AZ-900 vs AZ-104 vs AZ-204 vs AZ-305: Which Should You Take First?

The four most common entry points into Azure certification are AZ-900, AZ-104, AZ-204, and AZ-305 — and they are aimed at genuinely different people, not just different difficulty levels.

AZ-900 — Azure Fundamentals

Best for: anyone with little to no cloud background, including non-technical roles like sales, project management, or students exploring the field. It covers cloud concepts, not implementation. If you've never touched a cloud console before, start here — not because it's "required," but because the vocabulary it teaches makes every later exam easier to study for. See the full breakdown on the AZ-900 exam page.

AZ-104 — Azure Administrator

Best for: IT professionals, sysadmins, and support engineers who manage infrastructure day to day. This is the natural next step after AZ-900 if your job (or target job) involves provisioning, monitoring, and maintaining Azure resources rather than writing application code. See the full breakdown on the AZ-104 exam page.

AZ-204 — Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure

Best for: software developers building applications that run on Azure — App Service, Functions, storage SDKs, authentication, and API integration. If you write code for a living and your company is on Azure, this is usually the more relevant path than AZ-104, even without an administrator background. See the full breakdown on the AZ-204 exam page.

AZ-305 — Designing Azure Infrastructure Solutions

Best for: architects and senior engineers who need to make design-level decisions: which services to combine, how to plan for cost, resilience, and governance at scale. This one assumes real-world experience — Microsoft recommends AZ-104 or equivalent hands-on experience first, and it shows in how the questions are written. See the full breakdown on the AZ-305 exam page.

A simple decision rule

• No cloud background at all → AZ-900 first, always.
• You manage infrastructure → AZ-104.
• You build applications → AZ-204 (AZ-900 first if you're new to Azure specifically, even if you're an experienced developer).
• You design systems / already hold AZ-104 → AZ-305.

There's no wrong order in an absolute sense, but studying a certification aimed at a role very different from your actual work makes the material harder to retain — the scenarios won't map to anything you've done, so nothing anchors the concepts. Pick the one closest to what you actually do or want to do next.