performance), st1 (throughput), sc1 (cold).
EFS: Managed NFS. Shared file storage across multiple EC2 instances and AZs.
FSx: Managed Windows File Server, Lustre (HPC), NetApp ONTAP, or OpenZFS.
AWS Backup: Centralized backup management across AWS services.

Databases

RDS: Managed relational databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server).
Aurora: AWS proprietary relational DB. 5x throughput of MySQL, PostgreSQL-compatible.
DynamoDB: NoSQL key-value store. Single-digit millisecond latency, serverless, auto-scaling.
Redshift: Data warehouse for analytics and BI. Columnar storage.
ElastiCache: Managed Redis or Memcached for in-memory caching.

Networking

VPC: Isolated network. Subnets (public/private), route tables, internet gateways, NAT gateways.
CloudFront: Global CDN. Caches content at edge locations. Reduces latency.
Route 53: DNS service. Domain registration, routing policies, health checks.
Direct Connect: Dedicated private connection from on-prem to AWS. Not over the public internet.
ELB (Elastic Load Balancing): ALB (HTTP/HTTPS), NLB (TCP/UDP), GWLB (third-party appliances).
VPC Peering: Connect two VPCs privately. Transit Gateway for hub-and-spoke.

AI / ML & New Services (CLF-C03 additions)

Amazon Bedrock: Fully managed generative AI service. Access foundation models from Anthropic, Meta, Amazon, etc.
Amazon Q: AWS AI assistant for business and developer workflows. Available in Q Business and Q Developer.
Amazon SageMaker: Build, train, and deploy ML models at scale.
Amazon Comprehend: NLP service for entity recognition, sentiment analysis.

Other Core Services

CloudWatch: Monitoring, logs, metrics, alarms, dashboards.
CloudTrail: Auditing. Records API calls and account activity for compliance.
SNS: Pub/sub messaging. Push notifications to email, SMS, Lambda, SQS.
SQS: Message queue. Decouples application components. At-least-once delivery.
EventBridge: Serverless event bus. Connects SaaS apps and AWS services.
CloudFormation: Infrastructure as Code. JSON/YAML templates.
AWS Config: Track configuration changes and compliance rules.

Domain 4: Billing, Pricing & Support (12%)

This is the smallest domain but it surprises many test-takers. You must know the four pricing models, when to use the TCO Calculator vs. the Pricing Calculator, and the support plans by response time and cost. Billing questions are often phrased as scenario-based comparisons rather than simple recall.

AWS Free Tier: 12 months free for new accounts. Limited usage on EC2, S3, RDS, etc. Always-free tier for some services (Lambda 1M requests/mo).
Pricing Calculator: Estimate costs before deploying services.
TCO Calculator: Compare on-premises vs AWS total cost of ownership.
Cost Explorer: Visualize and analyze AWS spending over time.
Budgets: Set custom cost and usage budgets with alerts.
Cost and Usage Report: Detailed CSV of all AWS charges. Most granular billing data.
Consolidated Billing: One bill for multiple accounts via AWS Organizations. Volume discounts apply.
Tags: Key-value pairs to organize and track costs by project, team, or environment.

Well-Architected Framework: 6 Pillars

Pillar	Key Idea
Operational Excellence	Run and monitor systems; continuously improve
Security	Protect data, systems, and assets; IAM, encryption, traceability
Reliability	Recover from failures, test resilience, scale automatically
Performance Efficiency	Use resources efficiently, evolve with technology
Cost Optimization	Minimize cost while delivering business value
Sustainability	Minimize environmental impact of workloads

Shared Responsibility Model

AWS Responsibility (Security OF the Cloud)

Data center physical security
Hardware, software, networking
Host operating systems
Virtualization layer
Managed service infrastructure (RDS, S3, Lambda)

Customer Responsibility (Security IN the Cloud)

Customer data
IAM, MFA, encryption settings
OS patches and updates (for EC2)
Network ACLs and security groups
Application security and code

Support Plans at a Glance

For a complete study plan covering all these concepts, see our 30-day AWS study guide. Need more free materials? Our free AWS resources roundup has videos, labs, and practice tests.

Plan	Cost	Response Time
Basic	Free	None (community only)
Developer	$29/mo	Business hours, < 24h
Business	$100/mo (min)	24/7, < 1h critical
Enterprise On-Ramp	$5,500/mo (min)	24/7, < 30 min critical

Pricing Models Cheat Sheet

Model	Best For	Savings
On-Demand	Short-term, unpredictable workloads	Baseline
Reserved Instances	Steady-state workloads, 1-3 year commit	Up to 72%
Savings Plans	Flexible commitment based on $/hour	Up to 72%
Spot Instances	Fault-tolerant, flexible start/end times	Up to 90%

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is CLF-C03 the same as CLF-C02?

CLF-C03 replaced CLF-C02 in late 2024. The four domains and weightings are the same, but CLF-C03 includes updated content covering newer AWS services like Bedrock, Q, and advanced cost optimization tools. If you studied for CLF-C02, most of your knowledge transfers — but review the updated exam guide.

What should I memorize for AWS Cloud Practitioner?

Memorize the six Well-Architected pillars, the Shared Responsibility Model, core service purposes (EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, VPC), the four pricing models, support plan tiers, and the difference between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

How many services do I need to know?

You need to recognize roughly 70-90 services by name and primary purpose. CLF-C03 adds some newer services vs CLF-C02, but you still do not need deep configuration knowledge for any of them.

Can I use a cheat sheet during the exam?

No. The exam is closed-book and proctored. This cheat sheet is for pre-exam review only — study it the night before and the morning of your exam.

What are the four CLF-C03 domains and weightings?

Domain 1: Cloud Concepts (24%), Domain 2: Security and Compliance (30%), Domain 3: Cloud Technology and Services (34%), Domain 4: Billing, Pricing, and Support (12%). Security and Technology are the two largest domains.

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