Anthropic · CCAO-F · Foundations
Claude Certified Associate – Foundations (CCAO-F)
Exam update: Anthropic has announced that an updated exam guide will be available from 17 November 2026 and that the exam will include updated content from 7 December 2026. Taking the exam on or after 7 December 2026? Study from the updated guide. Taking it before then? Study from the current guide (v1.0). We'll update this page once the new guide is out.
Professionals who use Claude as a productivity tool and build Claude Projects (operations, marketing, project management, education, communications, consultants, knowledge workers); limited-to-moderate technical expertise. Not for API developers, agentic-system designers or ML specialists (they escalate such work to Architects/Developers).
60 free practice questions · full timed mock exam · study plan
Exam facts
- How many questions are on the CCAO-F exam? 60 questions, multiple choice and multiple response.
- How long is the CCAO-F exam? 120 minutes.
- What is the CCAO-F pass mark? 720 scaled (100-1,000)
- How much does the CCAO-F exam cost? $99 USD before any partner discount.
- Who can take the CCAO-F exam? Only people who work at Claude Partner Network organisations can take the exams, registering with a company email on a domain listed on their organisation's partner record (personal email addresses won't work). You must be 18 or over and show a valid, unexpired, government-issued photo ID whose name exactly matches your exam profile.
- How is the CCAO-F exam delivered? Proctored by Pearson VUE: online proctored (OnVUE) or Pearson test center; registration via Anthropic Partner Academy (Claude Partner Network members, 18+, partner email domain)
- How long is the CCAO-F certification valid? Valid for 12 months from the day you earn it. Renew for free before it expires by passing an open-book, non-proctored assessment on Partner Academy; if it lapses, you must pass the full exam again at the full fee.
Checked 2026-11-15 against the official exam guide (Version 1.0, effective July 2026 (initial publication July 2026)). Official exam guide · Official certification FAQ
Retakes, rescheduling and more
- How long should I set aside on exam day? The exam itself is 120 minutes, but Anthropic advises planning for about 135 minutes of total seat time, to cover check-in, instructions and a short survey afterwards. For an online (OnVUE) exam, Pearson VUE also asks you to start check-in 30 minutes before your appointment time, for system checks, ID photos and a room scan, so allow time beyond the exam itself.
- Can I take the exam online or at a test centre? Either. All four exams are delivered by Pearson VUE, and you choose between OnVUE online proctoring and a Pearson test centre at the time you schedule. To switch, cancel and book again. If your government ID is from Belarus, Cuba, North Korea, Russia, Syria or a restricted region of Ukraine, you can't use OnVUE and must test at a test centre.
- How do I register and book the exam? Since 12 November 2026 you register in Anthropic Partner Academy, go to Pearson VUE through the Partner Academy sign-in, then pay and pick a date at Pearson's checkout, where any partner discount is applied automatically. You need a company email on a domain listed on your organisation's Claude Partner Network record. Personal email addresses won't work.
- What do I need on exam day? A valid, unexpired, government-issued photo ID. The name on it must exactly match your exam profile, or you can't test and you lose the fee. You must be 18 or over, and your age is checked against the ID.
- Is there a discount on the exam fee? It depends on your organisation's Claude Partner Network tier. Registered-tier partners pay full price. Select, Preferred and Global Premier partners get 50% off, applied automatically at Pearson's checkout. Up to and including 31 December 2026, Global Premier partners get 100% off instead, so their exams are free; after that date, the standard 50% discount applies. The discount is locked in when you schedule, so book by 31 December 2026 to keep the 100% discount.
- Why do some sites say Architect – Foundations (CCAR-F) costs $99? That was the old CCAR-F price. From 30 June 2026, the same day exam delivery moved to Pearson VUE, the CCAR-F fee went up from $99 to $125 (USD, before any partner discount). Registrations completed before that date paid $99.
- Is the exam open book? No. The exams are closed book: no notes, documentation, translation tools or AI assistants. Only the separate renewal assessment is open book.
- What languages is the exam in? English and Japanese only. You pick the language when you schedule at Pearson. To switch a booked English exam to Japanese, cancel it and book again through Partner Academy. No translation tools, devices or software, including browser translation, are allowed during the exam; if English is your second language, you can ask Pearson for extra time instead.
- What happens if I fail? How do retakes work? You wait 14 days after a first failed attempt, 30 days after a second and 90 days after a third. You can sit the same exam at most four times in any rolling 12-month period. These limits apply to each exam separately, and Anthropic's policies say they reset when an exam moves to a new version. Each retake costs the full exam fee, and any partner discount you get applies to retakes too. Once you pass, you can't retake the exam to raise your score.
