Claude Certified Developer Exam Prep

No. This is an independent study program built lesson-by-lesson from the official Claude Certified Developer – Foundations (CCDV-F) Exam Guide v1.0 published by Anthropic. We are not affiliated with Anthropic. Completing this program does NOT award the official credential — that comes only from passing Anthropic's proctored exam through the Partner Academy. What we give you is the map, the practice, and the completion certificate that proves you studied every domain.

Anthropic's certification family has three foundational tiers. CCAO-F (Associate, $99) is for non-builders — consultants, sellers, delivery leads who need broad Claude fluency. CCDV-F (Developer, $125 — this program) is for engineers who build, integrate, and ship Claude applications: API integration, agents, tools, MCP, evals, security. CCAR-F (Architect – Foundations, $125) is for solution architects who design the systems developers build. If you write the code, take the Developer exam. If you design the architecture, take the Architect exam. Many engineers eventually take both — this Developer prep is the natural first step, and we also publish an Architect prep program.

The CCDV-F exam is $125 USD per attempt. If you don't pass, retakes follow a waiting ladder: 14 days after your first failed attempt, 30 days after the second, 90 days after the third — with a maximum of 4 attempts in any rolling 12-month period, and the fee applies each time. The credential is valid for 12 months. To renew on time you review what changed and complete a FREE, non-proctored assessment on the Anthropic Partner Academy — no fee. If you let it lapse, you must retake the full exam at the full fee. You can also cancel or reschedule up to 24 hours before your appointment; inside 24 hours you forfeit the fee.

Registration runs through the Anthropic Partner Academy (anthropic.skilljar.com) and scheduling through Pearson VUE. Certification is open to organizations in the Claude Partner Network, which is free for any organization to join — your employer applies, not you individually. You can complete this entire prep program without Partner Network access; it stands on its own as a structured path through everything a Claude developer needs to know.

53 items in 120 minutes. Items are a mix of multiple-choice (pick one) and multiple-response (pick several) — each item tells you how many responses to select. Passing is a scaled score of 720 on a 100–1,000 scale. It's proctored, either online with a webcam or at a Pearson VUE test center. Your score report shows pass/fail, your scaled score, and your percent-correct in each of the 8 domains. There's no penalty structure that rewards leaving items blank — answer everything.

Most candidates work through the 38 lessons over 2–3 weeks at 5–6 hours per week, then spend a few days on Module 9's exam simulation. The exam guide's Minimally Qualified Candidate has 1–5 years of software engineering plus at least 6 months hands-on with Claude — if that's you, this program fills the specific exam-shaped gaps. If you're newer to Claude, plan for more hands-on building alongside the lessons.

Start with Module 9's exam simulation. If you score 80%+, you're likely ready — use the domain modules to patch specific weak spots (most strong builders are shaky in 2–3 of the 8 domains, often Systems Life Cycle, Configuration Management, or the security domain). If you're below 80%, work the modules in order. The exam tests breadth across all 8 domains, and Applications & Integration alone is a third of it — even senior engineers miss points by under-preparing the parts of Claude they don't use daily.

The exam assumes you can read and write Python and/or TypeScript, that you're fluent with REST APIs and the command line, and that you understand LLM fundamentals, agents, context, and MCP at a working level. There are no mandatory course prerequisites. If the conceptual foundations feel thin, the three free FindSkill courses listed above (How LLMs Work, Prompt Engineering, Building AI Agents & Workflows) are the Stage 0 on-ramp.

The Claude API (Messages API, streaming, vision, thinking, Batch API, prompt caching), the Claude Agent SDK, Claude Code, MCP for building servers, and the Anthropic Console. All of them practice on free tiers or minimal API credit. This program is Anthropic-first by design — the exam tests these exact tools, so we don't substitute alternatives.

The official Anthropic CCDV-F credential is a verifiable, proctored certification from the company that makes Claude — that's the recognition that matters, and it's what employers and clients check. Our FindSkill completion certificate proves you prepared systematically across all 8 domains; it's a study credential, not a substitute for the official exam. The goal of this program is to get you to walk into the proctored exam and pass it.

Anthropic Academy offers excellent free courses covering Claude broadly — they're great for general learning and you should use them. This program is different in one specific way: it's organized entirely around the CCDV-F exam blueprint. Every module is a domain, lesson counts match domain weights, and every lesson ends with practice questions in the exam's format. Academy teaches Claude; this teaches the exam.

No prep program can guarantee a pass — the exam tests judgment in novel scenarios, not memorization. What we can promise: you'll have studied every one of the 8 domains in proportion to its weight, seen real worked Claude output and the ways each technique fails, and answered 110+ questions in the exam's exact format. That's what closes the gap between 'I build with Claude' and 'I'm exam-ready.'

The prerequisite courses (How LLMs Work, Prompt Engineering, Building AI Agents) teach the concepts at a REMEMBER/UNDERSTAND level for a general audience. This program operates at APPLY/ANALYZE level for developers: it assumes you know what an agent is and teaches you to decide workflow-vs-agent under real constraints, build one with the Agent SDK, and defend it against prompt injection. Less than 10% overlaps the courses — this is the exam-shaped layer on top.