AZ-900 Exam Format: Duration, Passing Score, and What to Expect

The AZ-900 gives you 45 minutes and requires a score of 700 out of 1000 to pass. It is a proctored, beginner-level exam covering three skill domains, and unlike the associate and expert certifications, it never expires.

That is the short answer. The rest of this post covers the details that actually change how you prepare.

What is on the exam

Microsoft publishes the skill domains and their weight ranges in the official study guide. As of the July 20, 2026 update, AZ-900 has three:

• Describe cloud concepts (25 to 30 percent). Cloud computing itself: the shared responsibility model, public, private and hybrid models, the consumption-based model, and the differences between IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.
• Describe Azure architecture and services (35 to 40 percent). The largest domain. Regions and region pairs, availability zones, the resource group to subscription to management group hierarchy, compute and networking services, storage services, and Azure identity, access and security.
• Describe Azure management and governance (30 to 35 percent). Cost management, Azure Policy, resource locks, tags, the portal and CLI tooling, infrastructure as code, and the monitoring tools.

Two things worth noticing. First, the weights are published as ranges, not fixed numbers, so no practice platform can promise an exact question split. Second, security and identity is not a separate domain. It sits inside "Describe Azure architecture and services", which is part of why that domain is the heaviest.

What 700 actually means

This trips up more people than any other part of the exam. A 700 is a scaled score, not a percentage. Microsoft reports results on a scale that tops out at 1000, and the raw number of questions you answered correctly is converted onto that scale.

The practical consequence: you cannot work backwards from "700 out of 1000" to "I need to get 70 percent right". The conversion accounts for the difficulty of the specific questions you were served, and questions are not all worth the same. Aiming for a comfortable margin above the line is a better strategy than trying to compute a minimum.

The format itself

The exam is proctored, and Microsoft notes that it may include interactive components, meaning you can get more than plain multiple choice. Expect single answer and multiple answer questions, and formats where you evaluate a set of statements as yes or no.

Microsoft does not publish how many questions AZ-900 contains, and the count can vary between deliveries. If you see a confident number quoted somewhere, treat it as a test taker estimate rather than an official figure.

One detail that is easy to miss: the 45 minutes is the time allotted for the assessment, not the total time you should block out. Check-in, identity verification and the instructions come before the timer starts, so book more than 45 minutes of real-world time.

If you fail

You can retake the exam 24 hours after the first attempt. For subsequent retakes the waiting period gets longer, so the first retake is the cheapest one in terms of time. It is worth using that window to actually re-study the domain you were weakest in rather than immediately rebooking.

This is where a competency breakdown earns its keep: a single overall score tells you that you failed, but not which of the three domains dragged you under. Our AZ-900 practice exam reports per-domain scores for exactly this reason, and you can see how that report reads in our guide to using one.

Renewal, or the absence of it

Fundamentals certifications do not expire. Once you pass AZ-900, it is yours permanently, with no renewal assessment and no annual deadline.

This is genuinely different from the rest of the Azure track. Associate and expert certifications, including AZ-104 and AZ-305, expire after 12 months and require a free renewal assessment. If you are planning a certification path, see what expires and what does not before you assume the whole track behaves the same way.

Cost and languages

Microsoft prices the exam based on the country or region where it is proctored, so there is no single global figure to quote. Check the price on the official exam page while signed in, since that reflects your region.

The exam is offered in a wide set of languages including Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese and German. If your preferred language is not available, Microsoft allows you to request an additional 30 minutes.

Bottom line

Forty-five minutes, 700 to pass on a 1000-point scale, three domains weighted toward Azure architecture and services, and no expiry. If you want to see where you currently stand against those three domains before booking, the 20-question free sample scores you by domain without asking for payment.