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Professional · Professional Cloud ArchitectPrep available

Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect (Professional Cloud Architect) practice exam and study path

A free, timed 50-question Professional Cloud Architect practice exam in 120 minutes, scored by domain, with every option explained after you submit. Also 138 practice questions you can check one at a time, a page for every task in the exam guide, and a study path. No sign-up.

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Professional Cloud Architect exam pack:

$11.99for 12 months

The Google Cloud design exam: turning business and technical requirements into an architecture, provisioning networks, storage, compute and AI services, designing for security and compliance, and running the solution well, often against one of four published case studies.

The exam

Exam code
Professional Cloud Architect
Questions
Not yet published
Time
120 minutes
Passing score
Not published
Exam fee
$200 (USD)
Question types
multiple choice, multiple response

50-60 multiple-choice and multiple-select questions in 2 hours, $200 plus tax, online-proctored or at a test center, in English and Japanese. Each exam includes 2 of the 4 published case studies, and case-study questions make up 20-30% of the exam. No prerequisites; 3+ years of industry experience including 1+ years designing and managing solutions on Google Cloud recommended; valid for 2 years. Holders can renew with the standard exam, a renewal exam (1 hour, 25 questions, $100, built on one generative AI case study) or designated courses and skill badges in Google Skills. Passing score: Not published. Our forms hold 50 questions, the low end of the published range, split by the guide's approximate section weights.

From Google Cloud's certification page and exam guide, checked Oct 18, 2026.

Domains and weights

  • Domain 1: Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture

    25%

  • Domain 2: Managing and provisioning a cloud solution infrastructure

    18%

  • Domain 3: Designing for security and compliance

    17%

  • Domain 4: Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes

    15%

  • Domain 5: Managing implementation

    13%

  • Domain 6: Ensuring solution and operations excellence

    12%

On our roadmap this comes after Associate Cloud Engineer. See every certification.

Practice

138 original practice questions, every option explained with the Google Cloud documentation page that proves it. Free, no sign-up; progress stays on this device.

Your results on this device →

More practice exams

The lessons, the sample questions on every task page and the first full practice exam are free and stay free. A pack adds the further timed Professional Cloud Architect practice exams.

Professional Cloud Architect exam pack

$11.99for 12 months

  • Every paid Professional Cloud Architect practice exam, timed, with every option explained
  • The next version of this exam included when it changes within your 12 months
  • 12 months of access. One payment, nothing renews by itself.
  • 14-day refund, no conditions
  • 14-day refund, no conditions: ask within 14 days of buying and you get the whole payment back.
  • No pass guarantee. These are practice exams written by us from the exam guide and the Google Cloud documentation; a score here does not predict your result on the real exam.

Study path

One module per exam domain. Lessons that already exist on BytePatterns are linked; the rest are being written.

  1. Module 1: Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture

    1. 1Functional and non-functional requirements, and design decision trade-offsTask 1.1

      Partly covered by: What Is System Design

    2. 2Build, buy, modify or deprecate; KPIs and ROI as success measuresTask 1.1

      Partly covered by: Measuring AI Value

    3. 3Integration patterns and data movement with external systemsTask 1.1

      Partly covered by: Message Queues, SQS vs SNS vs EventBridge

    4. 4High availability, failover, backup and recovery on Google CloudTask 1.2

      Partly covered by: Database Replication, Disaster Recovery: RPO & RTO

    5. 5Scalability, elasticity, performance and latencyTask 1.2

      Partly covered by: Vertical vs Horizontal Scaling, Load Balancing, Content Delivery Networks

    6. 6The Well-Architected Framework pillars and Gemini Cloud AssistTask 1.2

      Lesson coming

    7. 7VPC design: Shared VPC, peering, Private Service Connect, hybrid and multicloudTask 1.3

      Partly covered by: VPC: Subnets, NAT & Firewalls, Hybrid Networking & DNS

    8. 8Choosing storage and data processing: object, file and databasesTask 1.3

      Partly covered by: SQL vs NoSQL, RDS vs DynamoDB, S3: Consistency, Classes, Lifecycle

    9. 9Mapping compute to GKE, Cloud Run, Cloud Run functions and Compute EngineTask 1.3

      Partly covered by: ECS vs EKS vs Fargate, Containers vs VMs

    10. 10Choosing AI services, Gemini models, Model Garden and AI HypercomputerTask 1.3

      Partly covered by: What Is an LLM, Fine-Tuning vs Prompting

    11. 11Migration planning: Migration Center, methods, dependencies and licensingTask 1.4

      Partly covered by: Migration: The 7 Rs, TCO & Waves, Moving Data Into AWS

    12. 12Designing for change: cloud-first and managed servicesTask 1.5

      Lesson coming

  2. Module 2: Managing and provisioning a cloud solution infrastructure

    1. 13Hybrid and multicloud networking: Cloud VPN, Cloud Interconnect, Network Connectivity CenterTask 2.1

      Partly covered by: Hybrid Networking & DNS

    2. 14Firewall policies, Cloud NGFW, Cloud Armor and load balancer choiceTask 2.1

      Partly covered by: VPC: Subnets, NAT & Firewalls, Load Balancing

    3. 15Storage configuration: access, lifecycle, retention, growth and backupTask 2.2

      Partly covered by: S3: Consistency, Classes, Lifecycle, Disaster Recovery: RPO & RTO

    4. 16Compute configuration: Spot VMs, MIGs, VM Manager patching, VMware EngineTask 2.3

