AZ-900 vs AZ-104: Which Azure Cert Should You Take First in 2026?

This guide is for anyone unsure whether to start with Azure Fundamentals or jump straight to Azure Administrator in 2026.

The Short Answer

Skip AZ-900 if you have 6+ months of hands-on Azure experience or a strong systems administration background. Take AZ-900 first if you are new to cloud, switching careers, or want a confidence-building win before tackling the harder AZ-104. Both certifications have value — the question is sequencing, not either/or.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Content Overlap

If you are mapping out your full certification journey, our Azure certification path for beginners shows the ideal sequence from AZ-900 to Expert level. Wondering how tough AZ-900 really is? See our difficulty breakdown with real pass rates.

Roughly 35% of AZ-900 material appears in AZ-104 at a deeper level:

• Services: Both cover VMs, storage, networking, Azure AD. AZ-104 adds implementation details and troubleshooting.
• Security: Both test Azure AD and RBAC. AZ-104 adds conditional access, MFA configuration, and custom roles.
• Governance: AZ-900 asks "What is Azure Policy?" AZ-104 asks "Create a policy that enforces tagging."

Who Should Skip AZ-900

• You have 6+ months of hands-on Azure experience
• You are a systems administrator, network engineer, or DevOps engineer
• You already hold an AWS or GCP associate-level certification
• You need AZ-104 for a job requirement within 2 months

Who Should Take AZ-900 First

• You are new to cloud computing entirely
• You are switching careers from a non-technical field
• You want a quick win to build confidence
• You are in sales, project management, or a non-engineering role

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The Third Option Nobody Mentions

There is a third path that the two-option framing hides, and it is the right one for some candidates. It is to skip the fundamentals exam entirely and start at the associate level, using documentation and a free practice bank as the grounding instead.

This works when you already administer systems. If you manage Windows Server, virtualisation or networking in your current role, the concepts AZ-900 teaches are already familiar, and the exam adds a vocabulary layer rather than knowledge. Paying for that layer is optional when you can pick it up from the associate material itself.

It fails when you are new to infrastructure. Candidates without that background who skip AZ-900 tend to spend their first weeks decoding terms rather than learning administration, and the associate exam assumes the vocabulary throughout. The fundamentals exam is not a formality for them. It is the prerequisite in practice, whatever the official line says.

How to Know You Are Ready to Move Up

Readiness for AZ-104 is not measured by how much of the study guide you have read. It is measured by whether you can complete tasks without following a tutorial.

A useful test is to take a described requirement and carry it out in a free account without looking anything up: create a virtual network with two subnets, place a virtual machine in one, and prove the other subnet cannot reach it by default. If that takes you twenty minutes and no searching, you are close to ready. If it takes an afternoon of documentation, the exam will be harder than it needs to be.

The other signal is practice scores that stay stable. A single high mock score is noise. Three consecutive scores in the high eighties suggest the knowledge has settled, and that is when booking the exam stops being a gamble.

Where the Hands-On Work Starts

Whichever route you take, the associate exam is where the hands-on work starts mattering more than the reading.

Trying Both

Both exams are free to practise for, so trying each costs you nothing but time.

Frequently Asked Questions