OTCA practice exam: free questions, domains and format

What is the OTCA exam?

OTCA is the OpenTelemetry Certified Associate exam from the Linux Foundation and CNCF. It is a proctored, online, multiple-choice exam on OpenTelemetry, the vendor-neutral standard for generating and collecting traces, metrics and logs. It tests the fundamentals of observability, the OpenTelemetry API and SDK that applications are instrumented with, the Collector that receives, processes and exports telemetry, and the work of maintaining and debugging observability pipelines. It is a knowledge exam, so you read configuration and instrumentation code and decide what it does. Officially it is the OpenTelemetry Certified Associate certification, a multiple-choice exam in the Golden tier of the 16-certification Golden Kubestronaut program. The sections below cover its official domains, the verified format and cost, and its place in the path.

Typical questions cover signals and their semantics, context propagation, samplers, processors and exporters, the pipeline structure of a Collector configuration, and how resource attributes and semantic conventions describe a service. Reading a Collector configuration and following the data through it is the most useful practice.

OTCA exam domains and weights

OTCA has four domains, and one of them dominates. The OpenTelemetry API and SDK carries 46% of the exam, the largest by a wide margin. The OpenTelemetry Collector follows at 26%, Fundamentals of Observability at 18%, and Maintaining and Debugging Observability Pipelines at 10%. That makes the API and SDK the clear priority: providers, tracers and meters, spans and their attributes, context and baggage propagation, sampling, and the logs and metrics APIs. The Collector is the second priority, with receivers, processors, exporters and pipelines. Weights come from the official certification page, checked on 23 October 2026. The official list has 4 domains: the largest is The OpenTelemetry API and SDK at 46% and the smallest is Maintaining and Debugging Observability Pipelines at 10%, so a sensible plan splits study time roughly in proportion to these weights.

Start with the observability fundamentals so the three signals are clear, then spend the bulk of your time on the API and SDK, then the Collector, and finish with the smaller maintenance domain, which mostly asks how to find out why telemetry is missing or wrong.

OTCA exam format and cost

The OTCA exam facts below were read from the official Linux Foundation pages on 2026-10-23, and every row of the table links to the page it came from. Format: Online, proctored, multiple-choice. Questions: 60. Duration: 90 minutes. Passing score: 75%. Price: 250 US dollars. Certification validity: 2 years. Prerequisites: None. Retake policy: One retake per exam purchase if a passing score is not achieved. Curriculum version: not published by the Linux Foundation. Prices and policies change, so confirm them on the official OTCA page before you book. If the Linux Foundation changes a value, this page is updated and shows the date it was last verified.

With 60 questions in 90 minutes you have about 90 seconds per question on average, which is enough to read a scenario carefully but not to agonise over one item. If every question counts equally, 75% of 60 is 45 correct answers, so one unknown topic does not decide the result. Flag a hard question, move on, and return to it at the end.

Treat the table as the single source for numbers on this page. If a row says the Linux Foundation does not publish a value, we print that instead of guessing, and the official OTCA page remains the final word on registration and policy.

How GoldenKube practice works for OTCA

GoldenKube turns the OTCA bank into a practice loop. You answer one question at a time, see right away whether you were correct, and read an explanation of why. The next question is chosen for you: reviews that are due come first, then the domain where you are weakest, spread across all 4 exam domains so you do not only practise what you already know. A question you miss comes back on a spaced schedule until you answer it correctly, and a mock exam mode lets you test yourself under exam conditions. You can answer 10 questions as a guest with no sign-up; after that a free account saves your progress, with no credit card.

• Adaptive order: due reviews first, then your weakest domain.
• Spaced repetition: missed questions return until you have mastered them.
• Every question carries an explanation, not just a right-or-wrong verdict.
• Mock exam mode for a timed run once you are close to ready.

5 sample OTCA questions

The five questions below come from the GoldenKube OTCA bank, and each one shows its correct answer and a written explanation. They are practice questions written for learning, not questions from the real exam, and they were picked once so the page stays stable. Use them as a quick check of your level: if you can explain why each wrong option is wrong, you are in good shape for this part of the syllabus, and if not, the explanation shows what to revise. The sample questions page holds a larger set, and the practice app holds the full bank with adaptive ordering and review.

Where OTCA sits in the Golden Kubestronaut path

OTCA is a Golden-tier certification, not one of the 5 core Kubestronaut certifications, and Golden Kubestronaut requires all 16 certifications in the program, so OTCA is a required step. Its own prerequisites, per the Linux Foundation: None. The program page lists all 16 certifications side by side and marks which ones GoldenKube can practice today. In the program it is paired with PCA: PCA covers metrics and alerting with Prometheus, while OTCA covers how telemetry is produced and collected in the first place, and the two share vocabulary around metrics, exporters and instrumentation. The observability knowledge also supports the hands-on exams, where troubleshooting starts from logs and metrics, and CNPE, which examines observability and operations directly.

Because OpenTelemetry is designed to feed many backends, studying it alongside PCA shows how a collector and Prometheus fit together. The program page lists all sixteen certifications and which of them GoldenKube practices today.

Frequently asked questions