Claude Certified Developer
A free, independent guide to the Claude Certified Developer exam (CCDV-F): what it covers, the official Anthropic course, and the public resources you can study right now without Partner Network access.
These exams require your employer to be in the Claude Partner Network. Check whether you are eligible first.
The exam at a glance
For developers building applications on the Claude API. All figures below are the official ones, published in the exam guide and shared across the four Claude exams.
- Exam code
- CCDV-F
- Price
- $125
- Questions
- 53
- Duration
- 120 minutes
- Scoring
- Scaled 100 to 1,000
- Pass mark
- 720
- Who it is for
- For developers building applications on the Claude API
The 8 exam domains, by weight
The percentages are the official domain weights: they tell you where the questions are concentrated and where your study time pays off most.
- 1. Agents & Workflows14.7%
- 2. Applications & Integration33.1%
- 3. Claude Code3.1%
- 4. Evaluation, Testing & Debugging2.6%
- 5. Model Selection & Optimization16.8%
- 6. Prompt & Context Engineering11%
- 7. Security & Safety8.1%
- 8. Tools & MCPs10.6%
Official preparation
Anthropic publishes an official preparation course for this exam, Claude Certified Developer - Foundations. The course page is public and the course itself is free. Taking it, though, requires access to the Claude Partner Network, which in practice means working for a partner organisation.
We deliberately do not reproduce that course's lesson list or Anthropic's descriptions of it here. That curriculum is Anthropic's work; our rule is to reference and link to official material, never to reproduce it. So we point you to it, note that it is free, and note that it needs partner access.
One public fact is worth stating: Anthropic lists nine recommended prerequisites for this course, against three for the Associate, which is itself a signal of the step up in scope. They are Claude 101, Claude Code 101, Claude Platform 101, Claude Code in Action, AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations, Building with the Claude API, Introduction to Model Context Protocol, Model Context Protocol: Advanced Topics, and AI Capabilities and Limitations. All nine sit in the public Anthropic catalogue, open to anyone; the next section shows where to find them.
Learning this without partner access
The certification is gated, but the skills it tests are not, and the exam domains are a good map of what it takes to build seriously on Claude whether or not you can sit the exam.
The official exam page on the Partner Academy is public to read, even though registering there is not: the Claude Certified Developer - Foundations exam page.
Two public routes cover the same official Anthropic courses, and neither needs a Partner Network account:
- The Anthropic course catalogue lists each course with its lecture count and length. Claude Code in Action, for example, is 15 lectures over about an hour, Introduction to Model Context Protocol 16 lectures over about an hour, and Model Context Protocol: Advanced Topics 15 lectures over about 1.1 hours.
- The same Anthropic courses are also on Coursera, including Building with the Claude API, Claude Code in Action, Introduction to Model Context Protocol, and Model Context Protocol: Advanced Topics. It is an alternative route for anyone who prefers that platform.
One public starting point applies to every exam: the free Claude Partner Network learning path, on the public catalogue rather than the partner portal, which Anthropic describes as the first step toward unlocking certification. It needs no partner access.
Domain by domain
For each exam domain, the public official resources come first, then the matching Sentievo concept pages. The Sentievo links reuse the same domain-to-concept map that powers our Study Plan Generator.
Domain 2: Applications & Integration (33.1%, a third of the exam)
On Sentievo: Messages API, Tool use, MCP, Context, Vision.
Domain 4: Evaluation, Testing & Debugging (2.6%)
On Sentievo: Evaluation.
Domain 5: Model Selection & Optimization (16.8%)
On Sentievo: Models, Tokens, Prompt caching, Extended thinking.
Domain 6: Prompt & Context Engineering (11%)
On Sentievo: Prompting, Context, Context window.
Domain 7: Security & Safety (8.1%)
On Sentievo: Security, Risk and safety.
Domain 8: Tools & MCPs (10.6%)
Practise this exam
Reading gets you the concepts; questions tell you whether they stuck. Sentievo's practice follows the official CCDV-F domains and weights, and the first domain is free with no signup.