If you’re looking to gain an internationally recognized Scrum Product Owner certificate, there are two main contenders worthy of your attention. The Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org. Respectively they offer the Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) and the Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO). Which should you go for? CSPO vs PSPO? Let’s look at the options.
Probably something that I would consider is how much I would learn in a CSPO VS. A PSPO class. Since I typically learn more, in classes where there is an assessment, the PSPO would win out even though my CSPO trainer was very good. I saw somewhere that someone studied 5 weeks for the PSPO.
Its an apples to oranges comparison. Cspo has no exam, take the class and thats it. Its not really a certification as it does not test your knowledge- it just shows you successfully attended class.
The pspo is totally opposite; class is not even mandatory- the exam is 80 questions in 60 min with 85% pass mark. It will be very tough to pass this unless you do fairly serious focussed study on your own. You will really have to know your stuff to make it through the exam. That is a true certification that tests your knowledge.
If your goal is to get something on resume, ask your company to pay for cspo class and you will have something at end of it. If your goal is to make a career of PO, possible in cspo but more stronger base to build upon in pspo.