Prep
What this Salesforce administrator certification study guide covers
This Salesforce administrator certification study guide gives you an 8-week plan for the Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator exam, mapped to the eight sections and weights in Salesforce's official exam guide. The credential used to be called Salesforce Certified Administrator; Salesforce renamed it and refreshed the outline, which now includes an Agentforce section.
Exam facts come from Salesforce's official Platform Administrator exam guide on Salesforce Help and the Trailhead credential page, checked on November 7, 2026, and are consistent with Salesforce Ben's coverage of the exam refresh. The plan and the advice on how to pass the Salesforce admin exam are our editorial recommendations.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Questions | 60 scored + up to 5 unscored |
| Time | 105 minutes |
| Passing score | 68% (English), 65% (Japanese) |
| Fees | USD 200 registration, USD 100 retake, plus tax |
| Largest section | Data and Analytics Management, 17% |
| New section | Agentforce, 8% |
| Maintenance | Yearly Trailhead maintenance module |
Salesforce Platform Administrator exam facts
- Questions: 60 scored multiple-choice questions, plus up to 5 unscored questions mixed in at random. You cannot tell which ones are unscored.
- Time: 105 minutes.
- Passing score: 68% for the English version (65% for the Japanese version).
- Fees: USD 200 registration, USD 100 retake, plus applicable taxes.
- Delivery: proctored, at a testing center or online. No reference materials allowed.
- Prerequisites: none. Salesforce recommends six or more months of experience as a Platform Administrator.
- Release: questions are aligned to the Summer '25 release.
- Maintenance: complete the Platform Administrator certification maintenance module on Trailhead once a year. If you miss the due date, the certification expires.
A 68% pass mark on 60 scored questions means about 41 correct answers. That is our arithmetic; Salesforce only publishes the percentage.
The eight exam sections and their weights
Salesforce Ben reports that the refresh went live on December 15, 2025. It reduced the weight of configuration topics and added Agentforce. The current weights:
| Section | Weight | About how many of 60 questions | Previous weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data and Analytics Management | 17% | 10 | 14% |
| Configuration and Setup | 15% | 9 | 20% |
| Object Manager and Lightning App Builder | 15% | 9 | 20% |
| Automation | 15% | 9 | 16% |
| Sales and Marketing Applications | 10% | 6 | 12% |
| Service and Support Applications | 10% | 6 | 11% |
| Productivity and Collaboration | 10% | 6 | 7% |
| Agentforce | 8% | 5 | Not included |
The question counts are our rounding of the weights against 60 scored questions. Previous weights are from Salesforce Ben's comparison. If you study from older material, you will over-prepare for setup and miss Agentforce entirely, so check the date on anything you use.
The 8-week study plan
This plan assumes 6 to 8 hours a week and a free Trailhead Playground, which you set up through Trailhead's practice org module. Build everything you read about; the exam is full of scenarios where you need to know which feature fits.
| Week | Section | What to study and build |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Configuration and Setup | Company settings, users, profiles, permission sets and permission set groups, roles, organization-wide defaults, sharing rules and other security settings. |
| 2 | Object Manager and Lightning App Builder | Standard and custom objects, field types, lookup vs master-detail relationships, page layouts, record types and Lightning record pages. |
| 3 | Sales and Marketing Applications | Leads and conversion, accounts, contacts, opportunities and sales processes, products and price books, campaigns. |
| 4 | Service and Support Applications | Cases, queues, assignment and escalation rules, support processes, and the channels cases can come in through. |
| 5 | Productivity and Collaboration | Activities, email and templates, mobile access, and when to look at AppExchange. Review weeks 1 to 4 with mixed questions. |
| 6 | Data and Analytics Management | Data Import Wizard vs Data Loader, data quality and duplicates, report types, report formats, dashboards and their running user. This is the largest section. |
| 7 | Automation and Agentforce | Flow: record-triggered, screen and scheduled flows; approval processes. Agentforce basics as described in the exam guide. |
| 8 | All sections | Two timed sessions of 60 questions in 105 minutes. Rework every weak section against the exam guide. Book when you score well above 68%. |
The topics listed for each week are our breakdown of what each section usually involves. Use the bullets in the official exam guide as the final checklist.
