Technically, yes. Microsoft removed the AZ-104 prerequisite, and nothing stops you from booking AZ-305 today.
But here's what most people miss: passing AZ-305 alone won't earn you a certification. This post clears up exactly how the two exams connect, answers the questions that confuse almost everyone, and helps you pick the right order for your situation.
Is AZ-104 a Prerequisite for AZ-305?
Not for taking the exam. Anyone can register for AZ-305 with zero certifications.
But here's the part Microsoft's exam page doesn't make obvious. AZ-305 has no standalone certification attached to it. Passing it works toward one credential: Azure Solutions Architect Expert. And that credential requires two things:
- The Azure Administrator Associate certification, which you earn by passing AZ-104
- A pass in the AZ-305 exam
So AZ-104 isn't a prerequisite for the exam. It's a requirement for the certification. You can change the order. You can't skip it.
The Questions Everyone Asks
These come up in every Reddit thread and study group, so let's answer them directly.
"If I pass AZ-305 tomorrow, will it count? Or do I get nothing?" It counts. Your pass is recorded on your Microsoft Learn profile and stays there. You just won't receive a badge or certificate yet, because there's no AZ-305-only credential to issue. The moment you also earn AZ-104, the Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification unlocks automatically.
"Is AZ-305 pointless if I haven't done AZ-104 yet?" No. The pass isn't wasted, and the knowledge definitely isn't. It just sits incomplete until AZ-104 joins it. Think of it as one of two keys.
"Can I take AZ-104 after AZ-305?" Yes. The order doesn't matter. Pass them in whichever sequence suits you, and the Expert certification is issued once both are done.
"So why does everyone say to take AZ-104 first?" Because for most people, it's the easier and smarter sequence. Here's why.
AZ-104 vs AZ-305: Exam Topics and Key Differences
AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator
AZ-104 is about running Azure day to day. The exam covers five areas:
- Managing Azure identities and governance
- Implementing and managing storage
- Deploying and managing compute resources
- Configuring and managing virtual networking
- Monitoring and maintaining Azure resources
If you've worked as an Azure admin, this list probably looks like your job description. That's the point. The exam checks whether you can actually do these things, and passing it gets you the Azure Administrator Associate certification straight away.
AZ-305: Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions
AZ-305 is a different kind of exam. You're not asked to configure or deploy anything. Its four domains are:
- Identity, governance, and monitoring solutions
- Data storage solutions
- Business continuity solutions
- Infrastructure solutions
Every domain starts with the same idea: design. A typical question gives you a company, its requirements, a budget, maybe a compliance rule, and then four possible architectures. All four are real solutions that would work. Your job is to figure out which one fits the constraints.
Here's the catch. Say the scenario needs data to survive a regional outage without blowing the budget, and the options are different storage redundancy types. You can only answer that if you already know what ZRS and GRS protect against and roughly what they cost. The exam never teaches or tests those basics. It just assumes them.
And that's really the whole relationship between these two exams. AZ-104 gives you the working knowledge. AZ-305 asks what you'd do with it.
Which Exam Should You Take First? A Quick Self-Check
The right order depends on how much working knowledge you already have. Ask yourself these five questions honestly.
1. Can you set up a VNet with subnets and NSGs without documentation? This is the kind of task AZ-305 assumes you've done many times. If you'd need to look up the steps, the exam's networking scenarios will feel heavier than they should.
2. Do you know when to use RBAC vs Azure Policy vs resource locks? All three control access and behavior in an environment, and it's normal to mix them up early on. But AZ-305 design questions expect this distinction to already be clear in your head.
3. Can you explain Azure storage redundancy options and when each applies? LRS, ZRS, GRS, and what each protects against. This one matters more than it looks, because redundancy tradeoffs come up in almost every AZ-305 case study.
4. Have you troubleshot real Azure deployments? There's a difference between following a lab and fixing something that broke in a real environment. The second one is where the fluency AZ-305 relies on actually comes from.
5. Do you have one to two years of hands-on Azure experience? This is roughly the experience Microsoft describes for the architect role itself, so it's a fair benchmark for the exam too.
If you answered yes to all five, taking AZ-305 first is a valid path. AZ-104 afterwards will mostly formalize what you already do at work.
If you hesitated on any of them, start with AZ-104. It covers exactly these areas, so preparing for it closes the gaps directly, and nothing you learn there goes to waste in AZ-305.
How to Prepare, Whichever Order You Pick
For AZ-305, the format is half the battle. The case studies are long, they eat time, and pacing only improves with reps. So work through scenario-based questions until spotting hard constraints, like compliance requirements, RTO numbers, and cost ceilings, becomes routine. Those constraints eliminate wrong answers faster than technical knowledge does.
For AZ-104, hands-on practice beats reading every time. You want the portal and CLI to feel familiar before exam day, so that nothing on screen surprises you.
Whizlabs covers both: complete hands-on exam prep for AZ-104 and AZ-305 that mirror the real exam format, along with hands-on labs and sandboxes so you build the admin fluency in a live Azure environment instead of just reading about it.
The Bottom Line
You can take AZ-305 without AZ-104. Your pass will count and wait for you. But the Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification only arrives when both exams are done.
So the real question was never whether you can skip AZ-104. It's which order gets you there faster. The self-check above tells you.
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