Best Azure Practice Exams in 2026: How to Choose for AZ-900, AZ-104 and AZ-305

For most candidates the best setup has two layers: Microsoft's free Practice Assessment to calibrate, and one original practice bank that explains every answer and scores you per skill domain. Skip anything advertised as "real exam questions". Those are brain dumps, and Microsoft treats using them as misconduct.

Full disclosure: we build one of the options below, Azure Certified. We have tried to describe every option, ours included, by what it actually does and where it falls short.

What makes a practice exam worth using

Six things separate practice that prepares you from practice that only reassures you.

1. Original questions. Written against the official skills outline, not copied from the live exam. Copied content breaks Microsoft's rules and is often wrong, because nobody verified the answer key.
2. Explanations for every option. Knowing why the right answer is right is half the value. Knowing why each distractor is wrong is the other half, especially for AZ-104 and AZ-305 scenarios.
3. Links to documentation. An explanation you can check against Microsoft Learn is worth more than one you have to trust.
4. Weighting that matches the official domains. Microsoft publishes a weight range for each skill domain. A bank that over-samples one domain misleads you about readiness.
5. A per-domain score report. An overall percentage hides the single weak domain that fails real candidates. See how to read a competency report.
6. A timed mode. AZ-900 gives you 45 minutes and AZ-104 gives you 100. Untimed practice does not prepare you for the pace.

The main options compared

How to combine them

• First week: take the Microsoft Practice Assessment cold. It tells you roughly where you stand in the official style, at no cost.
• Main preparation: work through a full bank in a learn-as-you-go mode. In Azure Certified that is Study Mode, which shows the explanation and the documentation link right after each answer, and practice by competency lets you drill one domain at a time.
• Final stretch: switch to timed, full-length simulations and watch your per-domain scores rather than the overall number.
• Before booking: open the Exam Sandbox once so the interface itself is not a surprise on exam day.

When you are actually ready

You are ready when every domain clears the pass mark with margin across several attempts, not when your average does. One attempt can flatter you; three in a row at a comfortable margin rarely lie.

Watch for one trap. Retaking the same small set of questions inflates your score because you remember answers, not concepts. If your score climbs on questions you have seen before but stalls on fresh ones, you are memorizing. A larger bank with unseen questions is the honest test.

Remember too that 700 on the real exam is a scaled score, not 70 percent. We explain why here, and it is one more reason to aim for margin instead of the line.

By exam

• AZ-900: the free Practice Assessment plus a few hundred original questions is plenty. It is a concepts exam, so breadth and vocabulary matter more than depth. The AZ-900 practice exam has a free 20-question sample.
• AZ-104: volume and scenario variety matter most, because single questions combine networking, identity and storage. Pair practice with hands-on work in a real subscription. See the AZ-104 practice exam and the six-week AZ-104 plan.
• AZ-305: explanation quality matters more than volume. You need to know why the other valid-looking designs lose. See the AZ-305 practice exam and the AZ-305 exam guide.

Bottom line

Calibrate with the free Microsoft Practice Assessment, prepare with one original, well-explained bank that scores you per domain, simulate the clock in the final stretch, and skip dumps entirely. If you want to judge our bank before paying anything, the free 20-question quiz gives you a per-domain report on any of the three exams.