CCNA or an AWS certification? Compare the networking and cloud career tracks on cost, difficulty, salary data and job direction before you commit.
Comparing the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) with an AWS certification is not really comparing two exams. It is comparing two career directions: running the networks that traffic travels over, or building on the cloud platforms that traffic increasingly terminates in. Get that framing right and the "which is better" question mostly answers itself.
Short answer: if you want to become a network engineer — or work anywhere networks are the product, such as ISPs, data centres, large campuses or managed service providers — take the CCNA. If you want to build, deploy or operate systems on cloud infrastructure, start with an AWS certification (typically AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, or Cloud Practitioner if you are brand new to IT). Neither credential is a subset of the other, and the highest-leverage move for many engineers is eventually holding both.
The rest of this article earns that verdict: what each certification actually signals, how the exams differ in cost and format, what the salary data says, and a decision framework for the reader who genuinely could go either way.
The CCNA answers the question: can this person understand, configure and troubleshoot a network? It is Cisco's associate-level networking certification, earned through a single exam — currently 200-301, on exam topics v1.1 since August 2024 — covering network fundamentals, IP connectivity and services, security fundamentals, and a growing slice of automation and programmability. The v1.1 refresh also added awareness-level coverage of generative AI and cloud network management, which tells you something: Cisco itself no longer treats networking and cloud as separate worlds.
An AWS certification answers a different question: can this person design or operate workloads on Amazon Web Services? AWS runs a tiered portfolio — Foundational ($100), Associate ($150) and Professional ($300) — and the certificate most often weighed against the CCNA is the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03), which validates the ability to design resilient, cost-effective architectures on AWS. Networking appears inside that exam, but as one concern among many, at nothing like CCNA depth.
So a hiring manager reads the two credentials differently. CCNA says "understands how packets actually move". SAA-C03 says "can assemble AWS services into a working system". Job adverts for network engineer roles ask for the former; cloud engineer and solutions architect adverts ask for the latter.
Any serious comparison needs the raw numbers side by side. Both providers change details over time, so confirm current figures on the official Cisco and AWS pages before booking.
| Factor | Cisco CCNA (200-301) | AWS Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) |
|---|---|---|
| Provider focus | Networking (Cisco-centred, concepts transfer) | Amazon Web Services cloud platform |
| Format | 120 minutes; multiple-choice, multi-select, drag-and-drop and lab-style items; Cisco publishes neither question count nor passing score | 65 questions, 130 minutes, multiple choice and multiple response; passing score 720 scaled (100–1000) |
| Cost (USD, as of 2026) | $300 exam fee, full price on retakes; varies by region | $150; varies by region; active AWS cert holders get a 50% voucher for their next exam |
| Prerequisites | None formal; Cisco suggests a year or more of network experience | None formal; AWS recommends 1+ year hands-on AWS design experience |
| Difficulty character | Broad syllabus plus command-line configuration and troubleshooting detail | Scenario judgement across many AWS services; no labs |
| Validity & renewal | 3 years; renew via exams or 30 Continuing Education credits | 3 years; renew by retaking or passing a Professional-level exam |
| Best for | Network engineer, network admin, NOC, ISP/data-centre roles | Cloud engineer, solutions architect, DevOps-adjacent roles |
| Typical next step | CCNP Enterprise | SAP-C02 (Professional) or a specialty |
Two cost notes worth pausing on. First, the CCNA costs twice as much per attempt as the AWS Associate, and Cisco charges the full $300 again if you fail (after a five-day wait). Second, AWS's entry point is cheaper still: Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) is $100, 65 questions in 90 minutes, and makes a gentler start if you have no IT background at all.
Most candidates who have sat both describe the difficulty differently rather than one being flatly harder. The CCNA is demanding because of its breadth-plus-precision combination: subnetting, routing behaviour, switching, wireless, security and automation topics, tested partly through lab-style items where vague familiarity is not enough. Cisco does not publish a passing score or question count, so ignore any prep source quoting exact figures as official.
The AWS Solutions Architect Associate is demanding in a judgement-heavy way: nearly every question is a scenario asking for the best answer among several plausible ones, which punishes candidates who memorised service definitions without understanding trade-offs. There are no hands-on lab components on any current AWS exam — it is entirely question-based.
Neither provider publishes pass rates, so treat any percentage you see elsewhere as invented. A reasonable rule of thumb from the formats alone: CCNA rewards deep, drilled technical accuracy; SAA-C03 rewards breadth of platform understanding and decision-making. Match that to how you learn.
Salary claims in this comparison are usually the least trustworthy part of the internet's coverage, so here is only what named, dated sources support — and pay always varies by location, experience, employer and role.
