One candidate scored 498 on AZ-900 after watching Microsoft Learn videos and drilling flashcards. That's the failure pattern: treating a scenario-reasoning exam like a memory test. The questions below are free, no account required, and they'll show you whether you're actually ready or just think you are.
What you're getting here
This page contains real AZ-900 practice questions pulled directly from the CertCompanion question bank. They're free. No email, no signup wall. Work through them as a timed sample test, or read each explanation carefully, both approaches teach you something.
Before you start, here's the format you're simulating:
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Questions | 40–60 (community reports typically around 45) |
| Duration | 60 minutes |
| Passing Score | 700/1000 |
| Format | Multiple choice, true/false, matching, scenario-based, interactive Azure Marketplace questions |
| Validity | Does not expire |
| Testing | Online proctored or test center via Pearson VUE |
| Cost | $165 USD |
Candidates report that timing can feel tighter than expected. One test-taker had only 10 minutes remaining after reviewing marked questions, while most people finish in around 25–30 minutes. Your pace will depend on how comfortable you are with the scenario-based format.
TL;DR
- The exam tests scenario reasoning, not Azure trivia. Know which service fits which business requirement, not just what each service is called.
- Aim for 80–90% on practice tests before you schedule. Scoring 70% means you're close but not ready.
- Azure Architecture and Services is the heaviest domain at 35–40%. Don't run out of study time before you get to Management and Governance, which carries 30–35%.
- Some exam sittings include interactive Azure Marketplace interface questions where you select options inside a simulated browser. That format can surprise you if you haven't seen it before.
- AZ-900 does not expire. One passing score lasts permanently.
10 free AZ-900 practice questions
These are real questions from our 382-question AZ-900 bank - the same pool the full practice exam draws from, not simplified samples. Answer before you expand the explanation.
Question 1
A small startup, 'CodeLeap,' is launching its first application on Azure. They are currently on the free Basic support plan but anticipate needing to contact a support engineer if their application encounters technical issues. They need to upgrade to the most cost-effective plan that allows them to submit a support ticket for technical problems. Which Azure support plan should they choose?
- A. Basic
- B. Developer
- C. Professional Direct
- D. Standard
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: (see explanation)
The Developer plan is the correct choice here. It is specifically designed for non-production environments like the one CodeLeap is starting with, and it is the first paid tier that provides technical support via email during business hours.
The Basic plan does not allow you to open technical support requests; it only covers billing and subscription management issues.
The Standard and Professional Direct plans do offer technical support, but they are more expensive and designed for production and business-critical workloads, respectively. Since the goal is to be cost-effective for a new application, the Developer plan is the most appropriate next step.
Question 2
A European financial firm, 'EuroBank,' is required by regulation to keep a real-time copy of its primary transaction database in a separate geographical region for disaster recovery. Additionally, their data analytics team needs to run daily reports on this data but must not impact the performance of the live customer-facing application. Which Azure storage redundancy option would meet all of these requirements?
- A. Geo-redundant storage (GRS)
- B. Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS)
- C. Zone-redundant storage (ZRS)
- D. Locally-redundant storage (LRS)
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: (see explanation)
Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) is the correct option. It meets both requirements perfectly. It copies your data to a secondary region hundreds of miles away, protecting against a regional disaster, and it also allows read-only access to the data in that secondary region. This allows the analytics team to run their reports from the copy without slowing down the primary application.
Geo-redundant storage (GRS) also copies data to a secondary region, but it does not allow you to read from that copy unless a failover event occurs. So, the analytics team could not run their reports.
Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) and Locally-redundant storage (LRS) only protect your data within a single region, so they do not meet the requirement to have a copy in a separate geographical location for disaster recovery.
Question 3
Innovate Inc., a tech startup, has a Basic support plan. They are designing a complex, new application and need proactive architectural guidance and design reviews from Microsoft experts to ensure it is scalable and secure. To achieve this while keeping costs as low as possible, an administrator suggests upgrading to the Professional Direct support plan. Does this solution meet the goal?
- A. Yes, Professional Direct is the only plan that offers this.
- B. No, the Standard plan would be more cost-effective and meets the requirement.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: (see explanation)
No, this solution does not meet the goal of keeping costs to a minimum. While the Professional Direct plan does offer in-depth architectural reviews, it is a premium, higher-cost plan. The Standard support plan is a more cost-effective option that still provides general architectural guidance. For a startup focused on minimizing costs, upgrading to Standard first is the better choice to get some level of design advice without the higher expense of Professional Direct. Therefore, recommending Professional Direct is not the most cost-effective solution.
