Short answer: take the exam for the cloud your employer (or the employer you want) actually runs on. If you have no such signal, AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) is the better first pick for people without an IT background - AWS writes that it is designed for candidates new to cloud who may not have an IT background - while Microsoft's AZ-900 audience profile assumes some IT experience. AZ-900 is the cheaper long-term choice: it is a 45-minute exam that never expires, while Cloud Practitioner is valid for 3 years. Every fact below was checked on aws.amazon.com and learn.microsoft.com on 7 October 2026.
The two exams side by side
| AWS Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) | Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) | |
|---|---|---|
| Exam time | 90 minutes | 45 minutes (65 minutes seat time) |
| Questions | 65: 50 scored + 15 unscored you cannot identify | Not fixed - Microsoft says most of its exams have 40-60 |
| Question types | Multiple choice (1 of 4), multiple response (2+ of 5+) | Not disclosed in advance; the exam sandbox shows multiple choice, drag and drop, hot area and others |
| Pass mark | 700 on a scaled 100-1,000 | 700 on a scale of 1-1,000 |
| Fee (US) | $100 (EUR 85 in euro markets) + taxes | Set per country - $99 in the US |
| Retake | After 14 calendar days, no attempt limit | After 24 hours, then 14 days; max 5 attempts in 12 months |
| Validity | 3 years | Does not expire |
| Delivery | Pearson VUE test centre or online proctored | Pearson VUE, or Certiport for students and educators |
| Languages | 12 (Italian and German retire after 31 Dec 2026) | 13 |
| Stated audience | New to cloud, may not have an IT background | Technology professionals with experience in an area of IT |
Sources: AWS Cloud Practitioner page, CLF-C02 exam guide, AWS exam pricing, AWS retake policy, AWS recertification, Azure Fundamentals page, AZ-900 study guide, Microsoft retake policy.
On the AZ-900 price: the certification page says only that the price depends on the country where the exam is proctored. The $99 US figure comes from a Microsoft Q&A moderator answer, so check your own country before you book. AWS publishes its foundational prices per currency on the pricing page, including EUR 85, AUD 150 and INR 8,553.
Two numbers in the table matter more than they look. CLF-C02 gives you 90 minutes for 65 questions, almost 1.4 minutes per question; AZ-900 gives you 45 minutes for a count Microsoft does not publish, and five of those minutes are break time. And the 15 unscored CLF-C02 questions are invisible - you have to treat every question as if it counts.
What each exam actually tests
Both are "describe and identify" exams. Neither asks you to build anything: AWS lists coding, designing architecture, troubleshooting and implementation as out of scope, and every AZ-900 objective starts with describe, define, compare or identify.
| CLF-C02 domain | Weight | AZ-900 skill area | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud Concepts | 24% | Describe cloud concepts | 25-30% |
| Security and Compliance | 30% | (inside architecture and services: Entra ID, MFA, Conditional Access, RBAC, Zero Trust, Defender for Cloud) | - |
| Cloud Technology and Services | 34% | Describe Azure architecture and services | 35-40% |
| Billing, Pricing, and Support | 12% | Describe Azure management and governance (cost, Policy, locks, Purview, tools, monitoring) | 30-35% |
The overlap is real but narrower than people expect. The cloud-concepts block - shared responsibility, IaaS/PaaS/SaaS, consumption pricing, high availability versus scalability - transfers almost one-to-one, and it is roughly a quarter of either exam. Everything else is vendor vocabulary.
Where they differ is emphasis. AWS gives security its own 30% domain: IAM users, roles and policies, the shared responsibility split, compliance programmes and the security services. Microsoft gives governance and management 30-35%: Azure Policy versus RBAC versus resource locks, Purview, Azure Arc, ARM templates, Advisor, Service Health and Monitor. Billing is a separate 12% domain on AWS (pricing models, Cost Explorer, Budgets, Support plans); on Azure, cost management is one subsection inside governance.
If you can, look at our practice sets by area before you choose - the vocabulary that feels foreign in ten minutes is the vocabulary that will cost you study time:
- CLF-C02: Cloud Concepts, Security and Compliance, Cloud Technology and Services, Billing, Pricing, and Support
- AZ-900: Cloud Concepts, Azure Architecture and Services, Azure Management and Governance
Which is harder?
Nobody can answer this with data: neither AWS nor Microsoft publishes a pass rate, and any percentage you see on a training site is the site's own estimate. What the vendors do publish points in two directions.
