AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Cheat Sheet (CLF-C02)
The full AWS vocabulary you need for the CLF-C02 exam, organised by service family and built around the patterns examiners actually test — no prior AWS experience assumed
About This Cheat Sheet
A compact reference covering every in-scope topic and service listed in the official CLF-C02 exam guide. Organised by service family and the four exam domains — Cloud Concepts, Security and Compliance, Cloud Technology and Services, and Billing, Pricing, and Support. Designed for candidates with up to six months of AWS exposure: assumes no prior cloud experience and uses tables, bullet lists, and highlighted exam tips to make the material scannable rather than encyclopaedic. Includes the AWS Support Plans restructure from re:Invent 2025 (legacy Developer / Business / Enterprise On-Ramp tiers are being retired 1 Jan 2027) alongside the legacy plans the current exam still tests.
What's Inside
Cloud Concepts
The six advantages of the cloud, deployment models (all-cloud, hybrid, on-premises), cloud design principles, and a quick-reference of the six Well-Architected Framework pillars with the outcome-to-pillar mapping examiners test.
AWS Global Infrastructure
Regions, Availability Zones, edge locations, regional edge caches, Local Zones, Wavelength Zones, Outposts, and GovCloud. How to choose a Region based on compliance, latency, service availability, and price.
Shared Responsibility Model
Line-by-line split of what AWS owns vs. what the customer owns, plus how the customer burden shifts across IaaS (EC2), CaaS (ECS/EKS), and managed/abstracted services (Lambda, DynamoDB, S3).
Security, Identity & Compliance
IAM users/groups/roles/policies/MFA, IAM Identity Center, Amazon Cognito. KMS, CloudHSM, ACM, Secrets Manager, Parameter Store. GuardDuty, Inspector, Macie, Detective, WAF, Shield, Firewall Manager, Security Hub, Audit Manager, Artifact. Organizations, Control Tower, RAM, Directory Service.
Compute
EC2 with instance families and Auto Scaling, Lambda, Fargate, Elastic Beanstalk, Lightsail, Batch, Outposts. Containers: ECS, EKS, ECR, Fargate. Decision rules for picking the right compute service.
Storage
S3 storage classes and key features (versioning, lifecycle, replication, encryption, pre-signed URLs). Block/file storage: EBS, Instance Store, EFS, FSx, S3 Glacier. Hybrid/transfer: Storage Gateway, Backup, Elastic Disaster Recovery, and the legacy Snow Family call-out.
Database
RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, DocumentDB, Neptune, ElastiCache, Redshift — what each is for. RDS Multi-AZ vs. Read Replicas clarified.
Networking & Content Delivery
VPC components (subnets, IGW, NAT, security groups, NACLs, endpoints, peering). Delivery and connectivity: CloudFront, Route 53, Global Accelerator, Direct Connect, Site-to-Site VPN, Client VPN, Transit Gateway, PrivateLink, ELB, API Gateway.
Application Integration, Analytics & ML
SQS, SNS, EventBridge, Step Functions, AppSync. Analytics: Athena, EMR, Glue, Kinesis, OpenSearch, QuickSight, Redshift. AI/ML: SageMaker, Amazon Q, Rekognition, Textract, Comprehend, Translate, Transcribe, Polly, Lex, Kendra.
Management, Governance & Migration
CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Config, CloudFormation, Systems Manager, Trusted Advisor, Compute Optimizer, Health Dashboard, License Manager, Service Catalog, Management Console, Well-Architected Tool. Migration: DMS, SCT, MGN, Application Discovery, Migration Hub, DataSync, Transfer Family, Snow Family. The 7 Rs of migration.
Pricing & Cost Management
Core pricing principles (pay-as-you-go, reserve to save, volume tiering). EC2 purchasing options (On-Demand, Reserved, Savings Plans, Spot, Dedicated Hosts, Capacity Reservations). Cost Explorer, Budgets, CUR, Pricing Calculator, Marketplace, Cost Allocation Tags. Free Tier.
AWS Support Plans
Basic, Developer, Business, Enterprise On-Ramp, Enterprise — cost ranges, response times, TAM availability, Trusted Advisor scope, and the decision cues examiners test.
Why This Cheat Sheet Helps
CLF-C02 is breadth-over-depth. The exam asks you to pick the right service for a scenario, distinguish support plans, map Well-Architected pillars to business outcomes, and know the shared responsibility split. This cheat sheet puts the commonly confused pairs (SQS vs. SNS, Security Groups vs. NACLs, Multi-AZ vs. Read Replicas, Business vs. Enterprise support) side by side so the decision rules become second nature.
It also flags services AWS has closed to new customers (Snow Family) so you know to recognise them on the exam without recommending them in real designs.
How to Use It
Read it once front to back in a single sitting to see the full breadth of what the exam covers. Then use CloudNinja's free CLF-C02 practice exam to find your gaps. When you get a question wrong, jump to the relevant section here and study the table or exam-tip box. On exam day minus three, go through the Shared Responsibility Model, Support Plans, and Pricing sections — those are the CLF-C02 favourites.
Pair this with the AWS Free Tier hands-on to internalise the services you've only read about.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this AWS Cloud Practitioner cheat sheet free?
Yes, completely free with no signup required. Download the PDF directly from CloudNinja and use it as a study reference for the CLF-C02 exam.
Is the CLF-C02 a good first AWS certification?
Yes. CLF-C02 is foundational and assumes no prior AWS experience — it is the recommended starting point for anyone new to AWS or anyone who needs an overview of the cloud business value and core services before moving on to associate-level exams like SAA-C03 or DVA-C02.
What is the difference between CLF-C02 and SAA-C03?
CLF-C02 covers breadth — you are asked to pick the right service for a scenario. SAA-C03 covers depth and architectural reasoning — you are asked to design resilient, secure, cost-effective systems. If you plan to pursue SAA-C03, you can skip directly to it, but many candidates find CLF-C02 a gentler on-ramp.
Is this cheat sheet updated for the current CLF-C02 exam?
Yes, it is built directly from the current official CLF-C02 exam guide and includes the in-scope AWS services listed there, plus call-outs for services AWS has retired or closed to new customers (such as the Snow Family). Always cross-reference the official AWS exam guide before your test date.