Question 4
A logistics company, 'ShipFast,' wants to move its on-premise servers to Azure. Their IT team wants to stop managing physical servers and virtualization hosts but insists on retaining full administrative control over the guest operating systems to manage updates, apply custom security policies, and install specific monitoring agents. Which cloud service model should ShipFast use for this migration?
- A. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
- B. Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- C. Software as a Service (SaaS)
- D. Function as a Service (FaaS)
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: (see explanation)
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is the correct model. With IaaS, the cloud provider (Azure) manages the physical infrastructure like data centers, networking, and servers, but the customer manages everything from the operating system up. This gives ShipFast the OS-level control they require for their virtual machines.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) would be incorrect because Azure manages the operating system in a PaaS model, which removes the control the IT team needs.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is also incorrect as it refers to fully-managed applications like Microsoft 365, where the customer only manages their data and users, not the underlying OS or infrastructure.
Function as a Service (FaaS) is for running code in response to events without managing any servers at all, which is not suitable for migrating entire virtual machines.
Question 5
An online retailer, 'GadgetGrove,' is deploying their new e-commerce website on Azure App Service. The website must use the custom URL 'gadgetgrove.com', be secured with an SSL certificate, have the ability to scale out to multiple server instances to handle traffic spikes, and needs 20 GB of storage. Which App Service plan offers all these features at the lowest possible cost?
- A. Standard
- B. Basic
- C. Free
- D. Shared
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: (see explanation)
The Standard plan is the correct choice because it is the most economical tier that meets all of the specified requirements. It supports custom domains, includes SSL, allows for auto-scaling across multiple dedicated instances, and offers up to 250 GB of storage.
The Basic plan supports custom domains and SSL but runs on dedicated instances with no auto-scaling feature, which is a key requirement.
The Free and Shared plans are cheaper but do not support custom domains with SSL and do not run on dedicated compute instances, failing to meet several of the core needs for a professional e-commerce site.
Question 6
A large manufacturing conglomerate, 'OmniCorp,' is structuring its Azure environment. It has three distinct divisions: Automotive, Aerospace, and Industrial. Each division needs its own administrator to manage its own resources and budgets. A junior admin suggests creating a completely separate Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tenant for each division to ensure separation. Does this solution correctly address the requirement while minimizing administrative complexity?
- A. Yes, separate tenants provide the required separation.
- B. No, this solution increases administrative complexity unnecessarily.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: (see explanation)
No, this solution is incorrect because it dramatically increases administrative complexity. Managing three separate Azure AD tenants means managing three separate sets of users, identities, and permissions. It would prevent users from one division from easily collaborating with another and would be an administrative nightmare.
The correct approach is to use a single Azure AD tenant for the entire organization. Separation of duties and resources can be effectively managed within that single tenant by using Azure Management Groups for each division, with separate Subscriptions and Resource Groups underneath them. This provides administrative boundaries without creating disconnected identity systems.
Question 7
A traditional retail chain, 'MainStreet Wares,' is closing its private data center and moving its entire IT operation to an Azure pay-as-you-go subscription. The CFO wants to understand the financial implications. The IT Director explains that by moving to Azure, the company is shifting its IT spending to a capital expenditure (CapEx) model. Is the IT Director's statement correct?
- A. Yes, because Azure is a capital investment.
- B. No, this represents a shift to an operational expenditure (OpEx) model.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: (see explanation)
No, the IT Director's statement is incorrect. Moving to a pay-as-you-go cloud model like Azure represents a fundamental shift FROM capital expenditure (CapEx) TO operational expenditure (OpEx).
Capital expenditure, or CapEx, is the upfront spending on physical infrastructure like servers and data centers. MainStreet Wares is precisely trying to eliminate this.
Operational expenditure, or OpEx, is the day-to-day cost of running a business, such as paying for services or utilities. The pay-as-you-go model, where you pay monthly only for the resources you consume, fits the OpEx model perfectly. It turns a large, upfront capital cost into a predictable, ongoing operational cost.
Question 8
A retail company is shifting its on-premise servers to an Azure pay-as-you-go subscription to eliminate the cost of maintaining a data center. An IT manager needs to correctly categorize this new spending for the finance department. The proposed solution is to classify the monthly Azure bill as an operational expenditure (OpEx). Does this solution meet the goal?
- A. Yes
- B. No
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: (see explanation)
Yes, the solution meets the goal. Moving from owning physical hardware (a capital expense, or CapEx) to a pay-as-you-go cloud service is a classic shift to an operational expenditure (OpEx) model. OpEx involves paying for services or goods as you use them, like a monthly utility bill, which is exactly how Azure's pay-as-you-go model works. This correctly categorizes the spending.
