Exam comparison
PCA vs CGOA: Prometheus monitoring or GitOps
Who should take each exam
Prometheus Certified Associate is for engineers and application developers with an interest in observability and monitoring: metric collection, PromQL queries, alerting.
Certified GitOps Associate targets DevOps and Platform Engineers managing infrastructure and applications via Git: declarative principles, reconciliation, deployment patterns.
In short: PCA if you deploy Prometheus, CGOA if you pilot infrastructure and apps via Git (ArgoCD, Flux).
Exam format
| Prometheus (PCA) | GitOps (CGOA) | |
|---|---|---|
| Code | PCA | CGOA |
| Publisher | Linux Foundation / CNCF | |
| Duration | 90 minutes | |
| Format | Online multiple-choice, proctored | |
| Number of questions | 60 | |
| Passing score | 75% or above | |
| Validity | 2 years | |
| Prerequisites | None | |
| Languages | English | |
Domains and coverage
Prometheus (PCA)
- Observability Concepts 18 %
- Prometheus Fundamentals 20 %
- PromQL 28 %
- Instrumentation and Exporters 16 %
- Alerting & Dashboarding 18 %
GitOps (CGOA)
- GitOps Terminology 20 %
- GitOps Principles 30 %
- Related Practices 16 %
- GitOps Patterns 20 %
- Tooling 14 %
Overlaps and differences
Overlaps: both sit in the observability/DevOps ecosystem. GitOps can orchestrate Prometheus via Git, and Prometheus provides metrics to validate a GitOps deployment.
Differences:
- PCA covers: metrics, logs, tracing, Prometheus configuration, PromQL, alerting, exporters.
- CGOA covers: declarative vs imperative, desired state, drift, reconciliation, deployment patterns (progressive delivery, canary), ArgoCD/Flux, CI/CD.
Which one to choose based on your profile
Choose PCA if…
- You install and configure Prometheus in production.
- You write PromQL queries and alerting rules.
- Observability is your area of expertise.
Choose CGOA if…
- You manage infrastructure and applications via Git.
- You deploy with ArgoCD, Flux, or similar tools.
- Declarative automation and reconciliation interest you.
How to prepare
- PCA page or CGOA page.
- CNCF curricula: PCA PDF or CGOA PDF.
- Practice: PCA practice exam or CGOA practice exam.
Try both, free
Original questions, each answer explained with a link to the documentation. Study mode is free and needs no account.
Practice Exam PCA: Prometheus Certified Associate
25 free questions with explanations
Practice Exam CGOA: Certified GitOps Associate
25 free questions with explanations