AWS Certified AI Practitioner (AIF-C01) Exam Guide 2026: FREE Study Plan, Bedrock Deep Dive, Domains

Key Facts

The AWS Certified AI Practitioner (AIF-C01) exam costs $100 USD, the same as AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (AWS certification pages).
The AIF-C01 exam has 65 questions in 90 minutes: 50 scored plus 15 unscored pretest items used to validate future questions.
The AIF-C01 passing score is 700 on a 100-1000 scaled range; AWS uses a compensatory model, so no per-domain pass is required.
Domain 3 (Applications of Foundation Models) is the heaviest AIF-C01 section at 28% of scored content; Domain 4 (Responsible AI) and Domain 5 (Security, Compliance, and Governance) are 14% each.
AIF-C01 is valid for 3 years and is recertified by passing the latest AIF-C01, MLA-C01, or AIP-C01 exam (AWS recertification page).
AIF-C01 has zero formal prerequisites and no coding is required to sit the exam (AWS recommends up to 6 months of AI/ML exposure).
AIF-C01 is delivered at Pearson VUE testing centers or as an online-proctored exam (AWS certification page).
AWS adds a new product, service, or feature to any AWS certification exam, including AIF-C01, only after it has been generally available for 3 months (AWS Certification FAQ).
The AIF-C01 exam guide (version 1.4) names bias, fairness, inclusivity, robustness, safety, and veracity under responsible AI (Task Statement 4.1).

AWS Certified AI Practitioner (AIF-C01): The Foundational AI Cert That Actually Matters in 2026

Generative AI isn't a side project anymore. It's showing up in every board deck, product roadmap, and hiring plan — and your employer is quietly sorting people into two piles: the ones who can talk about Bedrock, RAG, fine-tuning, and responsible AI without flinching, and the ones who can't.

The AWS Certified AI Practitioner (AIF-C01) is how you move into the first pile — fast. AWS describes it as a good starting point for anyone exploring AI/ML on AWS, and its two largest domains are generative AI fundamentals and applications of foundation models.

This guide — built for 2026 — covers the full AIF-C01 content outline verified against the AWS official exam guide , the five scored domains and their exact weights, a Bedrock deep dive, a 2–4 week study plan, and a comparison with AWS Cloud Practitioner.

AIF-C01 at a Glance (2026)

Attribute Value
Exam code AIF-C01
Category Foundational
Cost $100 USD
Duration 90 minutes
Total questions 65 (50 scored + 15 unscored pretest)
Question types Multiple choice, multiple response, ordering, matching
Passing score 700 / 1000 (scaled, compensatory)
Delivery Pearson VUE testing centers or online-proctored exam

Language Arabic, English, French (France), Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Latin America), Spanish (Spain), Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese (German and Italian retired after October 15, 2026)

Validity 3 years
Prerequisites None
Recommended experience Up to 6 months exposure to AI/ML on AWS
Retake wait 14 days
Recertification Pass the latest AIF-C01, MLA-C01, or AIP-C01 exam

Everything in that table was verified against the AWS Certified AI Practitioner landing page (aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-ai-practitioner) and the AIF-C01 Exam Guide PDF (docs.aws.amazon.com) and checked again on October 22, 2026; recertification options come from the AWS recertification page.

The 3-Month "New Service" Rule

AWS has a little-known but exam-critical policy: a new AWS product, service, or feature must be generally available for 3 months before it can appear on any AWS certification exam, including AIF-C01 (per the AWS Certification FAQ). That is a short window, so recently shipped services are fair game.

Why this matters for 2026 candidates: the version 1.4 exam guide lists the capability areas candidates are tested on. Study its objectives first, not a list of new service names.