Question 9
An e-commerce company wants to build a system in Azure that analyzes customer shopping patterns to predict future sales. The goal is to use a service specifically designed for creating, training, and managing predictive analytic models. The proposed solution is to use Azure Machine Learning. Does this solution meet the goal?
- A. Yes
- B. No
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: (see explanation)
Yes, this solution meets the goal. Azure Machine Learning is the specific platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering in Azure that provides all the tools needed to build, train, and deploy machine learning models. It is the perfect choice for creating a predictive analytics solution from scratch.
Other services like databases or workflow engines do not provide the specialized environment needed for machine learning tasks.
Question 10
An e-commerce company wants to build a system in Azure that analyzes customer shopping patterns to predict future sales. The goal is to use a service specifically designed for creating, training, and managing predictive analytic models. The proposed solution is to use Azure Cosmos DB. Does this solution meet the goal?
- A. Yes
- B. No
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: (see explanation)
No, this solution does not meet the goal. Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, highly responsive database service. It is excellent for storing and retrieving data for applications, but it is not a tool for building or training predictive models. The appropriate service for building and training machine learning models is Azure Machine Learning.
How to use this sample test
The real exam gives you roughly 60 minutes for up to 60 questions. That works out to about one minute per question. For this sample set, hold yourself to that same pace. Don't look anything up while you're working through it. That's the only way you'll get a signal you can actually use.
When you're done, score yourself honestly. Aim for 80–90% on practice tests before you schedule the real exam, this is what candidates who pass consistently report scoring beforehand. If you're hitting 75%, you're close but not there. If you're below 70%, don't book yet, go back and work through the domains where you dropped points.
One specific instruction most people ignore: read every explanation, including the ones for questions you got right. The reasoning behind a correct answer is often what the exam is actually testing. Knowing the right answer by instinct and knowing why it's right are different things, and the gap between them shows up in the harder scenario questions.
What these questions reveal about the real exam
The AZ-900 doesn't test Azure trivia. It tests whether you can apply cloud concepts to a given situation and pick the most appropriate option, not the most technically correct one in isolation.
The question style that trips people is the "which service fits this requirement" format. You'll read a short business scenario, a company wants to run a containerized app without managing the underlying infrastructure, or a team needs to store unstructured data at scale, and you'll need to select the right Azure service. The trap is that two options often look plausible. The question is testing your ability to read the constraint in the scenario and match it to the service that satisfies that specific constraint.
Some questions include a "NOT" or "EXCEPT" qualifier buried mid-sentence. Read every question twice before selecting. This isn't caution for caution's sake; candidates with solid knowledge still miss these because they pattern-match to a familiar question shape without reading the actual question.
The format looks simple. But it rewards knowing functional differences between services, not just their names. Some questions simulate an Azure Marketplace or portal interface where you select options directly within a simulated browser rather than picking from a standard multiple-choice list. This format may not appear on every exam sitting, but candidates who've encountered it report being caught off guard if they hadn't seen it beforehand.
What the sample questions are testing across the three domains
The exam covers three domains. Azure Architecture and Services is the heaviest at 35–40% of the exam. Azure Management and Governance sits at 30–35%. Cloud Concepts is 25–30%.
The breakdown matters because most people spend their study time in roughly the opposite order. They start with Cloud Concepts because it's the easiest to understand, then run short on time for the governance and management content that carries a third of the exam weight. Don't do that.
Those who struggled on exam day consistently flagged identity and security, pricing and SLAs, and governance tools as their weakest areas. These topics live in Management and Governance, the second-heaviest domain. If the sample questions had you hesitating on anything related to Azure Policy, RBAC, or cost management, that's where to focus before you schedule.
The conventional advice is to start with Cloud Concepts and work through the domains in order. Skip it. If you have any cloud background at all, Cloud Concepts is the domain you'll cover fastest. Starting with Management and Governance, the domain where candidates report the most uncertainty, means you spend your freshest study energy on the hardest material. That's not quite right, though. The hardest material sits at the intersection of governance tools and scenario reasoning, not in raw difficulty of underlying concepts. The concepts themselves aren't complicated. The questions that apply them are.
The ROI case, grounded in actual numbers
The exam costs $165. Prep with free resources, Microsoft Learn's official learning path and the official free practice assessment, costs nothing. A full video course adds cost but is optional. Total realistic investment: $165 to $250 depending on what paid resources you use.
Entry-level roles where AZ-900 appears as a requirement span a wide salary range. According to Salary.com and ZipRecruiter data compiled in 2026, Cloud Support Specialist roles typically fall in the $43,000–$64,000 range, Junior Cloud Administrator roles in the $53,000–$73,000 range, and Cloud Sales Specialist roles in the $78,000–$100,000 range. Figures vary significantly by location and employer.
