Best Kubernetes Certifications

The industry-standard Kubernetes credential. Entirely hands-on — you solve real problems in a live cluster under time pressure. Required or strongly preferred for platform and SRE roles.

$250 entry-level CNCF cert. Multiple choice exam covering K8s fundamentals, container basics, cloud native concepts, and GitOps. Best first credential before attempting CKA — validates you understand the landscape before the hands-on exams.

The industry-standard Kubernetes credential. Entirely hands-on — you solve real problems in a live cluster under time pressure. Required or strongly preferred for platform and SRE roles.

$395, hands-on performance-based exam. Focuses on deploying, configuring, and troubleshooting applications on Kubernetes — more appropriate than CKA for backend developers who use K8s but don't administer clusters. Covers multi-container pods, ConfigMaps, resource limits, and Jobs.

$395, requires an active CKA. The highest K8s credential — covers cluster hardening, network policies, pod security standards, supply chain security, runtime threat detection, and audit logging. Differentiates senior platform engineers and K8s security specialists.