AWS Cloud Practitioner vs Azure Fundamentals: A Dollar Apart, a Decade Apart

These are the two cheapest, most accessible certifications this site tracks, built for people who need to talk about a cloud rather than operate one: sales, support, project management, and career-changers testing whether cloud work is a fit before committing to a harder track. Priced almost identically, they diverge in a way that only shows up years after you pass either exam.

Almost the same certificate

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner costs $100 for 65 questions (50 scored, 15 unscored) over 90 minutes, passing at 700 of 1,000. Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) costs $99, typically 40 to 60 questions over just 45 minutes, the shortest sitting time this site tracks, also passing at 700 of 1,000. The one-dollar gap is close to irrelevant on its own: $99 is 99 percent of $100, a one percent difference, not a reason to pick an ecosystem by price alone.

What each one actually tests

Cloud Practitioner’s four domains: Cloud Concepts (24 percent), Security and Compliance (30 percent), Cloud Technology and Services (34 percent, the largest slice), and Billing, Pricing, and Support (12 percent). AZ-900’s three domains, published as weight bands rather than exact figures: Describe cloud concepts (25 to 30 percent), Describe Azure architecture and services (35 to 40 percent, the largest), and Describe Azure management and governance (30 to 35 percent). Both explicitly exclude coding, hands-on configuration, and troubleshooting from scope; both are describe-and-compare exams by design at this tier, never do exams, and neither vendor apologizes for that.

The gap that actually matters

Entry price is nearly a wash. Expiration is not. Cloud Practitioner is valid three years, and if it stays your ceiling, retaking the current exam every cycle costs 3 times $100, or $300 total across nine years. AZ-900 belongs to Microsoft’s Fundamentals tier, and per Microsoft’s own published expiration policy, Fundamentals certifications simply do not expire: no renewal assessment, no continuing-education units, no annual fee, no window to ever miss. Nine years of AZ-900 costs exactly what it cost on day one: $99, and nothing more, ever.

The asterisk on both sides

Neither headline number tells the whole story. Cloud Practitioner’s $300 nine-year ceiling is not the likely outcome for most holders, since passing any AWS Associate- or Professional-level exam automatically recertifies it at no separate cost, so the realistic range runs from $0 (if you keep climbing the AWS ladder) to $300 (if you deliberately keep re-sitting this specific exam instead of advancing). AZ-900’s permanence cuts the other way: the badge stays technically active forever, but a 2026-vintage AZ-900 sitting on a resume in 2035 tells an employer nothing about whether you know the cloud as it exists that year, only that you once knew an earlier version of it. Free forever and current forever are not the same claim, even when one vendor’s policy makes the first one true.

Two different occupations underneath

The BLS mapping is not identical between them either, and it is worth noticing even though neither certificate is an occupation-specific credential the way CISSP or SAA is. Cloud Practitioner maps to network and computer systems administrators (SOC code 15-1244), the broad “keeps AWS-adjacent operations running” category. AZ-900 maps to computer user support specialists (SOC code 15-1232), the broad help-desk and end-user support category. Both mappings describe a wide occupation the certificate holder often sits alongside rather than works inside directly, so treat the panel above as context for the field each vendor associates its badge with, not a title either exam actually confers.

Same low stakes, different shelf life

Neither certificate functions as a hard hiring requirement on its own; both are an on-ramp and a resume keyword for their respective ecosystem, the same low-stakes role their associate-tier siblings do not play. Pick based on which vendor your employer, or your target employer, actually runs, the same logic that decides between SAA and AZ-104 one rung up. A support tech at an AWS shop gets more practical use from Cloud Practitioner even though its clock keeps running, and a support tech at a Microsoft shop gets a permanently active credential from AZ-900 for a dollar less at the door.

Common mistake

Reading AZ-900’s “never expires” as “never goes stale” is the trap here. Microsoft’s own certification policy is explicit that Fundamentals certs carry no renewal requirement at all, but the Azure product surface underneath the badge keeps moving regardless of whether the credential does. Refresh your own knowledge on a schedule you set yourself, even on the one certification here where ISC2, ISACA, CompTIA, AWS, and Microsoft all agree you technically do not have to.