AZ-900 is the shorter sitting and the narrower blueprint in service count, but it assumes more background. Microsoft's own audience profile says candidates "should have skills and experience working with an area of IT", such as infrastructure, databases or software development. Its exam also uses more question formats than plain multiple choice, which you can try in Microsoft's exam sandbox.
CLF-C02 is twice as long and has more questions, including multiple-response items where you must pick every correct option. But AWS aims it squarely at "line-of-business roles like sales, marketing, product or project management", and the target candidate has at most six months of AWS exposure - which AWS says is not even required. Scoring is compensatory: you pass on the overall score, not per domain.
Our practical read: for someone who already works in IT, the two are close, and AZ-900 is quicker to sit. For someone from finance, sales or project management, CLF-C02's framing is friendlier, and the extra 45 minutes reduce time pressure. Candidates commonly report 15-30 hours of study for AZ-900 and 20-40 hours for CLF-C02; neither vendor publishes an official figure. See our AZ-900 study plan for two week-by-week schedules.
What each costs over five years
The sticker prices are almost identical. The difference is renewal.
- AZ-900: pay once. Microsoft states that Fundamentals certifications do not expire; the free annual renewal applies only to associate, expert and specialty certifications.
- CLF-C02: valid for 3 years. AWS lists four ways to renew: pass the latest version of the exam (you can use the 50% discount voucher in your AWS Certification Account), complete the game-based AWS Cloud Quest: Recertify Cloud Practitioner, or pass any Associate or Professional exam. If you move on to the AWS Solutions Architect Associate within three years, that exam renews Cloud Practitioner automatically.
So the realistic five-year cost of CLF-C02 is one exam fee plus either a half-price renewal or nothing - if you either do Cloud Quest or keep climbing the AWS ladder. Failing costs time on both sides: AWS requires 14 calendar days before a retake (with no limit on attempts), Microsoft 24 hours and then 14 days, with at most five attempts in 12 months - and Microsoft states plainly that you pay for each retake. Our cost pages keep the details in one place: CLF-C02 cost and AZ-900 cost.
Decision rules
Use the first rule that applies to you.
- Your employer or client runs on one cloud. Take that vendor's exam. Fundamentals certificates prove literacy in a vocabulary, and the vocabulary is vendor-specific - "IAM role" and "RBAC role assignment" are not interchangeable in a meeting.
- You are aiming for a technical cloud role. Take the fundamentals exam of the cloud you will specialise in, or skip it. Neither Solutions Architect Associate nor Azure Administrator Associate lists a fundamentals certification as a requirement. AWS's own advice is narrower: candidates without any IT work experience would benefit from earning Cloud Practitioner first. If you already have hands-on experience, go straight to the associate level.
- You are non-technical and have no cloud signal yet. Start with CLF-C02. Its stated audience is you, it gives you more time per question, and its security and billing domains map directly onto conversations project managers, analysts and buyers actually have.
- You want the credential that stays on your CV with zero upkeep. Take AZ-900. It never expires.
- Your role is genuinely multi-cloud (pre-sales, procurement, consulting, a PMO overseeing both). Take both, back to back. Do the one for your main cloud first; for the second, study only the vendor-specific domains - roughly three quarters of the blueprint - because the cloud-concepts block carries over.
How to prepare for either one
Both vendors give you a free starting point. Microsoft offers a free practice assessment and the four-part Introduction to Cloud Infrastructure series on Microsoft Learn. AWS points candidates to a four-step plan and digital courses on AWS Skill Builder from the certification page.
Then measure yourself before you plan: take the free diagnostic for CLF-C02 or AZ-900 and see which domain drags your score down. Two habits matter on both exams. Read the rationale for every option, including the ones you got right, because both vendors write distractors that are real services used in the wrong place. And practise under time: our simulators for CLF-C02 and AZ-900 run timed mocks in the exam's single-answer style.
If English is not your first language, both vendors give you extra time. AWS lets non-native English speakers request a 30-minute extension once in their AWS Certification Account, and it then applies to every future booking. Microsoft offers an extra 30 minutes when the exam is not available in your preferred language.
For full fact sheets, see the CLF-C02 exam format and AZ-900 exam format pages. For other paths across vendors, start at which certification.
Exam time, question counts and types, pass marks, domain weights, fees, retake rules, languages, validity and renewal options verified on aws.amazon.com, docs.aws.amazon.com and learn.microsoft.com on 7 October 2026. AWS and Microsoft publish no pass rates and no official study-hours figures, and Microsoft publishes no fixed AZ-900 question count, so we give none of those as fact.