Claude Certified Developer – Foundations
The hands-on-keyboard exam, weighted heavily toward building applications and integrations. If you read API docs for fun and ship on Claude, this is your credential — and the best signal-per-dollar of the four.
- Questions
- 53
- Duration
- 120 minutes
- Passing score
- 720 / 1000
- Validity
- 12 months
- Format
- Multiple choice / response
- Delivery
- Online-proctored or Pearson VUE
- Counts toward CPN tier
- Yes
You call the Messages API directly and wire Claude into real products and services.
You build MCP servers, tool schemas, and the plumbing between Claude and internal systems.
You own streaming, retries, rate-limits, and deployment on Bedrock or Vertex.
Domain breakdown & weights
The spine of the exam. Messages API mechanics and production integration patterns.
- Messages API, streaming, and stop_reason handling
- Retries, rate-limits, and idempotency
- Batch API — the 24-hour / 50%-off tradeoff
- Deployment on Amazon Bedrock and Google Vertex AI
The distinctions it quietly leans on
Memorise which side of each split a question is testing — it eliminates wrong answers fast.
Free courses, in the right order.
Every course below is free on the Anthropic Academy. Work them top to bottom — tick each off to track your readiness.
Tap a course to mark it complete and watch your readiness climb.
Traps & high-value focus areas
Nearly every 'which API call fixes this?' question hinges on stop_reason. Memorise end_turn, max_tokens, tool_use, and stop_sequence cold.
At 33%, this single domain outweighs any other. Master the Messages API before touching anything else.
Expect questions about structured error envelopes. If you've written one, the answer is obvious; if not, you're guessing.
It's only ~3% but that's 1–2 questions — free points for anyone who's actually run it.
Ready to earn Developer?
Follow the mapped prep track, drill the mock exam, and book when your readiness says go.