Overview
The HashiCorp Certified Terraform Associate is an entry-level certification that proves foundational Terraform knowledge and skills. The current exam is version 004, written against Terraform 1.12, and includes HCP Terraform. HashiCorp describes it as an hour-long multiple-choice exam. Format details beyond that, such as the number of questions and price, come from reports and should be confirmed on HashiCorp's site.
Exam pattern
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Length | 60 minutes |
| Questions | About 57 (reported) |
| Question types | Multiple choice, multiple answer, true or false and text match (reported) |
| Delivery | Online proctored, in English (reported) |
| Fee | USD 70.50 plus local taxes (reported) |
| Result | Pass or fail, with no score released (reported) |
Syllabus
HashiCorp lists eight objective areas.
Infrastructure as code with Terraform: IaC concepts and Terraform's multi-cloud reach
Terraform fundamentals: providers, state and configuration
Core Terraform workflow: init, plan, apply, destroy, validate and format
Terraform configuration: resources, data sources, variables, outputs and custom conditions
Terraform modules: sourcing, composing and versioning
State management: local and remote backends, locking and drift
Infrastructure maintenance: importing resources and inspecting state
HCP Terraform: cloud workflows, collaboration and governance
After the exam
The certification is reported as valid for 2 years.
Preparation tips
Practise each workflow command against a real configuration.
Learn how state and backends behave, since state management is its own objective area.
How long is the Terraform Associate exam?
60 minutes.
Which Terraform version does it test?
Terraform 1.12 for exam version 004.