AWS Certification Renewal: Every Route, and What It Costs

Every AWS certification expires three years after you earn it. AWS’s FAQ states it without qualification: “You will be required to update your certification (or recertify) every three years.”

There are four ways to reset that clock, they cost very different amounts, and one of them is free but applies to exactly one certification. Here is each, from AWS’s own recertification page and FAQs, read on 24 September 2026. The exams themselves are laid out on the AWS certification path.

Route one: retake the current version

The default. You sit the latest version of the same exam and pay the full registration fee — $100 at foundational level, $150 at associate, $300 at professional or specialty.

Two things make this less painful than it sounds. AWS puts a 50% discount voucher in your AWS Certification Account when you recertify or upgrade, accessible from the Benefits section, which on a professional exam is the largest single discount AWS publishes. And “the latest version” often means a different exam from the one you passed: someone renewing a Developer – Associate certification after 1 December 2026 sits DVA-C03, not the DVA-C02 they originally took.

Route two: pass a higher-level exam

The route most people use without planning it. AWS lists passing a higher-level exam — a professional or associate exam above the one you hold — as a recertification action, so moving up the ladder renews what is underneath you.

If you take an associate exam this year and a professional next year, both are current from the date of the professional pass. AWS’s wording on timing is specific: “For all recertification options—renewal and maintenance—time is extended based on the date of completion of that recertification action.”

The practical planning point: if a certification is close to expiry and you were already thinking about the next rung, take the next rung. You get a new credential and a renewed old one for one fee.

Route three: the free one, for Cloud Practitioner only

AWS’s recertification page lists a free route for a single certification: completing “AWS Cloud Quest: Recertify Cloud Practitioner”, its game-based training, renews the Cloud Practitioner certification at no cost.

No other AWS certification has a free renewal path. If the foundational exam is the only one you intend to hold, that changes its long-run price considerably — $100 once, rather than $100 every three years. What Cloud Practitioner covers and who should skip it goes through the rest of that decision.

Route four: paid maintenance, for one extra year

AWS also offers a maintenance route: completing maintenance activities on AWS Skill Builder extends a certification by one year rather than three.

Three conditions apply. It needs an active paid Skill Builder subscription — Monthly, Annual or Team, at $29 a month or $449 a year. It only opens when your certification is within 90 days of expiration. And it buys a year, not three, so it is a deferral rather than a renewal.

That makes it useful in one specific situation: your certification is about to lapse, the current exam version is about to change, and you would rather sit the new version next year than the old one this month. Outside that, the arithmetic rarely favours it. Skill Builder’s free tier against the subscription covers what else the money buys.

What happens if you let it lapse

Your certification stops being current. Nothing else happens — there is no penalty, no waiting period and no surcharge on returning; you simply sit the current exam at the full fee as anyone would.

Two details worth knowing. Retired exams keep their holders certified for the remainder of their three years: AWS’s Machine Learning – Specialty page, for an exam whose last day was 31 March 2026, says holders “will still have an active certification for 3 years from the date it was earned”. And if you fail the renewal attempt, the ordinary retake rule applies — 14 calendar days, full fee again, no limit on attempts.

Version changes are the real deadline

The three-year clock is predictable. The version calendar is not, and it is the thing that spoils study plans. Every date below is published by AWS.

• Registration for SAP-C03 and DVA-C03 opens on 27 October 2026.
• Solutions Architect – Professional SAP-C02 retires on 16 November 2026; SAP-C03 is generally available from 17 November 2026.
• Developer – Associate DVA-C02 retires on 30 November 2026; DVA-C03 is generally available from 1 December 2026.
• Machine Learning Engineer – Associate MLA-C01 retired in English on 28 September 2026; the MLA-C02 beta runs at $75 from 29 September 2026, with general availability on 14 January 2027.
• Advanced Networking – Specialty ends on 31 December 2026.
• Cloud Practitioner’s Italian and German versions retire after 31 December 2026; CloudOps Engineer – Associate’s Simplified Chinese and Korean versions retire after 19 November 2026.

If your renewal falls near one of those dates, the choice is between studying for an exam that is about to disappear and waiting for a syllabus nobody has yet written a good course for. Neither is wrong; picking blindly is.

A worked example

Say you passed Solutions Architect – Associate in October 2024. It expires in October 2027. Your options, in order of cost:

1. Pass a professional exam before then — $300, and you gain a credential.
2. Retake SAA-C03, or whatever version is current — $150, halved to $75 if you use the 50% recertification voucher.
3. Maintain through Skill Builder inside the last 90 days — $29 for a month’s subscription, buying one extra year.
4. Let it lapse and re-sit later at full price.

Every figure there is from this page. The arithmetic is yours; what matters is that option two costs less than most people assume, because the voucher is easy to forget.

The one thing renewal is not

It is not a re-examination of whether you were ever any good. AWS’s routes are all “do something current on the platform”, whether that is an exam, a higher exam, a game or a set of Skill Builder activities.

That is worth remembering when you read that certifications are “just a subscription”. They are, in the sense that the clock runs. They are not in the sense that anyone can pay to keep one: every route involves passing something. Whether that value is worth your money in the first place is a separate argument, made without a single salary figure.