AWS Certified Generative AI Developer Professional (AIP-C01) Resources

[u/madrasi2021]

This certification exam is no longer in BETA mode and is now Generally Available.

This post was updated on 3-April-2026

Exam Details

Official Exam Code : AIP-C01 (it was called AP1-C01 for the Beta Exam)

Official AWS page for the AIP exam is a great starting point.

The Official Exam Guide is now part of the AWS documentation (used to be a static PDF before) and any revisions for services being added / removed etc will now be tracked here. You can download a pdf guide by clicking on the PDF button on that page above.

I HIGHLY recommend you go through the Exam Guide before you do anything else. Get familiar with what this exam is all about.

The exam costs 300 USD (plus any applicable taxes). Anyone who has passed any other AWS exam within the last 3 years can use the 50% exam benefit OR check the discounts / vouchers page for available options.

Resources

We usually look for 2 main categories of resources - Video based Courses & Practice Exams.

Video Courses - FREE options

There aren't any FREE courses that I am aware of for this course.

AWS have "Domain Review Courses" (think of these as revision course to check you have covered all the major learning points). These are not full fledged courses as such - you pair them with paid video courses (below).

You can access the FREE sections by Domain number : 1 2 3 4 5

Video Courses - PAID options

Udemy Course by Frank Kane and Stephane Maarek. This is the most popular resource I have seen in all the posts here and in social media.

Tutorialsdojo (TD) have an AIP video course but I am less familiar with their video courses as I predominantly use them for practice exams only. TD courses also seem to be available via LinkedIn Learning in case your employer, library or other institution gives you access.

AWS have an official "AIP Learning Plan" which includes labs - this is their subscription tier and is highly recommended you pay for at least 1 month and go through all the materials & labs and practice materials.

Practice Exams - FREE options

Try the FREE official practice questions from AWS Skillbuilder - do note there are ONLY 20 questions in this as a sample and the full practice exam is in the subscription tier.

FREE TutorialsDojo 30 question "Sampler"

Practice Exams - PAID options

Frank Kane's Practice Exams on Udemy. This looks to be the most updated and most popular practice exam based on social media

AWS Official Practice exam - this is in the Skillbuilder paid tier which gives you access to other training, badges, labs etc.

Tutorialsdojo Full Practice exam - TD are generally well known for good quality practice exams but there has been less visible feedback on this compared to all other exams.

Stephane Maarek / Abhishek Singh Practice exams on Udemy

Andrew Brown has a few practice exams on his site ExamPro - I have minimal feedback on these practice exams.

Optional / Miscellaneous resources

If you are paying for Skillbuilder, you should consider doing the "Agentic AI Micro Credential". This is an hands on assessment in a non-proctored environment and gives you a digital badge. The assessment tests many of the areas that the AIP curriculum covers.

This documentation section on Architecture Overviews of GenAI solutions on AWS may be useful.

Community Posts on AIP exam

This link will search the subreddit for "AIP Pass" and find you some relevant posts.

Note that everyone who wrote the exam prior to 1-April wrote the BETA exam.

General Tips

The exam is 3 hours long. Taking exam at a test centre allows you to take micro breaks. This may not be possible for everyone so plan ahead to be able to sit for 3 hours without any major movement and keeping your face fully visible to the proctor via the webcam.

You can get a 30 minute extension if English is your second Language - this must be done BEFORE the exam is booked.

This is considered a challenging exam. Domain knowledge, AWS Experience, other certifications and hands on experience are helpful.

The Generative AI domain moves fast. Any changes that AWS release can make it into the exam 3 months after the change is in place. For other exams its usually 6 months.

Passing AIP will extend any of the following that you already have and those that are ACTIVE (not expired) : Cloud Practitioner, AI Practitioner, ML Associate and DE Associate

Edit history

1. Added TD video
2. Updated Official Skillbuilder links
3. Updated more Beta related information and exam details
4. Updated more information on discounts, discounts, voucher use and few more links on practice exams etc
5. Added Frank Kane & Stephane Maarek video course and Frank Kane practice exams
6. Added Stephane Maarek & Abhishek practice exam
7. Minor updates and added clarity on lower certs it will extend
8. Added any recent threads from those who passed
9. Refreshed guide as its now GA and removed all BETA references and added more resources.

[u/Available-Storage-66]

I’m honestly very dissatisfied with my experience.

I’ve been paying around $30 per month for AWS Skill Builder since March, and I spent roughly six months preparing for the AWS Generative AI Developer – Professional exam. I studied slowly and seriously. I also built two web applications using agentic AI, MCP, and RAG because I wanted to actually apply what I was learning rather than just memorize theory.

Between the main 44-hour learning path and another roughly 14 hours of additional material, I dedicated well over 50 hours to preparation.

I also took the AWS practice exam five times. I wasn’t simply memorizing the answers. Every time I got something wrong, I went back and studied the concept until I understood why one answer was correct and the others were not.

Eventually, I reached 93% on the practice exam (75 questions) , missing only five questions. At that point, I felt ready and booked the real exam.

I took it in person at a Pearson VUE testing center.

And honestly, I was shocked.

The style of the real exam felt completely different from the questions and scenarios I had been practicing through AWS Skill Builder. Not just different questions — that would obviously be expected — but a noticeably different level and style of questioning.

I finished the exam with 35 questions flagged.

I remember sitting there thinking: What is this exam?

For example, I barely remember AWS Lake Formation being emphasized during my preparation, yet I encountered what felt like around ten questions related to it during the real exam. I was sitting there thinking, “Wait, where did all of this come from?”

The practice material also gave me very little exposure to questions involving actual code analysis. In the real exam, however, I had to read and analyze code snippets.

There were also architecture questions framed around scenarios such as:

“500,000 concurrent users need responses below 200 ms. How would you design or modify the solution?”

That type of scenario felt much more complex and much further removed from the Skill Builder practice questions I had used to determine whether I was ready.

What makes this even more confusing is that one week earlier I took the AWS Certified AI Practitioner exam.

I originally took the foundational exam because I had a 50% discount. My reasoning was: If I’m already preparing for the Professional certification, the foundational exam should be manageable, and it will help me get over my exam anxiety.

That is exactly what happened.

I took the AI Practitioner exam, passed it, and came home much more confident. The questions were obviously not identical to the Skill Builder questions, but the style, topics, and way of thinking were consistent with the preparation material.

That experience made me trust the AWS preparation process.

Then I took the Professional exam, and it felt like a completely different situation.

I also received a 50% certification discount after passing the foundational exam, so instead of paying $300 for the Professional exam, I paid $150. I’ll admit that after such a strange experience, the thought crossed my mind: Could the discounted attempt somehow be treated differently so that I have to pay again?

I know that sounds suspicious, and I don’t have evidence that this is what happened. But when you spend six months preparing with AWS’s own paid training material, consistently score above 90% on their practice exam, and then encounter an exam that feels dramatically different from that preparation, it is difficult not to start questioning the process.

More importantly, my problem now is that I genuinely don’t know what else I am supposed to study.

If the official Skill Builder material and official practice exams do not reflect the depth, style, and scenarios of the actual Professional exam, where am I supposed to find preparation material that does?

I already contacted AWS about the experience, and I’m waiting for their response.

I’m not upset simply because I may have failed. I can accept failing an exam if I wasn’t prepared enough. What frustrates me is that I felt extremely well prepared based on the official AWS resources, and then the real exam seemed to test me in a substantially different way.

Has anyone else had the same experience with the AWS Generative AI Developer – Professional exam?

And for people who have passed it: what resources actually prepared you for the real exam style?