The honest reading: both tracks lead to six-figure US averages at mid-level, and neither certification is a salary guarantee. Progression matters more than the first badge — a CCNP or an AWS Professional certification is where the survey numbers move noticeably.
The gravitational pull towards cloud is real. Synergy Research Group's data for Q3 2025 (published November 2025) put AWS at 29% of the cloud infrastructure services market, Microsoft at 20% and Google Cloud at 13% — the big three holding 63% of a $106.9 billion quarterly market. That scale is why cloud job listings keep multiplying and why an AWS credential opens more doors by raw volume.
But cloud running on someone else's data centre does not delete networking — it relocates it. Hybrid connectivity, VPC design, routing between on-premises estates and cloud regions, and troubleshooting when "the cloud is slow" all demand people who understand layers 1 to 4. Google Cloud maintains a dedicated Professional Cloud Network Engineer certification, and AWS's Advanced Networking Specialty existed precisely because cloud networking is hard (note: AWS lists that specialty as retiring, with 31 December 2026 as the last exam day). CCNA fundamentals — subnetting, routing logic, DNS, security basics — are exactly the knowledge cloud engineers lean on when architectures misbehave.
So the question is not "networking or cloud, which survives?" Both do. The question is which end of the stack you want to be responsible for.
1. You want to be a network engineer, or you work somewhere the network is the job. Take the CCNA. It remains the recognised entry credential for network roles, and no AWS certification substitutes for it in those job adverts. Your later ladder is CCNP — see our guide to choosing between CCNA and CCNP when you have some experience behind you.
2. You want to build or run systems in the cloud. Start with AWS. Go straight to the AWS Solutions Architect Associate if you have some IT background; start with Cloud Practitioner if you have none. If you are undecided between cloud providers rather than between networking and cloud, that is a different question — our AWS vs Google Cloud certification path comparison covers it.
3. You are in IT support or helpdesk and unsure which way to jump. Look at the employers within reach of you. A region dense with enterprises, ISPs and data centres rewards CCNA; a market dominated by SaaS companies and startups rewards AWS. If both look viable, AWS's $100 foundational exam is the cheaper way to test your interest before committing to the $300 CCNA.
4. You suspect you will eventually want both. Order by first job target, not by difficulty. A network engineer who later adds an AWS Associate becomes a strong hybrid-cloud candidate; a cloud engineer who later studies CCNA-level networking debugs the problems teammates cannot. There is no wasted sequence here — only a wasted year spent studying for a role you do not intend to apply for.
One scenario to make it concrete: a helpdesk analyst with two years' experience in a hospital trust — an environment full of switches, VLANs and site-to-site links — gets more immediate mileage from CCNA, because the next internal role up is network admin. The same analyst at a software company whose infrastructure is entirely in AWS should study SAA-C03, because "networking" there means security groups and VPC route tables, and the internal path up is cloud operations.
Whichever exam you pick, practice questions belong late in your preparation, not at the start: use them to test understanding of the official objectives, analyse which domains you keep missing, and rehearse under time pressure. Working through Cisco CCNA practice questions — or the AWS equivalents from the Amazon exams hub — after finishing the syllabus will show you which domains need another pass before you book.
Sequence by your first job application, not by the exams themselves. If your next role is network-side, CCNA first; if it is cloud-side, AWS first. There are no prerequisites in either direction, so nothing is lost by starting with the one your CV needs now.
Yes, indirectly. CCNA-level fluency with IP addressing, routing and DNS makes AWS's VPC, hybrid-connectivity and load-balancing topics much easier to reason about. It is a helpful foundation, not a requirement.
For network-focused roles, yes — it remains the standard associate credential, and Cisco's 2024 blueprint refresh added cloud and AI topics precisely to keep it current. It is not worth it as a detour if your goal is purely cloud engineering.
Yes. AWS has no prerequisites for any exam; Cloud Practitioner is optional and mainly useful for people new to IT or in non-engineering roles.
Write down the job title you want to hold in two years. If it contains the word "network", the CCNA is the better path and the $300 is well spent. If it contains "cloud", "architect", "DevOps" or "platform", start with AWS — most readers in that group should target Solutions Architect Associate. If you honestly cannot choose, spend a weekend with free introductory material on both, then commit to one exam and finish it: a completed certification in the slightly-wrong lane beats two abandoned study plans in the right one. And remember the long game — in hybrid environments, the engineer who understands both the packet and the platform is the one everyone else phones.
Exam facts in this guide were checked against official certification-provider pages on . Fees, exam codes and policies change — confirm on the provider’s own site before you book.
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