ClaudeArena Usage Guide

Michael F — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 16:40:37 +0000

(Optimized for CCAR-F and CCAR-P)

ClaudeArena is a free, focused practice platform for the Claude Certified Architect exams (Foundations and Professional). This guide shows the most effective way to use it.

1. Create a free callname (recommended)

Creating a callname is optional but strongly recommended.

It unlocks progress tracking, badges, medals, leaderboard ranking, and the ability to save results across devices — all of which help you train more efficiently and clearly see your improvement over time.

2. Work through the Study Guide domain by domain

Go to Study Guide and study one domain at a time.

For each domain:

Read the full domain page carefully (including any amber “Exam guide vs today” notes inside it).
Immediately click “Practise Domain X” at the bottom.
Do the practice in Normal mode.
After the session, review the Score by objective breakdown and click “Practice my weakest objectives”.
Drill the weak objectives until they improve.

When to move to the next domain:

Aim for roughly 75%+ on the domain and no major weak objectives left before continuing. Once you have completed all domains this way, proceed to step 3.

3. Review the full “Exam guide vs today” list

(Only after finishing all domains)

Use this as a final clarification reference — do not start here.

4. Move to mixed practice and higher difficulty

Do mixed-domain sessions.
Start in Normal mode.
Move to Hard mode once you can consistently score above 75% in Normal.
Use Expert mode only if you want extra challenge.

5. Full timed mock exams

Switch to Full exam mode (always timed, 120 minutes).
After every full mock, review domain + objective scores and immediately drill the weakest objectives again.
Repeat until you are consistently solid in Hard mode.

6. Final readiness check

When you are comfortably scoring well in Hard mode on full mocks and your weakest objectives are under control, you should be ready to book the real exam.

(No practice score can guarantee a pass on the actual scaled exam.)

Simple daily loop (after initial study):

Weak objectives → short drill → longer mixed/full session → review mistakes.

This approach keeps the focus on understanding first, then systematically closing gaps at both domain and objective level - the most efficient path to exam readiness on ClaudeArena - https://claudearena.dev

I built a free practice engine for Anthropic’s Claude Certified Architect exams

Michael F — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 20:21:57 +0000

I sat the Claude Certified Architect - Foundations exam (CCAR-F) in September and passed.

Dedicated prep time was only a few hours. Not because the exam is easy - there just wasn’t much realistic material to practice on. Anthropic provides a handful of sample questions and no real practice exam.

The exam is mostly judgment calls: when an agent should stop, how to isolate subagent context, which tool restrictions actually prevent a bad outcome, that kind of thing. Reading the docs helps, but it doesn’t give you the reps.

So I built ClaudeArena.

What it includes

950+ original scenario questions for both Foundations (CCAR-F) and Professional (CCAR-P)
Questions tagged to individual exam objectives (not just domains)
A “drill my weak spots” mode that builds short sessions from the objectives you’re weakest on
Full timed mock exams in the real format (60 or 63 questions, 120 minutes)
Three difficulty levels (Normal, Hard, Expert)

A few technical details

Early on I noticed the longest answer option was correct far too often. I added a build check that tries to beat chance using only the shape of the options (length, punctuation, the one that stands out). Getting that check to pass forced a lot of rewrites.

Grading happens on the server, so the browser never sees an answer key. No email is required, no analytics, and nothing is loaded from third parties.

The questions are written with Claude and I built the site with Claude Code. Each question records what its answer rests on (Anthropic’s docs, the exam guide, or established practice). They were re-checked against the current documentation on 14 October and also reviewed independently by a second model.

There’s also a short page that lists the places where the frozen exam guide and today’s documentation diverge.

Try it

You can start with an 8-question demo or practice without creating an account (120 questions a day). Everything is free and unofficial.

→ https://claudearena.dev

If you’ve taken the real exam, I’d be interested to hear how the difficulty compares.

DEV Community: Michael F