AWS DVA-C02 vs GCP Professional Cloud Developer: Which Certification Should You Get First?

If you write the code that runs your cloud applications rather than just designing or operating the infrastructure underneath them, two certifications are built specifically for you: the AWS Certified Developer — Associate (DVA-C02) and the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Developer. Both validate hands-on application development skills — building, testing, deploying, and debugging cloud-native software — rather than the broader architecture or operations focus of certs like SAA-C03 or the Associate Cloud Engineer.

They are not interchangeable, though. One is an associate-level exam with no prerequisites; the other is a professional-level exam that assumes years of hands-on experience. This guide compares both directly so you can decide which to pursue first, or whether your stack points you toward one over the other.

The Comparison Table

Factor	AWS DVA-C02	GCP Professional Cloud Developer
Level	Associate	Professional
Prerequisites	None (1+ year hands-on AWS dev experience recommended)	None (3+ years industry experience, 1+ year on GCP recommended)
Questions	65 (50 scored, 15 unscored)	50-60
Duration	130 minutes	120 minutes
Question Types	Multiple choice, multiple response	Multiple choice, multiple select
Passing Score	720 out of 1000 (scaled)	Not published (Google does not disclose a numeric cutoff)
Exam Cost	$150 USD	$200 USD plus applicable taxes
Validity	3 years	2 years
Delivery	Testing center or online proctored	Testing center or online proctored
Languages	English (plus other languages by region)	English and Japanese

Sources: AWS DVA-C02 exam guide (AWS Certification documentation); GCP Professional Cloud Developer certification page (Google Cloud).

Exam Format Deep Dive

AWS DVA-C02

The DVA-C02 gives you 65 questions in 130 minutes — 50 of which are scored and 15 of which are unscored pretest questions you cannot identify during the exam. Questions are either single-answer multiple choice or multiple-response (select two or three correct answers), with no case studies or drag-and-drop items.

The exam is organized into four domains, each weighted against the scored total: Development with AWS Services (32%), Security (26%), Deployment (24%), and Troubleshooting and Optimization (18%). The heaviest domain by far is service-level development — Lambda, DynamoDB, API Gateway, S3, and the AWS SDKs — which reflects the exam’s focus on code you actually write and services you directly integrate with.

AWS expects one or more years of hands-on development experience on AWS, though this is a recommendation, not a hard prerequisite. There is no exam you must pass first.

GCP Professional Cloud Developer

The Cloud Developer exam runs 120 minutes and contains 50 to 60 multiple-choice and multiple-select questions, delivered either onsite at a testing center or online with remote proctoring. Google does not publish a numeric passing score for any Professional-level exam.

The exam covers four sections: Designing highly scalable, secure, and reliable cloud-native applications (~32%), Building and testing applications (~23%), Deploying applications (~24%), and Integrating applications with Google Cloud services (~21%). Google’s current exam guide also explicitly calls out AI-assisted development — using AI coding assistants, context engineering, and automated debugging tools — as part of the delivery workflow candidates are expected to know, not just core GCP services.

There is no formal prerequisite, but Google recommends 3+ years of industry experience, including 1+ year designing and managing solutions on Google Cloud — a materially higher experience bar than DVA-C02’s associate-level target.

Where the Two Overlap

Despite the different levels, both exams test a similar shape of knowledge:

• Serverless compute: Lambda functions and Cloud Run/Cloud Functions — execution models, cold starts, concurrency, and event triggers
• API design and management: API Gateway on AWS, Apigee or API Gateway on GCP — authentication, rate limiting, versioning
• CI/CD pipelines: CodePipeline/CodeBuild vs Cloud Build — automated testing, blue-green and canary deployments
• Managed data stores: DynamoDB vs Firestore, and their respective relational options — data modeling for application access patterns rather than analytics
• Observability: structured logging, distributed tracing, and metrics for debugging production issues
• IAM and secrets: least-privilege service roles/service accounts and secrets management (Secrets Manager vs Secret Manager)

The service names differ, but the underlying design patterns — stateless compute, managed data stores, event-driven architecture, and automated deployment pipelines — transfer directly between the two.

Which One Should You Take First?

Choose AWS DVA-C02 First If:

• You already work on AWS or your team’s infrastructure runs there
• You want an associate-level entry point with no formal prerequisite and a lower cost
• You want the most widely recognized developer credential in cloud job postings
• You are earlier in your career and want to build toward AWS’s professional-level certs (like DOP-C02) later

Read the full DVA-C02 study guide for a domain-by-domain breakdown and a 5-week study plan.

Choose GCP Professional Cloud Developer First If:

• You already have several years of hands-on GCP experience and want a professional-level credential that reflects it
• Your organization builds on Cloud Run, GKE, or Firebase rather than AWS-native services
• You want a certification that explicitly tests AI-assisted development workflows, which is a growing expectation in developer roles
• You are comfortable with a shorter, 2-year renewal cycle in exchange for a credential that signals deeper seniority

Read the full Cloud Developer study guide for the complete four-domain breakdown and an 8-week study plan.

If You Are Choosing Between the Two From Scratch

Match the certification to the cloud your team actually deploys to. If you do not yet have a strong opinion, DVA-C02 is the more accessible starting point: no experience prerequisite is enforced, the associate level means a narrower and shallower body of knowledge, and the $150 cost is lower. The GCP Professional Cloud Developer exam assumes you already have real GCP production experience — it is a poor choice as a first certification if you have not yet built and shipped something on Google Cloud.

Preparing with StudyKits

StudyKits offers dedicated practice question sets for both AWS DVA-C02 and GCP Professional Cloud Developer, each mapped to its exam’s official domain weighting so your practice time mirrors the real exam. Both apps use spaced repetition to resurface questions you got wrong until the material actually sticks, rather than a flat pool of random questions.

If you are planning to earn both certifications eventually — a reasonable path for developers on multi-cloud teams — studying DVA-C02 first gives you the serverless and CI/CD fundamentals that carry over directly into the GCP exam’s build, test, and deploy domains.

The Bottom Line

DVA-C02 and Professional Cloud Developer test the same core skill — building and operating applications on managed cloud services — but at different altitudes. DVA-C02 is the accessible, associate-level entry point for AWS developers. Professional Cloud Developer is a senior-level credential for developers who already have real GCP production experience. Pick the one that matches the cloud you build on today, not the one with the more impressive title.