The ROI math isn't subtle. If this certification helps you move from a non-cloud IT role to an entry-level cloud role, or helps you meet a requirement your current employer is now checking, the $165 exam fee pays back fast. AZ-900 alone won't get you hired into a cloud engineering role. It signals baseline fluency and satisfies a box on employer screening lists. What it actually does for you depends on what role you're coming from and where you're trying to go.
What to do based on your score
80–90% or above: You're ready. Schedule the exam and run through Microsoft Learn's free Practice Assessment in the days before your test; it provides feedback tied to official topic areas and costs nothing.
70–79%: You're close but not there. Go back to whichever question categories you missed and work through them with explanations. The Microsoft Learn free Practice Assessment is worth running here, it gives you feedback tied to the official topic areas. Don't book until you're consistently above 80%.
Below 70%: Don't book yet. Identify whether your misses are concentrated in one domain or spread across all three. Concentrated misses are easier to fix. If you're dropping points across the board, the issue is likely the scenario-reasoning style rather than missing knowledge, which means more practice questions, not more videos.
For a full breakdown of how each domain is weighted, what the exam's failure patterns look like, and how the prep sequence fits together, the AZ-900 exam guide covers all of it in depth.
Recent candidate threads
Real posts from people preparing for or recently sitting the AZ-900. Read these for the unfiltered version of what the exam felt like:
- Just got destroyed by AZ-900, r/AzureCertification · 68 comments
- Looking for Azure Cloud Engineers, r/AZURE · 43 comments
- Passed AZ-900, r/AzureCertification · 7 comments
- I'm an (Senior) Azure Engineer, where do I go from here? - UK Based, r/AZURE · 23 comments
- Passed AZ-900, r/AzureCertification · 16 comments
Threads pulled from the Reddit communities most active for Microsoft certifications.
Frequently asked questions
Is AZ-900 actually hard? The concepts aren't technically complex. The questions are harder than the concepts because they require applying reasoning to scenarios, not recalling definitions. The pattern across failure reports is consistent: candidates knew what Azure services were, but couldn't quickly identify which service fit a specific business requirement under time pressure. That's the difficulty.
How long does it take to prepare for AZ-900? Candidates report completing prep in around 25 hours including a structured course, labs, and practice questions. Experienced cloud professionals can move faster by jumping straight to practice tests to identify gaps. Beginners should expect more. Background matters more than any fixed hour estimate.
Does AZ-900 expire? No. Microsoft Fundamentals certifications do not expire. Once you pass, the credential stays on your transcript permanently. This is one of the things that makes AZ-900 worth the investment even if your career trajectory changes direction.
Can I take AZ-900 without any Azure experience? Yes. The exam is designed for candidates with no prior cloud or technical background. That said, candidates with zero context will likely find the scenario questions harder than candidates who've spent even a few hours inside the Azure portal. Hands-on familiarity helps even at the fundamentals level.
What's the retake policy if I fail? Microsoft typically allows a retake after a short waiting period, but check the current policy at learn.microsoft.com before scheduling, retake windows can change and the official page will always reflect the most current terms.
What should I study after passing AZ-900? The two most common next steps are AZ-104 (Azure Administrator) for infrastructure and operations paths, and AZ-204 (Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure) for developer paths. AI-900 and DP-900 are parallel foundational certs in AI and data if you want to broaden before going deep. SC-300 makes sense if identity and access management is your intended focus area.
Is AZ-900 worth it for someone already working in IT? For most IT professionals moving toward cloud roles, yes. It's a low-cost way to validate baseline Azure knowledge and meet employer screening requirements. The certification won't replace experience, but for roles that list it as preferred or required, not having it is a concrete disadvantage. For someone already working in cloud at an intermediate or advanced level, the calculus shifts, AZ-104 or role-specific certs may be more worth your time.
What's the best free resource for AZ-900 prep? Microsoft Learn's official learning path is the most exam-aligned free resource available, it's structured, free, and built around the exact topics the exam tests. Run through the official free Practice Assessment on Microsoft Learn as a check before you schedule. The exam sandbox at aka.ms/examdemo lets you familiarise yourself with the interface before test day, including the interactive question formats that catch some candidates off guard.
If you want a starting point that costs nothing, try CertCompanion's 30 free AZ-900 practice questions with detailed explanations. Work through them at your own pace or timed, then score yourself against the 80–90% benchmark. If you're hitting that range, you're ready to schedule. If not, the explanations show you exactly where the gaps are, go back to those domains, understand the reasoning, and test again. The practice questions are free; the feedback you get from them is what matters. Once you're confident, the full AZ-900 practice question bank has everything else you'll need, and our Microsoft practice exams hub maps the certification path beyond AZ-900.