dbt certification sample questions

Pick a topic

The official study guide lists seven topics. Each page below covers one of them: what it actually asks about, and original questions in the real exam formats with full explanations.

• Developing and optimizing dbt models
  ~45%
  6 sample questions · 14 subtopicsMultiple choiceFill in the blankDiscrete option (DOMC)Hotspot
• Managing dbt models governance
  ~10%
  3 sample questions · 3 subtopicsMultiple choiceDiscrete option (DOMC)
• Debugging data modeling errors
  ~16%
  4 sample questions · 5 subtopicsMultiple choiceHotspotMatching
• Troubleshooting and optimizing dbt pipelines
  ~6%
  3 sample questions · 2 subtopicsMultiple choiceDiscrete option (DOMC)
• Implementing dbt tests
  ~10%
  3 sample questions · 3 subtopicsDiscrete option (DOMC)Multiple choice
• Implementing and maintaining external dependencies
  ~6%
  3 sample questions · 2 subtopicsBuild listHotspotMatching
• Leveraging the dbt state
  ~6%
  3 sample questions · 2 subtopicsFill in the blankMultiple choiceDiscrete option (DOMC)

Where those percentages come from

dbt Labs publishes no per-topic weights. Every percentage on this site is our own estimate, and this section is exactly how we got it.

dbt Labs does not publish per-domain weights. We checked both editions of the official study guide — the current v1.11 and the previous V.6.0 — and neither gives a percentage or a question count per topic; both say only that every scored question is weighted equally. There is no credible unofficial count either.

So the percentages on this site are ours, and here is exactly how we got them: each domain’s share of the 65 questions is estimated by its share of the outline’s subtopics. It is a proxy, it is a reasonable one, and it is the honest label to put on it. Anyone presenting exam weights as official fact either has a source we could not find, or made them up.

Why these are not dumps

Dump sites publish questions harvested from real sittings, with answers decided by comment-thread vote. Two things follow: the answers are frequently wrong, and using them breaks the agreement you sign before the exam. You cannot tell which of the answers are the wrong ones, which is the part that actually costs you.

These questions are original. They are written from the public outline and the official documentation, every one carries a link to the documentation page that settles it, and 12 of the 25 here ship with a runnable query so you do not have to take our word for the answer. That is the whole difference: you can check us.

Common questions

Are these real dbt certification exam questions?

No, and nobody should sell you those. Real exam items are protected content and reproducing them breaks the exam agreement. Every question here is original, written from the public v1.11 study-guide outline and the official dbt documentation, and every answer links the documentation that settles it.

Are the dbt certification sample questions free?

Yes. Every question on these pages is free, ungated and shown in full — the stem, the correct answer, why each wrong option is wrong, the documentation links — and, where the question has a proof cell, a query you can run. There is no email wall.

How many questions are on the dbt Analytics Engineering exam?

65 questions in 120 minutes, with a 65% pass mark. Every scored question is worth one point, and the exam includes unscored research questions that are not marked as such.

What question formats does the dbt exam use?

Six: multiple choice, discrete option multiple choice (DOMC), build list, matching, hotspot and fill in the blank. DOMC is the unusual one — options appear one at a time and you answer yes or no to each, and the question can end before you have seen them all.