Prometheus Certified Associate

Measured data

The Linux Foundation logo

Prometheus Certified Associate

PCA

We scored 60 real Prometheus Certified Associate exam questions 1-10 on question complexity and broke the result down by exam domain.

60 questions scored
5 domains
2.1/10 overall complexity

Complexity by exam domain

Higher scores mean more demanding question formats. The exam score is computed over the whole bank, not averaged across domains.

Exam complexity score2.1/10Gentle · measured across 60 bank questions
  • Alerting & Dashboarding11 questions · complexity 2.0/10 · Gentle

    36% multi-select · 0% scenario · 27% interactive

  • Instrumentation and Exporters9 questions · complexity 2.3/10 · Gentle

    33% multi-select · 11% scenario · 33% interactive

  • Observability Concepts11 questions · complexity 2.0/10 · Gentle

    36% multi-select · 0% scenario · 27% interactive

  • PromQL17 questions · complexity 2.0/10 · Gentle

    35% multi-select · 0% scenario · 29% interactive

  • Prometheus Fundamentals12 questions · complexity 2.0/10 · Gentle

    33% multi-select · 0% scenario · 33% interactive

Full per-domain breakdown

Blueprint weight, bank size and question format mix for every domain of the exam.

DomainBlueprintQuestionsSingleMultiInteractiveComplexity
Alerting & Dashboarding18%114432.0/10Gentle
Instrumentation and Exporters16%93332.3/10Gentle
Observability Concepts18%114432.0/10Gentle
PromQL28%176652.0/10Gentle
Prometheus Fundamentals20%124442.0/10Gentle

How the score is calculated

The formula is fixed and public, so anyone can reproduce these numbers from the same bank.

Every question in the Prometheus Certified Associate bank is measured on four signals that can be read directly from the database. Each signal is expressed as a share of the questions in the domain, and the four shares are combined with fixed weights:

  • Multi-select questions (40% weight). Items with more than one correct answer. The candidate has to find all of them, which is the single hardest format in the bank.
  • Scenario questions (30% weight). Questions longer than 150 characters, which describe a situation instead of a definition and therefore test reasoning rather than recall.
  • Interactive questions (20% weight). Items that require reading code or a configuration snippet.
  • Deep explanations (10% weight). Questions whose explanation runs past 300 characters, which signals a concept with real nuance behind it.

The combined share is multiplied by ten to produce a 1-10 score. The exam-level score is computed over the whole bank rather than averaged across domains, so a small domain cannot distort the total. Figures on this page are recomputed from the live bank on every crawl.

Data set: Certilum Prometheus Certified Associate Foundation question bank, 60 questions, 5 domains. Published by CERTILUM. This is Certilum’s own measurement of its own question bank and is not an official The Linux Foundation statistic.

Questions analysed
60
Exam domains
5
Hardest domain
Instrumentation and Exporters (2.3)
Most approachable domain
Alerting & Dashboarding (2.0)
Question mix
21 single · 21 multi · 18 interactive
Measured on
Foundation

Frequently asked questions

What our Prometheus Certified Associate complexity numbers mean and how they are produced.