Free Terraform Associate practice exams are the fastest way to check if you're ready for the HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (004). The exam is only an hour long, but it's packed with questions on exact CLI behaviour and HCL details. You'll need to know what terraform init -upgrade does to the lock file, how variable precedence resolves, and when to use a moved block instead of terraform state mv. Practice questions show you quickly which of these you actually know and which you've only skimmed.
What the Terraform Associate exam covers
The 004 exam tests Terraform 1.12 across eight objectives. It starts with infrastructure as code concepts and Terraform fundamentals, including how providers are installed, versioned, and aliased, and how Terraform uses state. The core workflow objective covers init, validate, plan, apply, destroy, and fmt. Terraform configuration is the biggest area, covering resources and data sources, variables and outputs, complex types, expressions and functions, dependencies, custom conditions, and handling sensitive data.
The remaining objectives cover modules and versioning, state management with backends, locking and drift, maintaining infrastructure with import blocks, state inspection and TF_LOG, and HCP Terraform workspaces, projects, and governance. New to 004 are lifecycle rules like create_before_destroy, custom conditions, ephemeral values, write-only arguments, and HCP Terraform projects.
It's a one hour, online proctored exam with multiple choice, multiple answer, and true or false questions. The certification is valid for two years.
What's in these practice exams
There are 500 questions across 25 sets of 20, spread over every objective:
- Infrastructure as code concepts and multi-cloud workflows
- Providers, version constraints, the dependency lock file, and state basics
- The core workflow, including saved plans,
-replace,-refresh-only, andfmt -check - HCL configuration:
for_eachvscount, dynamic blocks, functions, lifecycle rules, and validation - Module sources, input and output scope, and version pinning
- Backends, state locking, drift, and
movedandremovedblocks - Import blocks with generated config,
terraform statecommands, and verbose logging - HCP Terraform workflows, variable sets, projects, Sentinel and OPA policies
The first set is completely free with no signup. Every answer includes an explanation of why the right option is right and why the others aren't.
How to use these effectively
Take the free set first to get a baseline. When you miss a question about CLI behaviour, don't just read the explanation. Open a terminal, write a tiny config using the local or random provider, and run the command yourself. Seeing Terraform actually rewrite the lock file or show a replacement in the plan sticks far better than memorising it.
Pay extra attention to the state and HCP Terraform questions, since those are where most people lose marks. Once you're scoring above 80 percent across every objective, run full sets under a timer to get used to the one hour pace.