The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) exam tests core services at identify-the-right-tool depth: compute (EC2, Lambda, Elastic Beanstalk), storage (S3, EBS, EFS), databases (RDS, DynamoDB), and networking (VPC, Route 53, CloudFront), plus the security, billing, and support services woven through the other domains.
Last updated August 2026.
Cloud Technology and Services is the largest CLF-C02 domain at 34% of scored content, about 17 of the 50 scored questions. But the exam guide's task statements are written at an identify-and-describe level, and questions follow them: given a described need, pick the service whose job matches. You will not be asked to size an instance, write an IAM policy, or design a subnet.
That sets the study bar. For every service below, the goal is a one-sentence job description you can produce on sight. If you can also say when a neighbouring service is the better fit (Lambda versus EC2, EFS versus EBS), you are at full exam depth for this domain.
Domain weight from the official CLF-C02 exam guide, which also lists the in-scope services for each task statement. Depth guidance is ours, drawn from those task statements.
| Category | Service | The one-line job |
|---|---|---|
| Compute | Amazon EC2 | Virtual servers you size, launch, and manage yourself |
| AWS Lambda | Run code on demand with no servers to manage, billed per invocation | |
| Elastic Beanstalk | Deploy an application and let AWS provision the infrastructure under it | |
| Storage | Amazon S3 | Object storage for any amount of data, with storage classes by access pattern |
| Amazon EBS | Block storage volumes attached to a single EC2 instance | |
| Amazon EFS | Shared file storage mounted by many instances at once | |
| Databases | Amazon RDS | Managed relational databases: SQL engines without the server admin |
| Amazon DynamoDB | Managed NoSQL key-value database with single-digit-millisecond reads | |
| Networking | Amazon VPC | Your logically isolated network inside AWS |
| Route 53 | DNS: routing names to endpoints, with health-aware routing policies | |
| CloudFront | Content delivery network serving from edge locations near users |
The exam guide's in-scope list is longer, naming analytics, integration, and machine learning services at the same recognise-the-category level. The table above is the set questions return to most, not the full list: work the guide's own list for complete coverage.
CLF-C02 service questions are usually a disguised comparison between two plausible services. These are the distinctions worth rehearsing:
Two thirds of the exam is not the services domain, yet still names services. Budget recognition time for these:
A service-flashcard plan that stops at Domain 3 leaves the IAM and billing-tools questions, roughly a fifth of the exam, to chance.
The core set is compute (EC2, Lambda, Elastic Beanstalk), storage (S3, EBS, EFS), databases (RDS, DynamoDB), and networking (VPC, Route 53, CloudFront), plus IAM and AWS Artifact for security and the billing tools: Budgets, Cost Explorer, the pricing calculator, and Organizations. The exam guide lists the full in-scope set.
At identify-and-describe depth: given a scenario, pick the service whose job fits. You will not configure, size, or code anything, so the right preparation is a one-line job description per service and the ability to separate close pairs like Lambda versus EC2.
No. Work from the in-scope services list in the CLF-C02 exam guide rather than the full AWS catalogue. Many listed services only need category-level recognition, while the core compute, storage, database, and networking services carry most of the questions.
The comparisons: EC2 versus Lambda, the three storage services, RDS versus DynamoDB, and where Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations fit. Questions are usually a scenario that fits one service noticeably better than its plausible neighbour.
The CLF-C02 exam guide names the in-scope services under every task statement, which makes it the definitive flashcard source for this domain.
Open the AWS exam guide →