      Partly covered by: EC2, Auto Scaling & Load Balancers, AWS Cost Levers

    5. 17Container orchestration on GKE and serverless networkingTask 2.3

      Partly covered by: Design a Deployment on Kubernetes, Requests, Limits & HPA

    6. 18Agent Platform Pipelines, data preparation and the ML lifecycleTask 2.4

      Partly covered by: Training vs Inference, From Pilot to Production

    7. 19AI Hypercomputer: GPUs, TPUs and consumption optionsTask 2.4

      Lesson coming

    8. 20Prebuilt AI APIs, Agent Search and Gemini EnterpriseTask 2.5

      Partly covered by: Retrieval-Augmented Generation, Agents and Tools

    9. 21Bringing Model Garden models into a solutionTask 2.5

      Lesson coming

  3. Module 3: Designing for security and compliance

    1. 22IAM, the resource hierarchy, organization policies and separation of dutiesTask 3.1

      Partly covered by: Shared Responsibility & IAM, Organizations, SCPs & Control Tower

    2. 23Cloud KMS, customer-managed keys and Secret ManagerTask 3.1

      Partly covered by: KMS, Envelope Encryption & Private CA

    3. 24VPC Service Controls, IAP, Chrome Enterprise Premium and Workload Identity FederationTask 3.1

      Lesson coming

    4. 25Software supply chain: Artifact Registry, Artifact Analysis, Binary AuthorizationTask 3.1

      Lesson coming

    5. 26Securing AI: Model Armor, Sensitive Data Protection and model deploymentTask 3.1

      Partly covered by: Guardrails, Finding and Masking PII

    6. 27Compliance: health and personal data, data sovereignty, PCI DSS, SOC 2 and audit logsTask 3.2

      Lesson coming

  4. Module 4: Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes

    1. 28SDLC, CI/CD and testing software and infrastructureTask 4.1

      Lesson coming

    2. 29Troubleshooting and root cause analysisTask 4.1

      Partly covered by: Tracing a Request, Observability Basics

    3. 30Disaster recovery patterns and objectivesTask 4.1

      Partly covered by: Disaster Recovery: RPO & RTO

    4. 31Stakeholders, change management and skills readinessTask 4.2

      Partly covered by: Change Management for AI, AI Teams and the Center of Excellence

    5. 32Cost optimization: CapEx and OpEx, committed use and FinOpsTask 4.2

      Partly covered by: AWS Cost Levers

  5. Module 5: Managing implementation

    1. 33Deployment approaches and testing frameworks for teamsTask 5.1

      Lesson coming

    2. 34API management with ApigeeTask 5.1

      Partly covered by: Designing a REST API, Rate Limiting

    3. 35Migration and management tooling, and Gemini Cloud Assist for teamsTask 5.1

      Partly covered by: Moving Data Into AWS

    4. 36Cloud Shell, Cloud Code, the gcloud, gcloud storage and bq tools, and emulatorsTask 5.2

      Lesson coming

    5. 37Terraform, client libraries and calling Google APIs with the right credentialsTask 5.2

      Lesson coming

  6. Module 6: Ensuring solution and operations excellence

    1. 38The operational excellence pillarTask 6.1

      Lesson coming

    2. 39Monitoring, logging, tracing, profiling and alerting on SLOsTask 6.2

      Partly covered by: Observability Basics, Tracing a Request, CloudWatch, Alarms & X-Ray

    3. 40Release management: canary, blue-green and rollbackTask 6.3

      Partly covered by: Scheduling & Rolling Updates

    4. 41Supporting deployed solutions with Customer Care and Personalized Service HealthTask 6.4

      Lesson coming

    5. 42Quality control: error budgets, release gates and scanningTask 6.5

      Lesson coming

    6. 43Chaos engineering, load testing and penetration testingTask 6.6

      Lesson coming

Every task in the exam guide

The exam guide splits each domain into task statements. Each one has a page with a short summary, the lessons that teach it and open sample questions.

Domain 1: Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture

Domain 2: Managing and provisioning a cloud solution infrastructure

Domain 3: Designing for security and compliance

Domain 4: Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes

Domain 5: Managing implementation

Domain 6: Ensuring solution and operations excellence

How these questions are made

  • Written by us from the exam guide's task statements and the Google Cloud documentation — never from real exam content.
  • Every option carries its own explanation and a link to the Google Cloud page that proves it.
  • A question enters a timed exam only after an independent check; until then it is a practice question.
  • Results are a plain percentage, per domain too — not an imitation of Google Cloud's scaled score.

Questions about the Professional Cloud Architect practice exam

Is the Professional Cloud Architect practice exam free?
Yes. The full practice exam (50 questions, 120 minutes) is free with no sign-up, and so are the 138 practice questions, the task pages and the study path. Your attempts are saved in this browser, on this device.
How many questions does it have, and is it timed?
50 questions in 120 minutes: the real Professional Cloud Architect pace, scaled to this form. When the time runs out, the exam is submitted as it stands.
Are the answers explained?
After you submit, not during: like the real exam, the timed exam gives no feedback until the end. Then you get your score overall and per exam domain, and every question with each option explained and a link to the Google Cloud documentation page behind it. In practice mode an answer is explained as soon as you check it.
What does the Professional Cloud Architect exam pack add?
3 more timed practice exams (Practice exam 1: 50 questions, 120 minutes; Practice exam 2: 50 questions, 120 minutes; Practice exam 3: 50 questions, 120 minutes), each scored and explained the same way, and the next version of this exam if it changes within your 12 months. 12 months of access. One payment, nothing renews by itself. Everything above stays free. See the pack.
Can I get a refund?
Yes, with no conditions: ask within 14 days of buying and you get the whole payment back. The details are in the terms.
Is this an official Google Cloud practice exam?
No. BytePatterns is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Google Cloud. Every question is written by us from the public exam guide and the Google Cloud documentation, never from real exam content, and a score here does not predict your result on the real exam. Google Cloud lists its own preparation resources on its certification page.