- Can I cancel or reschedule the exam? Test-centre exams can be cancelled or rescheduled free up to 48 hours before. For online (OnVUE) exams Anthropic says up to one hour before, but Pearson VUE's FAQ says 48 hours, so make changes at least 48 hours ahead to be safe. The 24-hour cutoff in the July 2026 exam guides is out of date. If you change after the deadline or don't show up, you lose the fee and must pay for a new attempt; the exam guides say the same applies if you arrive after the late-arrival window. If you paid at Pearson's checkout and cancel in time, the refund starts automatically and takes 7 to 10 business days; rescheduling instead keeps your locked price and discount.
- How does renewal work? Each certification is valid for 12 months from the day you earn it. Before it expires, you renew for free by passing an open-book, non-proctored online assessment on Partner Academy, which you can retake as many times as you need. Passing adds 12 months to your current expiry date, not to the day you renew, so renewing early does not shorten your validity. If it lapses, you must pass the full exam again at the full fee. If Anthropic substantially updates an exam, it may require holders to pass the current version of the exam, rather than the renewal assessment, to stay certified; Anthropic decides this case by case. Anthropic hasn't yet said how early the renewal window opens. Certifications earned before 30 June 2026, when validity was 6 months, were automatically extended to 12 months from the date they were originally earned.
- How do I get my certificate or badge? After you pass, Credly, Anthropic's digital badge platform, emails you an invitation to accept your badge. You can then share it on LinkedIn and download a PDF certificate.
- Which certifications count toward Claude Partner Network eligibility? Developer – Foundations (CCDV-F), Architect – Foundations (CCAR-F) and Architect – Professional (CCAR-P) count toward Claude Partner Network eligibility. Associate – Foundations (CCAO-F) does not.
- Can I take the exam from any country? Only from the countries and regions Anthropic supports (see its Supported Regions Policy). Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia are excluded, and Pearson VUE has suspended exam delivery to residents of Iran since 8 September 2026.
What the exam covers
D1 Prompting and Task Execution (14% of the exam)
- Write effective prompts for business and technical tasks
- Use task decomposition to structure complex requests
- Iterate on prompts to raise output quality
- Adapt prompting to task type (analysis, research, drafting, brainstorming)
D2 Output Evaluation and Validation (21% of the exam)
- Judge outputs for accuracy and completeness
- Spot hallucinations, inconsistencies and bias
- Apply fact-checking/validation techniques
- Decide when human review or extra verification is needed
- Edit, adapt, refine and compare outputs for the target audience
- Organize/curate information and pick output format (artifacts, inline, structured data)
D3 Product and Model Selection (12% of the exam)
- Choose product features (Projects, research mode, chat, artifacts)
- Distinguish model families (Haiku, Sonnet, Opus)
- Match model to cost/speed/quality needs
- Manage context limits and memory (when to restart, summarize or persist)
D4 Workflow Integration and Solution Design (16% of the exam)
- Use Claude to analyze requirements and use cases
- Use Claude for research, planning and process optimization
- Use Claude to support solution design, development and iteration
- Embed Claude in existing workflows to augment or redesign them
- Explain Claude's value and limits to stakeholders
D5 Configuration and Knowledge Management (12% of the exam)
- Set up Projects with instructions and knowledge sources
- Manage uploaded knowledge and connectors (e.g., Google Drive, Gmail)
- Write effective system-level instructions
- Maintain and update configurations, knowledge sources and instructions
D6 Governance, Risk, and Responsible Use (15% of the exam)
- Tell appropriate from inappropriate use cases
- Apply data-sensitivity, regulatory and privacy considerations
- Follow organizational AI policy and governance standards
- Understand ethical implications of AI use
D7 Troubleshooting and Optimization (10% of the exam)
- Diagnose and fix underperforming prompts or poor outputs
- Adjust approach based on feedback and results
- Optimize workflows for efficiency and effectiveness
Sample practice questions
D1
A marketing manager types "Write a product announcement" and gets a bland, generic draft. Which change to the prompt would MOST improve the next draft?
- State the audience, key features, length, tone and the action readers should take.
- Ask Claude to try much harder and make this version far more creative and compelling.
- Cut the request to a single keyword so Claude has more freedom to pick an angle.
- Rerun the same prompt several times and keep whichever version sounds most persuasive.
D1
An operations lead's prompt says "NEVER use more than three bullet points," but long summaries keep breaking the rule. Which revision does Anthropic's prompting guidance suggest is most likely to help?
- Repeat the rule in capital letters at both the very start and the very end of the prompt.
- Drop the rule and trim the bullet lists by hand after each summary is produced.
- Explain the reason: the summary appears on a dashboard tile that fits three bullets.
- Warn Claude that any response with extra bullets will be rejected and redone.
D1
A consultant must turn 40 pages of notes into a market-entry memo with a competitor analysis, a regulatory scan, a pricing recommendation and an executive summary. What is the BEST way to approach this with Claude?
- Paste every note at once, ask for the finished memo, and fix any gaps afterward.
- Work in stages (competitors, regulation, pricing), checking each before the summary.
- Ask for the executive summary first, then have Claude build sections to support it.
- Split the notes across several separate chats so each one sees a smaller document.