PAA Practice ExamsProfessional Agentic Architect practice exam
40 free questions for the Google Cloud PAA exam, written against the official exam guide. Every answer explains why each wrong option fails and links to the official documentation. No sign-up; the full bank of 180 is $19, paid once.
Updated November 6, 2026 for the GA exam launching in mid-November. All 180 questions are original and were checked against the Google Cloud documentation they cite.
A retailer's ADK agent must look up orders in a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL database. Security forbids the model from generating arbitrary SQL. Only three approved parameterized queries may run. The team also wants connection pooling and OpenTelemetry tracing, and does not want to write or maintain a custom MCP server. What should you do?
How close these questions are to the real exam
Google describes the multiple-choice exam as a test of "conceptual knowledge, system design choices, and architectural standards." In practice every question is a scenario: a company, two to four hard constraints, and options that are all real Google Cloud features. A beta candidate on r/googlecloud described the real questions as similar to scenario practice banks, "although some of the exam ones have pretty convoluted wording."
The 180 questions here are written the same way, 37 of them multiple select. The constraints are the kind the exam uses (no custom server to maintain, least privilege, actions tied to the end user, maintainers who do not write Python, bursty traffic), and each wrong option is a feature that would work if one of those constraints were absent. The explanation names the constraint that rules it out and links the official page it rests on, 132 different pages across the bank.
Section weights and what they mean for a 50-question exam
Google publishes an approximate share for each section but not the GA question count. Other 2-hour Google Cloud professional exams have 50 to 60 questions; at 50, Section 3 alone is about 16 questions and Section 1 about 6. The bank uses the same split, and the full simulation draws its 50 questions in these proportions.
| Section | Exam weight | Of 50 questions | Free | Full bank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Low-code agents | 13% | 6 to 7 | 5 | 23 |
| 2. Coding agents | 17% | 8 to 9 | 7 | 30 |
| 3. Custom agents | 33% | 16 to 17 | 13 | 60 |
| 4. Evaluation and deployment | 22% | 11 | 9 | 40 |
| 5. Security and governance | 15% | 7 to 8 | 6 | 27 |
Product names changed in 2026
When Vertex AI's agent products became Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, several tools in the guide were renamed: Agent Engine is now Agent Runtime, Vertex AI Search is now Agent Search, and Agent Designer is now Workflow Builder. Courses, blog posts and practice sets written against the beta-period guide still use the old names. The questions here use the names in the current guide and documentation, and the exam guide page maps each old name to the new one.
Free sample and full bank
| Free | Full bank, $19 once | |
|---|---|---|
| Questions | 40, spread over all five sections | 180, including the free 40 |
| Explanation and a reason for every wrong option | Yes | Yes |
| Link to the official documentation behind each answer | Yes | Yes |
| Timed exam with score by section | 40-question mini-exam, 96 minutes | 50-question simulation, 120 minutes, drawn by section weight |
| Weak-area drill and section practice | Section practice on the free 40 | All 180 questions |
| Access | No account | 12 months, one payment, no subscription; sign in on another device with the email you paid with |
The exam at a glance
| GA launch | Mid-November 2026; the beta ran September 8 to 30 |
| Fee and length | $200 plus tax, 2 hours, English |
| Delivery | Pearson, online-proctored or at a test center |
| Results | Pass or fail in CM Connect within 7 to 10 business days |
| Second part | Hands-on labs in Google Skills, to be completed within 2 months of passing |
| Validity | 1 year (other Google Cloud professional certifications: 2 years) |
| Retakes | After 14 days, then 60 days, then 365 days; each attempt is paid |
Sources and the online-proctoring rules: format and cost. What to build and read each week: study plan.