AZ-900 study guide: every skill Microsoft measures, weighted, with a plan to cover it

Microsoft measures three skill areas and publishes each weight as a range, not a fixed share. Architecture and services is the heaviest at 35–40%, management and governance follows at 30–35%, and cloud concepts carries 25–30%. Read the ranges as an order of importance, not a question count: Microsoft gives no fixed number of questions for AZ-900, only that its exams typically contain 40–60.

Every sub-objective in the outline starts with the verb Describe. That one word sets the level: you are asked to recognize a service, a model or a tool and match it to a need, not to configure anything. Most questions hand you a short scenario and four names, two of them from the same family. The table lists, per sub-objective, what the questions probe and the pair you will most often have to split.

Two of the three areas have a full line guide on this site, with the concepts, the confusable pairs and 12 practice questions each. Cloud concepts is worked on the sample questions page instead: 12 items, every option explained.

• G125–30%

  Cloud concepts

  Cloud models, shared responsibility, consumption pricing, the benefits of cloud, and IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.

  Worked in the sample questions

• G235–40%

  Architecture and services

  Regions and zones, the resource hierarchy, compute, networking, storage, identity and security services.

  Line guide · 12 practice questions

• G330–35%

  Management and governance

  Cost tools and tags, Policy, locks and Purview, deployment tools, and the three monitoring services.

  Line guide · 12 practice questions

For cloud concepts, work through the cloud concepts worked examples, where every option is explained.

Describe Azure architecture and services (35–40%)

The biggest area and the most product names: four sub-objectives, from regions down to storage tiers and Entra ID. Questions here are service-picking. A stem says survive a datacenter failure or connect without crossing the public internet, and the answer turns on that phrase. The architecture and services guide walks the four sub-objectives in outline order and ends with a 12-question run.

Describe Azure management and governance (30–35%)

Cost, governance, deployment tools and monitoring. Fewer services than the architecture area, but they come in tight clusters that the exam loves to put side by side: Azure Policy, a resource lock and a tag in one option set, or Advisor, Service Health and Azure Monitor in another. The management and governance guide sorts each cluster by the question it answers.

Describe cloud concepts (25–30%)

The only area with no Azure product names in its labels, which is why people underrate it. Its stems test definitions in disguise: a company that wants to stop buying hardware for its peak month is a consumption-based model question; a team that patches its own operating system is in IaaS under shared responsibility. Short, wordy, and easy to miss by one term.

The 20 July 2026 refresh was minor: wording, not weights. The three areas and their ranges are the same as in the previous two versions. What has moved over the last few updates is the vocabulary, and that is where older notes cost you answers.

1. 23 January 2024Entra names arrive

   The outline switched its identity items to Microsoft names: Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Entra Domain Services and Microsoft Entra Conditional Access. Weights unchanged.

2. 14 January 2026TCO Calculator out, B2B and B2C unnamed

   The cost item changed from comparing the pricing calculator with the TCO Calculator to explore the pricing calculator. External identities stopped naming B2B and B2C. Weights unchanged.

3. 20 July 2026Current outline

   Virtual subnets became plain subnets; Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell are now listed beside Azure Cloud Shell rather than inside it; Application Insights is written as Azure Monitor Application Insights. Weights unchanged.

Two practical notes on the July wording. Expect Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell as tools in their own right, not only as something inside Cloud Shell. Also, if you read the outline in a language other than English, check the English page too: Microsoft says localized versions follow about eight weeks after the English one. As of 13 Oct 2026 the study guide lists no later version.

Microsoft renames products faster than prep material is rewritten. The outline uses the names below; an option carrying an older name is usually there to be struck.

Microsoft Entra ID

The cloud identity service, formerly Azure Active Directory. Handles sign-in, single sign-on, multifactor authentication and Conditional Access.

Microsoft Entra Domain Services

Managed domain services (domain join, Group Policy, LDAP) without running your own domain controllers.

