The AZ-104 (Microsoft Azure Administrator) exam is the most popular
role-based Azure certification and one of the most useful credentials
for landing a cloud admin or junior engineer role. It costs $165 USD,
runs 100 minutes, has 40 to 60 questions, and requires 700 out of 1000
to pass. Most candidates need 8 to 12 weeks of focused study. Questions
are scenario-based with frequent drag-and-drop sequencing and case
studies. If you have 6 months of hands-on Azure work, you can pass
without a course. If you don't, budget the full 12 weeks and do real
labs.
The 90-second answer
Take AZ-104 if you've been administering Azure resources for at
least 6 months, you're comfortable with the Azure portal plus CLI or
PowerShell, and you want a credential most cloud-hiring managers
recognize. It's the right cert for sysadmins, IT support staff, and
junior engineers moving into cloud roles paying $95K to $135K.
Skip AZ-104 if you've never touched the Azure portal. Start with
AZ-900 (Microsoft Azure Fundamentals) first to build vocabulary. Going
straight from zero Azure experience to AZ-104 usually means a failed
first attempt and another $165. The exam assumes you know what a
storage account, NSG, and resource group are; it doesn't teach you.
What does AZ-104 actually test?
AZ-104 tests five domains, with weights Microsoft updated for the
current 2026 version. Every question maps to one of them.
| Domain | Weight | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Manage Azure identities and governance | 20-25% | Microsoft Entra ID, RBAC, subscriptions, management groups, tags, policies |
| Implement and manage storage | 15-20% | Storage accounts, blob containers, Azure Files, lifecycle management, AzCopy |
| Deploy and manage Azure compute resources | 20-25% | VMs, scale sets, app services, container instances, ARM/Bicep templates |
| Implement and manage virtual networking | 15-20% | VNets, subnets, NSGs, load balancers, VPN gateway, peering, DNS |
| Monitor and maintain Azure resources | 10-15% | Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, alerts, backup, site recovery |
The exam is heavy on the Azure portal interface and equally heavy on
Azure CLI and PowerShell syntax. A typical question presents a
scenario ("a company needs to give read-only access to billing data
for the finance team without granting access to other subscription
resources") and asks which RBAC role or set of commands solves it.
Drag-and-drop sequencing questions show up in every exam. You'll get a
list of steps for, say, configuring a VNet peering with a custom route
table, and you have to put them in the right order. Get one step
wrong and you lose the whole question. There's no partial credit.
The other common format is the case study, where you read a 4 to 6
paragraph company scenario and then answer 5 to 8 questions about it
in sequence. Case studies typically eat 20 to 25 minutes of your 100
minutes if you're not pacing carefully.
How hard is AZ-104?
AZ-104 is a difficulty 3 out of 5. Harder than AZ-900 (Fundamentals)
or AWS Cloud Practitioner, much easier than AZ-305 (Solutions
Architect Expert). Microsoft doesn't publish official pass rates, but
community surveys put first-attempt pass rate around 65 to 70% for
candidates who studied at least 8 weeks.
The hard part isn't the Azure services. The hard part is the question
style:
- Long case studies (4 to 6 paragraphs) you have to parse for the actual requirement
- Drag-and-drop sequencing where four of five steps look right and one is subtly wrong
- "Pick three" multi-select questions with no partial credit
- CLI and PowerShell syntax that has to be exactly right (commas, parameter names, capitalization)
- Time pressure: 40 to 60 questions in 100 minutes works out to ~2 minutes each, but case studies eat into the buffer
The most common failure pattern: candidate watches an Azure course on
Udemy, never opens the actual Azure portal, walks into the exam, hits
the first PowerShell-syntax question, freezes, guesses, and the score
spirals from there. The fix is hands-on lab work starting week 1, not
week 8.
How long should you study for AZ-104?
Microsoft recommends 6 months of hands-on Azure experience before
taking AZ-104. That's the baseline assumption built into question
difficulty. For actual study time on top of that experience:
- With 6+ months Azure experience: 6 to 8 weeks at 8 to 10 hours per week
- Coming from AZ-900 + 3 months experience: 8 to 10 weeks
- No Azure experience, AWS background: 8 to 12 weeks, focused on Microsoft's vocabulary and Entra ID
- No cloud experience at all: 14 to 16 weeks, and you should take AZ-900 first before AZ-104 anyway
The biggest waste of study time is watching course videos without
opening the Azure portal. Build at least 4 small projects in your
Azure account: a storage account with three tiers (hot/cool/archive)
plus lifecycle rules, a VM scale set behind a load balancer in a custom
VNet, a peered VNet with a VPN gateway, and a Log Analytics workspace
collecting from one VM. That hands-on work makes case-study questions
click.
A realistic week-by-week pace for an 8-week study plan:
- Week 1: Subscriptions, management groups, Entra ID, RBAC fundamentals
- Week 2: Storage accounts, blob containers, Azure Files, AzCopy
- Week 3: VMs, images, availability sets, scale sets
- Week 4: Virtual networks, subnets, NSGs, peering
- Week 5: Load balancers, application gateway, VPN gateway, ExpressRoute basics
- Week 6: ARM templates, Bicep, deployment slots, app services
- Week 7: Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Azure Backup, Site Recovery
- Week 8: Full practice exams, weak-area cleanup, pacing drills
Most failures happen because candidates skip weeks 1 and 4. Identity
plus networking accounts for roughly 40% of AZ-104 questions when you
read the domain breakdown carefully.
What does AZ-104 cost?
