HashiCorp has replaced the Terraform Associate 003 exam with Terraform Associate (004). 003 was retired on January 8, 2026, and the certification page now covers only 004. If you bought a 003 course, most of it still applies. But there are four new objectives, and they are the ones most likely to catch you out.
Everything below comes from HashiCorp's official Terraform Associate certification page and the 004 exam content list.
The exam at a glance
- Product version tested: Terraform 1.12
- Format: multiple choice, online proctored, in English
- Duration: 1 hour
- Price: $70.50 USD plus local taxes and fees. A free retake is not included.
- Credential valid for: 2 years
The audience is the same as before: a cloud engineer with foundational Terraform skills who can tell Terraform Enterprise features apart from the Community edition.
The four new objectives
HashiCorp's own summary of the differences between 003 and 004 names four new topics:
- 4f -
depends_on and create_before_destroy. You need to know when an explicit dependency is actually needed, since Terraform infers most ordering from references. You also need to know what create_before_destroy changes about replacement order. The study material points at the resource graph docs and the "Create Resource Dependencies" tutorial.
- 4g - Validate configuration with custom conditions. This covers
validation blocks on variables, precondition and postcondition in lifecycle, and check blocks. Know which one fails the plan and which one only warns.
- 4h - Ephemeral values and write-only arguments. This is the biggest conceptual addition. The objective is about handling sensitive data, including secrets management with Vault. Know the difference between a value marked
sensitive, which is hidden in output but still stored in state, and ephemeral values and write-only arguments, which exist so that secrets are not persisted to state or plan at all.
- 8c - Organize HCP Terraform workspaces and projects. Projects group workspaces. The study material for this objective also covers run triggers and variable sets.
HashiCorp also notes that 004 includes HCP Terraform content and tests Terraform 1.12.
The 004 objective list
The exam is organized into eight objective areas:
- Infrastructure as Code with Terraform: what IaC is, its advantages, and multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud and service-agnostic workflows.
- Terraform fundamentals: installing and versioning providers, how Terraform uses providers, configurations with multiple providers, and how Terraform uses and manages state.
- Core Terraform workflow:
init, validate, plan, apply, destroy and fmt.
- Terraform configuration: resource and data blocks, cross-resource references, variables and outputs, complex types, expressions and functions, plus the new 4f, 4g and 4h.
- Terraform modules: module sources, variable scope, using modules, and module versions.
- Terraform state management: the local backend, state locking, remote state with the
backend block, and resource drift.
- Maintain infrastructure with Terraform: importing existing infrastructure, inspecting state with the CLI, and verbose logging.
- HCP Terraform: creating infrastructure with it, collaboration and governance features, workspaces and projects (the new 8c), and CLI integration.
If you studied for 003, you will recognize most of this. The 003 guide had nine objective areas. In 004, the closest match to 003's "use Terraform outside the core workflow" area is "Maintain infrastructure", and configuration and HCP Terraform each got more depth.
What to study beyond a 003 course
The official study material for 004 goes further than most older courses in a few places:
- Drift and refactoring (6d). The reading covers refresh-only mode, plus the
moved and removed block references. A 003-era course that teaches terraform refresh and terraform state mv alone is out of date here.
- Import (7a). The reading lists both the
import command and the "Import Existing Resources" docs.
- Governance (8b). The reading list covers policy enforcement (including OPA), dynamic provider credentials, drift detection, health, change requests, the private registry and teams.
- Secrets (4h). Expect a Vault provider question alongside the ephemeral and write-only material.
Studying with gitGood
The Terraform Associate practice exam follows the eight 004 objective areas. It includes questions on the four new objectives above - create_before_destroy, custom conditions and check blocks, ephemeral values and write-only arguments, and HCP Terraform projects - alongside the core workflow, state, modules and providers.
Other pages that help:
If you already hold 003
Your credential stays valid until it expires. According to HashiCorp's recertification scenarios for an unexpired 002 or 003 credential, you have two options:
- Pass Terraform Authoring and Operations Advanced. This extends your Associate expiration date and earns you an advanced-level badge.
- Pass 004, starting 6 months before your expiration date. You get a new, separate credential with its own expiration date. The old credential's date does not change.
If your credential has already expired, the only route is to pass the current version, which is 004.
The short version
004 is 003 plus four things: explicit dependency and replacement rules, custom conditions, secrets that never reach state, and HCP Terraform projects. It is tested on Terraform 1.12. Learn those four properly, practise the core workflow until it is automatic, and the rest will be familiar.