AWS vs Azure Certification: What the Two Pages Say

AWS publishes its exam prices and charges you to renew every three years. Microsoft publishes no dollar price for its Azure exams and renews its role-based certifications free, once a year, with an open-book online assessment. Whichever you pick, that difference will cost or save you more than the exam fee does.

This page compares what the two companies actually publish, read on 24 September 2026, with Google Cloud alongside for scale. For the AWS side in full, see the AWS certification path.

The price comparison you cannot make

Start with the awkward part. Microsoft’s Azure Fundamentals certification page — last updated 20 July 2026 — gives the exam code AZ-900, says the assessment runs 45 minutes, says it is proctored and booked through Pearson VUE, and then says this about the price: “Price based on the country or region in which the exam is proctored.”

There is no USD figure on that page. So this site prints none. Every article that gives you a crisp Azure exam price in dollars has taken it from somewhere other than that page, and while the number may well be right, it is not sourced — and an unsourced price on a page full of sourced ones is the most dangerous kind.

AWS, by contrast, prints a dollar figure on every exam page: $100 foundational, $150 associate, $300 professional and specialty. Google prints its fees too: $99 for Cloud Digital Leader and $125 for Associate Cloud Engineer, each “plus tax where applicable”.

Renewal is where the real money is

This is the genuine structural difference, and it is not close.

Microsoft’s renewal page says it plainly: “Renewals are free. There’s no cost to renew your certification, just make sure you pass the online assessment before your certification expires.” The assessment is unproctored, open book, retakeable as often as you need within a six-month eligibility window, and a pass extends the certification one year from the expiry date. And fundamentals certifications, AZ-900 among them, “do not expire” at all.

AWS’s model is the opposite in every respect. Certifications last three years, and renewal means retaking the current version of the exam at full price, passing a higher-level exam, or — for Cloud Practitioner only — completing the free AWS Cloud Quest recertification. There is a 50% discount voucher in your AWS Certification Account when you recertify or upgrade, and a maintenance route that extends a certification by a year via Skill Builder activities, which needs an active paid subscription and opens only within 90 days of expiry.

Google sits between the two: three years’ validity, with a cheaper renewal exam — $60 for Cloud Digital Leader against $99 for the full exam, $75 against $125 for Associate Cloud Engineer — or a one-year extension through designated Google Skills courses.

Over ten years on a single credential, that is one unpriced free assessment a year at Microsoft, roughly three full-price retakes at AWS, and three discounted ones at Google. What AWS renewal involves, route by route covers the AWS side properly.

The retake rules

AWS: wait 14 calendar days, pay the full registration fee again, unlimited attempts. Microsoft: “You can retake it 24 hours after the first attempt. For subsequent retakes, the amount of time varies.” A day versus a fortnight is a real difference if you are working to a deadline.

Two other things only one of them claims

Microsoft’s Azure Fundamentals page says “You may be eligible for ACE college credit if you pass this certification exam” and links its own page about it. Nothing on the AWS pages read here makes a college-credit or accreditation claim.

That matters if the reason you are certifying is academic credit rather than employment, and it is the kind of claim worth checking on the issuer’s page yourself rather than taking from any article, including this one. Neither is a degree, and neither is “accredited” in the sense a university uses the word.

Free training, on both sides

Microsoft Learn publishes its training modules and learning paths free, and its renewal page points at “free, self-paced modules” for renewal preparation. AWS advertises “1,000+ free learning resources” and over 900 free self-paced digital courses, plus free Official Practice Question Sets, free two-hour Exam Prep Courses and free AWS Cloud Quest.

Google’s picture was the least clear of the three on the day we read it: the Google Skills site advertises a GEAR programme with “35 monthly credits for hands-on learning in Google Skills, at no cost to you”, and links a subscriptions page whose price was not visible. So that is all we will say about it.

None of those three pays this site anything, and between them they cover most of what a candidate needs. Paid training is the optional layer on top — we go through what is genuinely worth buying for the AWS side.

So which should you take?

Take the one your employer runs. That advice is boring and correct: certifications are worth most where the platform is used, and nobody is hired onto an Azure estate for an AWS credential.

If you are genuinely free to choose, the honest tiebreakers are these. AWS has the largest installed base of certified people — its own page says over 1.42 million active certifications as of January 2025 — and the most published detail per exam. Microsoft has free annual renewal and a fundamentals credential that never expires, which makes a ten-year view much cheaper. Google is the cheapest to enter at $99 and the cheapest to renew by exam.

What should not decide it is a salary survey. Neither AWS nor Microsoft publishes one; the figures comparing “AWS vs Azure salaries” come from training companies, and this site does not repeat them. If you want the argument about value laid out properly, is an AWS certification worth it makes the case without a single salary number.

Google Cloud, as the third option

Google publishes more of its pricing than Microsoft and renews more cheaply than AWS, which makes it the most transparent of the three on cost even though it is the smallest of the three certification programmes.

Cloud Digital Leader is $99 for 90 minutes and 50–60 questions, valid three years, with a renewal exam at $60 for 45 minutes and 20 questions. Associate Cloud Engineer is $125 for 120 minutes, also valid three years, with a $75 renewal exam. Google also offers a one-year extension through designated courses and skill badges on Google Skills, and its pages list “6+ months hands-on experience with Google Cloud” as the recommendation for the associate exam, with no prerequisites.

The shorter, cheaper renewal exam is the structural idea worth noticing. AWS makes you retake the whole thing; Google sells a 20-question version at roughly 60% of the standard price; Microsoft gives you an open-book assessment for nothing. Over a decade of holding one credential, those three policies produce very different totals, and none of them is visible at the moment you book your first exam.

What each company is optimising for

This is interpretation rather than fact, so take it as such. AWS behaves like a company confident its certifications are the default — it publishes the most detail per exam, charges for renewal, and has the largest population, with over 1.42 million active certifications as of January 2025 on its own count. Microsoft behaves like a company optimising for the size of its certified base, giving renewal away and letting fundamentals credentials stand forever. Google sits between them, pricing to compete.

None of that tells you which exam to take. It does tell you what to check before committing to a platform’s ladder rather than one of its rungs: not the first fee, but the renewal rule underneath it.