The exam itself is $165 USD plus any local taxes. Beyond that, real
total cost depends on what study path you take:
| Component | Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Exam fee | $165 | One attempt. Retake is another $165 if you fail. |
| Microsoft Learn modules | $0 | Free, official, surprisingly good for AZ-104 |
| Udemy course (Scott Duffy, Tim Warner) | $15 to $30 | On sale at $15 most months |
| Practice questions | $0 to $100 | NerdExam has 703 enriched AZ-104 questions free |
| Azure lab costs | $30 to $80 | Free tier covers $200 of services for 30 days; expect $20/month after |
| MeasureUp practice exam (official) | $89 | Optional. Same publisher as the real exam, used in last week. |
| Realistic total spend | $180 to $400 | Cheapest viable path: $165 (exam only, free Microsoft Learn) |
Microsoft offers an occasional 50% discount voucher via the Microsoft
Learn Cloud Skills Challenge. The challenge typically runs twice per
year and requires completing a training path before the voucher
unlocks. The voucher cuts the exam fee from $165 to $82.50. If a
challenge is running when you're ready to book, it's the easiest
discount in the certification world.
Microsoft does not offer a retake voucher discount. Failing AZ-104 once
costs you $165 to try again. Microsoft Learn has a 24-hour wait
between attempt 1 and 2, then 14-day waits between subsequent
attempts.
What study resources actually work?
The candidates who pass AZ-104 on the first attempt use a consistent
stack:
- Microsoft Learn's official AZ-104 learning path (free, ~30 hours of modules). This is the closest match to exam phrasing because Microsoft writes both the modules and the questions
- One video course for breadth (Scott Duffy's "AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator Exam Prep" on Udemy is the community favorite at around $15 on sale; John Savill's free YouTube videos are equally good but less organized)
- A free Azure account ($200 of free services for 30 days, then pay-as-you-go for low-cost resources). Set a $10 billing alert immediately to avoid surprises.
- At least 400 practice questions before exam day to build pacing
- One full-length timed practice exam in the final week. Take it on a Saturday morning, treat it like the real exam, score honestly. If you're below 75%, postpone the real exam by 2 weeks.
Skip the books. Azure changes too fast for printed material to stay
current. The Tim Warner book is the closest exception but expects 6+
months of Azure experience already. Skip the $300 bootcamps.
Microsoft Learn plus a $15 Udemy course covers the same ground.
For practice questions, NerdExam has 703 enriched AZ-104 questions
with full explanations. Start practicing AZ-104 questions
to see the question style before you commit to a study plan. The
question explanations alone show you the reasoning pattern the exam
expects, which is harder to learn from courses than from doing the
questions.
What salary can you expect after passing AZ-104?
Azure Administrator is one of the highest-paying mid-level cloud
certs. 2026 salary data from US job boards shows:
- National average for Azure Administrator: $95,000 to $125,000
- Top US metros (Seattle, NYC, DC): $130,000 to $155,000
- Remote-friendly mid-level roles: $105,000 to $130,000 base
- With 3+ years experience plus AZ-104: $145,000+ at enterprise Microsoft shops
The cert alone doesn't deliver these numbers. You also need real Azure
experience and ideally a second specialty (security, networking, or
DevOps). But AZ-104 is the credential most often required in Azure
admin and junior cloud engineer job postings, which makes it the right
mid-level cert to chase.
A practical negotiation tip: if you pass AZ-104 while currently
employed at a Microsoft shop, ask your manager about a salary band
adjustment before annual review cycle. Companies running heavy Azure
workloads typically have policies for post-cert compensation reviews,
but the policy rarely triggers automatically. Internal moves with a
fresh AZ-104 historically clear 7 to 12% base bumps. External moves
with a fresh AZ-104 plus 1+ year of Azure production work clear 18 to
30%.
Who should NOT take AZ-104?
The cert is wrong for these candidates:
| You are | Take instead |
|---|---|
| New to cloud entirely | AZ-900 (Azure Fundamentals) first |
| A developer building on Azure | AZ-204 (Azure Developer Associate) |
| Targeting an architect role | AZ-305 (Solutions Architect Expert) after AZ-104 |
| A security-first cloud engineer | AZ-500 (Azure Security Engineer) after AZ-104 |
| Working primarily in AWS or GCP | The matching AWS (SAA-C03) or Google (Associate Cloud Engineer) cert |
| A data engineer | DP-203 (Azure Data Engineer) or AZ-104 second |
The cert path matters more than the individual cert. Picking AZ-104
when your role uses AWS wastes 3 months. Azure hiring managers don't
penalize people for not having AZ-104; they penalize people for not
understanding the services.
What's next after AZ-104?
Once AZ-104 is in hand, three paths open up depending on what you
want:
- Architect track: AZ-305 (Solutions Architect Expert). The natural follow-on. Most architects do this within 12 to 18 months of AZ-104.
- Specialty track: AZ-500 (Security Engineer), AZ-700 (Network Engineer), or DP-203 (Data Engineer). Pairs well with AZ-104 for senior roles in those domains.
- Multi-cloud track: Add AWS (SAA-C03) or GCP (Associate Cloud Engineer). Companies running multi-cloud workloads pay a premium for this combination.
Most people take 12 to 24 months between AZ-104 and their next cert.
Use that time to ship real production Azure work. The cert pays off
when hiring managers see it alongside actual experience, not when
it's the only line on your resume.
Ready to start? Practice with real AZ-104 questions on NerdExam
or browse the free per-question explanations.
Microsoft Learn's free AZ-104 learning path is also worth starting
first if you haven't:
Microsoft Learn AZ-104 path.
Adjacent reading: What is IAM and why it matters for Azure
administrators,
What is a VPC and how Azure's VNet compares, and
AZ-900 vs AZ-104: which to take first.
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