Google Cloud certification practice
Practise Google Professional Cloud Developer PCD across all 4 official exam domains — Designing highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications, Building and testing applications, Deploying applications, Integrating Google Cloud services — with original exam-style questions, full explanations, and wrong-answer analysis. Courseiva helps you prepare with realistic practice questions, topic-based revision, explained answers and structured study routes.
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Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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Recommended: 25-question diagnostic
Covers all 4 domains · takes ~5 min · no account needed · shows your weak areas immediately
Key facts for the Google Professional Cloud Developer exam.
Exam cost
$200 USD / ~£160
Duration
120 minutes
Question count
~50-60 questions
Passing score
Pass / Fail (scaled score reported)
Validity
3 years
Delivered by
Kryterion (Webassessor)
Online proctored
Yes — available
Retake policy
100% free — no account required
Everything on Courseiva for PCD is free — no subscription, no trial, no email wall.
Courseiva provides free Google Professional Cloud Developer (PCD) practice questions with original exam-style questions, detailed explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics. Courseiva is an independent platform and is not affiliated with Google Cloud.
14 days between attempts; after 3rd failure, 60-day waiting period
Question formats
The Google Cloud Professional Cloud Developer certification demonstrates expertise in building and deploying scalable, secure, cloud-native applications on Google Cloud. The exam covers application design using microservices and API-first patterns, using Google Cloud services such as Cloud Run, GKE, App Engine, Cloud Functions, and Firestore, managing application performance, and implementing CI/CD pipelines. It targets software developers who need to integrate cloud-native best practices into their development workflows.
Official prerequisite
None — no formal prerequisites required
Recommended experience
3+ years of software development experience including 1+ year building applications on Google Cloud
Software developers who build and deploy production applications on Google Cloud using services like Cloud Run, GKE, and Cloud Functions
Should you skip this exam?
Skip if you have no software development background; this exam requires coding knowledge and cloud app development experience
Courseiva study tip
Focus on Cloud Run vs GKE vs App Engine decision scenarios, Firestore vs Cloud Spanner trade-offs, and application security patterns including Secret Manager and identity-aware proxy
UK salary range
£60,000 – £95,000
US salary range
$115,000 – $160,000
Job roles that cite PCD
What certification to take next
The exam costs $200 USD.
Google does not publish a specific passing score. Results are given as Pass or Fail.
It is rated Moderate-Hard (4/5). Choosing the right compute platform and designing scalable application architectures are the most challenging areas.
Approximately 50-60 questions in multiple choice and multiple select format.
Cloud-native application design, compute options (Cloud Run, GKE, App Engine, Cloud Functions), storage (Firestore, Cloud SQL, Spanner), CI/CD, application security, and performance optimisation.
3 years. Recertification is required before the credential expires.
Software engineers and backend developers who build and deploy cloud-native applications on Google Cloud and want to validate their development skills.
See how PCD stacks up against related certifications.
Courseiva Exam Intelligence
Data confidence: BuildingDerived from Courseiva's continuously updated practice dataset: 964 exam-style questions. Updated 2 July 2026.
Question difficulty mix
Average time per question: 92s
5
Exam domains
official blueprint domains covered by the bank
964
Questions
exam-style questions in the PCD bank
Practice modes
Choose a mode that matches your current study phase. Use topic practice early on and mock exams closer to your exam date.
All PCD Questions
Browse the full question bank organised by domain and difficulty.
Practice Test
Start a 20-question session with a full explanation after each answer.
Mock Exam
Simulate the real exam with a timed, full-length question set.
Quick 25
A 25-question warm-up — ideal for a short daily study session.
Flashcards
Reinforce key terms, commands, and protocol facts with flashcards.
Domain Practice
Focus exclusively on one exam domain to target your weakest area.
50-Question Set
Mid-length practice set covering all domains.
Exam guide
Start with a short practice session, review each missed answer, then return to the topics that caused mistakes.
Google Professional Cloud Developer PCD spans 4 official exam domains (Designing highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications, Building and testing applications, Deploying applications, and more). Questions test whether you can apply each objective in a realistic scenario, not just recall a definition.
Related practice questions
Use these internal links to move from the exam guide into focused topic practice pages.
Practise PCD questions linked to Designing highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications.
Practise PCD questions linked to Building and testing applications.
Practise PCD questions linked to Deploying applications.
Practise PCD questions linked to Integrating Google Cloud services.
Practise PCD questions linked to PCD fundamentals.
Practise PCD questions linked to PCD scenario.
Practise PCD questions linked to PCD troubleshooting.
Practice directory
Every practice set is a unique selection of questions — numbered tests, domain-focused sessions, and topic-specific quizzes.
Showing 8 of 63 tests. See all 63 PCD practice tests →
Official blueprint
Target weak areas by practising questions from a single domain. Each domain page shows all questions, difficulty breakdown, and a focused practice session.
Practise PCD questions in this domain →
Practise PCD questions in this domain →
Practise PCD questions in this domain →
Practise PCD questions in this domain →
Deep-dive questions
The most-searched PCD questions — each with a detailed explanation, worked example, and full answer breakdown.
Learn the concepts
15 book-style chapters cover every PCD objective in plain English. Read the theory here, then test it with practice questions.
Chapter 1
Cloud-Native App Design Fundamentals
12 min read
Chapter 2
Microservices Architecture and Decomposition
12 min read
Chapter 3
Containerizing Apps with Docker and Cloud Build
14 min read
Chapter 4
Deploying Apps on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
12 min read
Chapter 5
Serverless Deployment with Cloud Run
12 min read
Chapter 6
Configuring Deployment Strategies and Rollbacks
12 min read
Chapter 7
Application Testing and CI/CD Pipelines
12 min read
Chapter 8
Building and Securing APIs
12 min read
Free study guide
The Courseiva PCD study guide covers exam format, the official domain blueprint with weights, a structured study plan, and domain-specific tips for each section. Use it alongside practice questions to build both conceptual depth and exam confidence.
Sample questions
Original exam-style questions — not copied from any exam or dump site. Open a question for the full answer breakdown.
Your application uses Cloud Spanner with strong reads, but you are experiencing high latency for read requests. You don't need absolute consistency for every read; stale data up to…
A company wants to run hybrid transactional/analytical processing (HTAP) workloads on a PostgreSQL-compatible database with built-in columnar engine for faster analytical queries.…
An engineer notices high CPU utilization on a Cloud Spanner instance and wants to identify the queries consuming the most resources. Which tool should they use?
A company is designing a cloud-native application on Google Kubernetes Engine. They want to ensure high availability and scalability for their microservices. Which two best practic…
A developer runs the command above. What is the effect of the --promote flag in this deployment?
An organization is migrating a Teradata data warehouse to BigQuery. They want to minimize manual SQL rewriting. Which approach is most effective for converting Teradata SQL to BigQ…
Related certifications
Studying for PCD? These related Google Cloud certifications share concepts and are common next steps.
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Ways to study PCD