IT Certifications That Never Expire: The Verified List

“Does it expire?” is the second question people ask about a certification, right after the price, and the market answers it badly. Vendors bury renewal terms three pages deep, and most certification lists online never mention that the $99 badge and the $749 badge live on completely different clocks. This is the verified answer across every certification we track: which ones genuinely never expire, which ones stay alive free if you do a little homework, and which renewal models quietly cost more than the exam did.

Truly permanent: pay once, hold forever

Across the full registry, exactly two certifications have no renewal requirement of any kind: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) and Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-901), both $99. Microsoft’s entire Fundamentals tier carries no renewal assessment, no continuing-education requirement, and no annual fee, ever. Pay once and the badge stays active for as long as you want to list it. That permanence is a real differentiator at the entry level: the other sub-$200 entry tickets all carry a clock, a fee, or both. ISC2 CC, the closest competitor in price and positioning, charges a mandatory $50 every single year you hold it.

One heavyweight carries an asterisk worth understanding. OffSec’s OSCP historically never expired, and the base OSCP still does not. But OffSec now awards OSCP+ alongside it, and OSCP+ expires three years from issuance. Holders keep the non-expiring OSCP either way; what lapses is the ”+” designation that signals recency. If you earned it, you keep the name that matters. If a job posting starts asking for the plus, that is a three-year clock in disguise.

Free forever, if you do the homework

A second tier never expires in practice but asks for ongoing proof of life, at no charge.

Salesforce Administrator does not expire as long as you complete one free maintenance module on Trailhead each year by the release deadline. Miss the deadline and the credential lapses; do the module, which is genuinely short, and it lives indefinitely without a renewal fee. The annual module is the easiest-to-miss obligation in this tier, and the most common way people lose an otherwise permanent credential.

Microsoft’s role-based certifications (like Azure Administrator AZ-104) run on a one-year clock but renew free through an online, open-book assessment on Microsoft Learn, available in the six months before expiry. Functionally, that is free-forever with an annual homework assignment. It is also the most renewal-friendly model any major vendor runs at the role-based level, and it makes the Microsoft track meaningfully cheaper over nine years than its sticker price suggests.

Renews itself while you climb

A third tier expires on paper but renews automatically if you keep advancing, which changes the honest math for anyone planning a multi-cert path.

AWS certifications are valid three years, but passing a higher AWS exam recertifies the ones beneath it: Cloud Practitioner renews when you pass any Associate or Professional exam, and Solutions Architect Associate renews under Solutions Architect Professional. CompTIA works the same way: earning CySA+ or higher renews Security+ automatically and waives the continuing-education fee. If your plan was always to climb, the lower rungs’ renewal costs round to zero. If the entry cert is your ceiling, budget for its full renewal model instead; certification renewal costs explained prices all four models over nine years.

The clocks that surprise people

The renewal terms that catch people are the short ones and the fee-bearing ones. Terraform Associate and SnowPro Core both run two-year clocks, the shortest in the registry, so the cheapest exam here ($70.50) is also one of the most frequently re-sat. ISC2 and ISACA attach mandatory annual fees to every certification they issue, meaning a lapse in payment, not just a lapse in study, can end the credential. None of this makes those certifications bad buys; it makes their real price different from their sticker price, which is exactly the gap this site exists to close. Before you pick an entry ticket for its low door price, check which clock it is on. The full picture for every certification we track, cost against occupation pay with renewal noted, is on the ROI Index.