Preparing for the Agentforce section
Agentforce is Salesforce's platform for AI agents, and it is the one section that older study material does not cover at all. At 8% it is worth about five questions, enough to matter on a 68% pass mark. We recommend:
- Read the Agentforce bullets in the official exam guide first. They tell you what an administrator is expected to know, as opposed to what a developer or an Agentforce Specialist needs.
- Build a simple agent in a Trailhead Playground that supports it, using Agent Builder, so the terms in the questions refer to something you have seen.
- Connect it to what you already know. Agents act on Salesforce data, so permissions, sharing and data quality from earlier weeks still apply.
- Use dated material. Agentforce changes with each Salesforce release. Prefer Trailhead content and the exam guide over older third-party notes.
Do not overinvest: 8% is the smallest section. Two or three focused study sessions in week 7 are enough for most people.
Free Trailhead resources to use
Trailhead is Salesforce's free learning platform, and its official content is the best place to start. We recommend:
- Prepare for your Salesforce Platform Administrator Certification: the official Trailmix linked from the credential page, curated for this exam.
- Admin Beginner and Admin Intermediate: the two core admin trails, covering the platform from first setup to automation.
- Trailhead Playground: free practice orgs where you can build without touching a production system.
- Superbadges: scenario-based challenges on Trailhead that make you build a solution from a business brief, which is good practice for scenario questions.
Trailhead badges alone do not prepare you for the exam's wording. Pair them with timed practice questions.
How to pass the Salesforce admin exam
The exam rarely asks for definitions. It describes a business need and asks for the best way to meet it, usually with the least customization. These habits help:
- Prefer declarative and standard. If a standard feature or a point-and-click tool solves the problem, that is usually the answer.
- Know the pairs people mix up. Profiles vs permission sets, role hierarchy vs sharing rules, lookup vs master-detail, assignment vs escalation rules, Data Import Wizard vs Data Loader.
- Read for scope. Does the requirement apply to one user, a group, a record type or the whole org? That often decides the feature.
- Watch multi-select questions. When the question says choose two or three, the number matters.
Start with our free Salesforce Administrator practice test to see which section needs the most time, and visit the Salesforce Administrator hub for the exam overview.
How long to study, and how hard is it?
Salesforce does not publish pass rates or recommended study hours. Our rough editorial estimate:
- Working admin with six months or more in an org: 3 to 5 weeks, mainly Agentforce, the sections you do not use at work, and practice questions.
- Salesforce end user or analyst: 6 to 8 weeks, as in the plan above.
- Complete beginner: 10 to 12 weeks, with the Admin Beginner trail before week 1.
Hard parts tend to be security and sharing, which interact in ways that are easy to get wrong, and the breadth of features. Spaced review helps; see spaced repetition and our study schedule template.
Readiness checklist before you book
- You have read every bullet in the official exam guide and can explain each one in your own words.
- You can explain how organization-wide defaults, the role hierarchy, sharing rules, profiles and permission sets combine to decide who sees a record.
- You have built at least one record-triggered flow, one screen flow and one approval process in a practice org.
- You have built a report with a custom report type and a dashboard, and know who the running user is.
- You have imported data with both the Data Import Wizard and Data Loader, or know when each fits.
- You have covered the Agentforce section and built or explored an agent.
- You score well above 68% on two timed, full-length practice sessions of questions you had not seen.
After you pass
Set a reminder for your yearly maintenance module on Trailhead, because a missed due date means the certification expires. If you are using the certification to change careers, our Salesforce administrator career guide covers the steps from certification to a first admin role. Salesforce lists Platform Administrator II, Platform App Builder and Agentforce Specialist among the related certifications on its credential page, which are common next steps.