Top 5 Free & Paid Spring Certification Courses and Practice Tests

Many Java developers don't know that, similar to Oracle's Java certification, there is also a Spring certification program, which certifies yourself for your Spring framework skill. There are three Spring certifications currently available, the Spring Professional certification exam, also known as the Vmware Certified Spring Professional exam (VMware EDU-1202) which certifies on your general knowledge about Spring framework, Spring MVC skill, Spring Boot, Spring Data JPA, Testing with Spring and Spring Boot, and other advanced Spring skills. Earlier, SpringSource provides these certifications, but now they are provided by Vmware, the company behind the Spring framework.

One of the reasons why many Java developers are not aware or interested in Spring certification was the steep cost of spring certification. Earlier it was exclusively for developers who enroll in the expensive classroom on an online Spring course from Pivotal now Vmware.

The cost of those training was quite expensive, if you to pay from your pocket like it will cost you around 3200 USD if you take this training in the USA, North America or Europe and somewhere around 50,000 INR depending upon which training you take in India.

If you compare this to Java certification, which cost around 246 USD, it's costly, and because of that steep cost of Spring certification (VMware EDU-1202), many Java developer, who use Spring certification was not keen to get certified, but things have changed now.

From 10th May 2017, it's not mandatory to take Spring training for getting Spring certified. You can directly purchase the exam voucher, which costs around 200 USD from the Pivotal website and appears in the exam. If you pass, you will become a Pivotal Certified Spring developer.

The spring certification exam is a computer-based exam, and there are a total of 50 questions in the exam, and you will get 90 minutes to answer them. The passing score is 76%, which means you need to answer 38 out of 50 questions correctly, which's quite high from many professional certifications.

But the good thing is you are not required to write code, which means time is more than enough to solve those questions. They mainly test your core concepts. If you practice well and solve some practice questions like given in my Spring Certification course on Udemy then you will be in good shape for a real exam. 

5 Free and Paid Spring Certification Courses & Practice tests

In order to prepare for spring certification using self-study, you need a good study guide and a good exam simulator. In the last couple of articles, I have shared some of the best study guides for Spring certification, and today I'll share some of the best Spring mock exams which are freely available on the internet for practice.

You can use these tests both for checking your knowledge as well as for checking the quality of questions before purchasing the full-length Spring exam simulator.

Here is my collection of some of the best Spring Core Professional Certification dumps and online practice tests that are freely available as well as some paid courses and practice courses from Udemy and other sites that are worth buying.

1. Spring Professional Certification Exam Tutorial - Module 01

This is the best course material to prepare for Spring Professional Certification. It explains and answers all questions from the Spring Professional Certification Study Guide which are not only useful for certification but also for Java interviews. 

Each answer is explained in detail with a video tutorial, description, and a good example for you to get a deep understanding of the discussed topic. With this course, you will get all the required knowledge and skills to pass the Spring Professional Certification Exam (VMware EDU-1202).

The course is divided into 8 modules:

    Module 01 - Container, Dependency, and IoC
    Module 02 - Aspect-Oriented Programming
    Module 03 - Data Management: JDBC, Transactions, JPA, Spring Data
    Module 04 – Spring Boot
    Module 05 - Spring MVC and The Web Layer
    Module 06 – Security
    Module 07 – REST
    Module 08 – Testing

This course covers the first module of the entire course and inside you can find answers to all topics from Spring Professional Certification Study Guide first section, which is Container, Dependency, and IoC. 

If you are serious about passing Spring Professional Certification then I also suggest you check other modules of this course like Spring Professional Certification Part 2, 3, 4, and 5.

If you like books you will also be glad to know that I am writing a book on Spring Boot Interview, called Grokking the Spring Boot Interview where I have tried to answer most of Spring and Spring  Boot related questions from the official Spring certification guide, you can also use the book for quick revision. If you are interested, you can pre-order the book on Gumroad. 

And, now let's some free mock tests for Spring Certification:

1. David Mayer's Spring 5.0 Mock questions (10 questions)

This is one of the best free Spring mock exams available online. It contains 10 questions, which you take online in a time-based test, or you can download PDF for offline reading. It will give you a good idea about the difficulty level of questions you can expect in the real exam.

To be honest, there are not many free practice tests available for Spring certifications. Those few which are available also doesn't have enough question for practice, hence if you are serious about Spring certification, I suggest you buy the full version of this exam which contains 200 high-quality questions for Spring certification.

2. Java and Moies Spring 4.2 Certification questions (50 questions)

This is one of the best free Spring certification tests available right now.  They have shared  50 sample questions for Spring Core 4.2 Professional exam. The mock exam contains practice questions on all major topics, here is the number of questions for each topic:

    Container  (13)
    Test (5)
    AOP (10)
    Data Access (5)
    Transactions (5)
    Spring MVC (3)
    Spring Security (3)
    Remoting (2)
    JMS (2)
    JMX (2)

You can also find the answers to all questions at the end of the PDF document. If you are thinking about how to prepare for this topic, well, there is no single course or book. You need to take help from a couple of sources like Spring Framework 5: Beginner to Guru covers most of this topic.

Also, here is the updated list of topics for the Spring 5 Certification

To prepare REST and Spring Security in-depth, I suggest you check fellow blogger Eugen Paraschive's Learn Spring Security: The Certification Class and REST with Spring Certification class courses; both are excellent, not just for certification but for in overall experience and knowledge required for a professional job.

3. Vojtech Ruzicka's Spring 4.2 question deck (200 questions)

Vojtech Ruzicka has shared some useful tips, notes, and practice questions for both Spring core and Spring web exams. If you are preparing for Pivotal Certified Spring Professional, then his practice questions are immensely useful.

He has also created a set of flashcards using Anki software. The questions are basically derived from his Spring core study notes. Anki provides desktop clients as well as mobile applications to study on the go.

Once you download his deck of exam questions, you can use it on desktop or mobile at your convenience. The deck contains close to 200 questions, and you can import the deck in Anki using File → Import.

4. Java and Moies Spring 3.0 Certification questions (50 questions)

Mock questions to prepare the Core Spring 3.x Certification : free 50 multiple-choice questions / 88 minutes / passing score = 76 % (38 questions answered successfully). You can download the PDF of these Spring questions from this link. Even though the questions for Spring 3.0 certification, it's still useful, and you can give it to check your knowledge and understanding of the core spring framework.

5. Spring 3.0 Certification questions Online by SkillGuru (50 questions)

This is the online version of the previous mock exam.  If you want to give a test online, you can also take this test on the Skill guru website, it's available there. However, you need to register at the Skillguru website before you can take this practice test online.


That's all about some of the best Spring certification practice tests (VMware EDU-1202) which are freely available on the web. If you are a Java programmer preparing for Spring certification, then I have shared some of the most useful resources to help you in your preparation in this blog.

The list includes Spring certification notes for both Spring core and Spring Web certifications, Spring mock exams, free Spring Certification dumps, books for Spring certifications, and official Spring certification guides. You can check them in your free time.


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P. S. -  If you are an experienced Java developer and using the Spring framework for 3 to 5 years and want to get certified for your skill I suggest you go through David Mayer's Online Spring Mock test, It's a free test, and if you can score over 80% then you are ready for the real exam.