PCA practice exam: free questions, domains and format

What is the PCA exam?

PCA is the Prometheus Certified Associate exam from the Linux Foundation and CNCF. It is a proctored, online, multiple-choice exam on monitoring with Prometheus: the general ideas of observability, how Prometheus collects and stores metrics, the PromQL query language, how applications are instrumented and how exporters expose data, and how alerts and dashboards are built on top. It is a knowledge exam, so you read PromQL expressions and configuration and decide what they do or what is wrong with them, rather than typing them into a live system. Officially it is the Prometheus 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.

Expect questions that ask what a metric type means, what a rate or histogram query returns, how a scrape job or relabeling rule behaves, what the Alertmanager does with a firing alert, and which instrumentation choice fits a given service. Reading and predicting query results is the single most useful skill.

PCA exam domains and weights

PCA has five domains. PromQL is the largest at 28%, followed by Prometheus Fundamentals at 20%, Observability Concepts and Alerting & Dashboarding at 18% each, and Instrumentation and Exporters at 16%. PromQL is the largest domain, so it deserves proportionate practice: instant and range vectors, rates and increases, aggregation with by and without, histograms and quantiles. The other domains are shorter to learn but wide: the data model, the scrape and storage architecture, metric types, client libraries, alerting rules and the Alertmanager routing tree. The official list has 5 domains: the largest is PromQL at 28% and the smallest is Instrumentation and Exporters at 16%, so a sensible plan splits study time roughly in proportion to these weights.

Start with the concepts and data model, because every PromQL question assumes you know the metric types. Then work through queries until you can predict their output, and finish with instrumentation and alerting, which are mostly about knowing which component does what.

PCA exam format and cost

The PCA 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 PCA 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 PCA page remains the final word on registration and policy.

How GoldenKube practice works for PCA

GoldenKube turns the PCA 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 5 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 PCA questions

The five questions below come from the GoldenKube PCA 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 PCA sits in the Golden Kubestronaut path

PCA is a Golden-tier certification, not one of the 5 core Kubestronaut certifications, and Golden Kubestronaut requires all 16 certifications in the program, so PCA 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. Within the program it is the metrics-and-alerting half of observability; OTCA, the OpenTelemetry associate, covers the instrumentation and collection half, and the two overlap on concepts such as metrics, traces and the role of exporters. Because PromQL appears again in alerting rules and dashboards, the skill you build for PCA is reused well beyond the exam.

Prometheus knowledge also pays off in the hands-on exams, where troubleshooting a cluster often starts from metrics. The program page lists all sixteen certifications and shows which of them GoldenKube can practice today.

Frequently asked questions