Microsoft Entra Conditional Access

If-then sign-in policy inside Entra ID: a signal such as location or device leads to allow, require MFA, or block.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Security posture and workload protection. Older notes call its predecessor Azure Security Center.

Microsoft Purview

Data governance, risk and compliance across your data estate; the outline places it under governance and compliance.

Pricing calculator

Estimates Azure costs before you deploy. The TCO Calculator was retired in 2025 and is no longer in the outline.

External identities

Letting people outside your organization sign in. The outline no longer names B2B or B2C.

Azure Monitor Application Insights

Application performance monitoring, now named as part of Azure Monitor.

Start where the points are and finish with a timed run. The order below follows the weights, heaviest first. If you already work in Azure, swap it for weakest first: take one untimed pass of the practice test and begin with the area where the end-of-line summary shows the fewest right answers.

1. 1

   Read the outline once, end to end

   Use the table above or Microsoft’s skills measured list. The goal is a map, not memory: you should know which area a service belongs to before you learn what it does.

2. 2

   Architecture and services first

   35–40% of the outline and the most names. Work the line guide sub-objective by sub-objective, then its 12 questions.

3. 3

   Management and governance next

   30–35%. Learn the clusters as sets, Policy against locks against tags, Advisor against Service Health, then run the 12 questions on that guide.

4. 4

   Cloud concepts third

   25–30%, with fewer names but slippery definitions. The sample questions page explains every option for this area.

5. 5

   Practice by skill area

   On the practice test, filter to one area at a time and run it untimed. Read the note on every option you struck, right or wrong.

6. 6

   Finish with a timed run

   Start a timed run of all 60 against a 45:00 clock. It is a pacing drill, not a score forecast; the exam itself gives you 45 minutes.

After each run, sort what you missed into three piles. The passes decide the order you answer in; the piles decide what you study next.

• Didn’t know it: a service you have never read about. Back to the line guide.
• Narrowed to two, picked wrong: you knew the family but not the word that splits the pair. Write that word down.
• Misread the stem: the condition was there and you skipped it. Read the four options first next time, so you know what the stem must decide.

The middle pile is the one that moves your result. You pass AZ-900 with 700 on a 1–1000 scale, which Microsoft says may not equal 70%, and most of the ground between a near-miss and a pass sits in questions where you had it down to two.

Self-study covers AZ-900 for most people, because the exam is beginner level with no prerequisites and the main free resource comes from Microsoft itself. A course earns its place when you want a fixed date and someone to ask.

Either way, reading teaches what a service does; questions teach you to tell it from its near-twin under a time limit. Budget your final days for the practice test and the line guides.

They all mean the same list. Microsoft publishes a page called the study guide for Exam AZ-900, and its core is a section titled skills measured: the three areas, the weights and the sub-objectives. Training providers and universities tend to call that list the syllabus; prep sites call it the outline or the topics.

Skills measured

Microsoft’s list of areas, weights and sub-objectives, dated. The current one is as of 20 July 2026.

Study guide (Microsoft)

The Learn page that carries the skills measured, a change log and links to Microsoft’s training. Read it on Microsoft Learn.

Syllabus

Not a separate document. Any “AZ-900 syllabus” should match the skills measured line for line.

This page

An independent study guide built on that outline, with explanations and practice of our own. It is not Microsoft’s.

The check is quick: compare a guide’s weights and names with the July 2026 outline. A PDF that still calls Entra ID by its old name, or lists the TCO Calculator as a topic, predates the January 2026 change at least. For the exam format itself, the exam details page covers time, scoring and booking.

• Architecture and servicesAzure architecture and services for AZ-900: the heaviest skill area, decoded
• Management and governanceAzure management and governance for AZ-900: the tools the exam expects you to tell apart
• Practice testFree AZ-900 practice test: 60 explained questions across all three skill areas
• Sample questionsAZ-900 sample questions, answered and explained