AZ-400 exam guide: DevOps Engineer Expert in 2026

AZ-400 is the exam for Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert, and passing it is only half of the certification: you also need an associate certification, which in practice now means Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104), because the developer route (AZ-204) retired on 31 July 2026. Anyone can book the exam, but the expert badge only appears on your transcript once both halves are in place. The exam itself is weighted heavily toward one area: build and release pipelines are 50-55% of it.

This guide covers what the prerequisite rule means after AZ-204's retirement, what each of the five skill areas asks of you, what Microsoft does and doesn't publish about the format, the price and renewal rules, and a preparation order that starts from where most candidates are. Every fact was checked on Microsoft Learn on 4 November 2026.

AZ-400 at a glance

• Exam: AZ-400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions.
• Certification: Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert (Expert level, DevOps Engineer role). It was called "Azure DevOps Engineer Expert" until May 2020; the exam code never changed.
• Status: live, with no retirement date on the exam page. The English exam was last updated on 27 July 2026, and translated versions follow about eight weeks after an English update.
• Prerequisite for the certification: Azure Administrator Associate or Azure Developer Associate (more on this below).
• Passing score: 700 on Microsoft's 1-1,000 scale.
• Price: US$165 in the United States as of November 2026; the price depends on the country where you take it and excludes tax.
• Delivery: online with Pearson VUE's OnVUE proctoring, or at a Pearson VUE test centre, in 10 languages.
• Validity: 12 months, renewed for free with an online assessment.

AZ-400 prerequisites after AZ-204's retirement

The DevOps Engineer Expert page on Microsoft Learn says you must earn at least one of two certifications: Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate or Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate. Until mid-2026 that gave you a choice between AZ-104 and AZ-204. Microsoft retired AZ-204 at 11:59 PM Central time on 31 July 2026, and the Azure Developer Associate page now says "This certification and the renewal assessment are retired."

Taking the exam vs earning the certification

AZ-400 has no booking prerequisite. You can sit it before or after AZ-104, and a pass counts. What you can't do is hold the DevOps Engineer Expert certification until you also hold a qualifying associate certification. If you are new to Azure, take AZ-104 first anyway: the pipelines half of AZ-400 assumes you already know resource groups, identities, networking and deployments, which is what AZ-104 tests.

If you already hold Azure Developer Associate

An Azure Developer Associate you earned before the retirement stays on your transcript until it expires, and the prerequisite list still names it. What changed is that it can no longer be renewed, because the renewal assessment retired with the exam. Once it expires it moves to your transcript's history. So a current Azure Developer Associate still qualifies you, but don't plan a long gap between it and AZ-400. If your developer certification has already lapsed, AZ-104 is the route left.

Where AI-200 fits

AI-200 (Azure AI Cloud Developer Associate) is the developer certification Microsoft launched in July 2026 alongside AZ-204's retirement. As of November 2026 it is not on the DevOps Engineer Expert prerequisite list. If you are a developer choosing between AZ-104 and AI-200 with AZ-400 in mind, AZ-104 is the one that counts today. Check the certification page before you book, because Microsoft updates these lists without much notice.

What the AZ-400 exam tests

The exam page lists five skill areas, with these weights:

1. Design and implement processes and communications: 10-15%.
2. Design and implement a source control strategy: 10-15%.
3. Design and implement build and release pipelines: 50-55%.
4. Develop a security and compliance plan: 10-15%.
5. Implement an instrumentation strategy: 5-10%.

The weights tell you how to spend your time. Pipelines alone are worth about as much as the other four areas put together.

Build and release pipelines (50-55%)

This is the half of the exam to get right. Expect questions on designing a pipeline, not just writing one: which agent or runner to use, how stages and approvals gate a release to production, how to keep secrets out of the repository, and which deployment pattern fits a given risk.

Three ideas come up again and again in different forms. The first is the difference between continuous delivery and continuous deployment; a practice question on delivery vs deployment tests exactly where the manual gate sits. The second is the release strategy: canary, blue/green and rolling each trade speed against how much traffic a bad release can reach, which a practice question on canary vs blue/green puts side by side. The third is artefact discipline: build once, then promote the same artefact through every environment, the idea behind a practice question on build-once-promote.

Infrastructure as code sits inside this area too. You should be comfortable reading an ARM or Bicep deployment and knowing what it will change. A practice question on ARM complete deployment mode shows the trap: complete mode deletes resources in the group that the template doesn't list.

Source control, processes, security and instrumentation

The other four areas are smaller but not optional, and together they are about half the marks.

• Source control strategy: branching models, pull request policies, protecting the main branch, and handling large files and repository size.
• Processes and communications: tracking work, linking commits to work items, dashboards, and the metrics a DevOps team reports. The study guide names flow-of-work measures such as cycle time, time to recovery and lead time; a practice question on change failure rate drills reading a delivery metric from raw numbers.
• Security and compliance: secrets management, dependency and code scanning, and identities for pipelines. A practice question on pipeline secrets covers the core rule: no credentials in the repository or the artefact, injected at deploy time instead. A practice question on replacing the container registry admin account is the Azure version: give the workload a managed identity rather than a shared password, the same principle that applies to a pipeline's connection to Azure.
• Instrumentation: monitoring and telemetry for applications and pipelines, and acting on what they show. At 5-10% it's the smallest area, so learn the main tools and move on.

GitHub and Azure DevOps: you need both

People often search for this as the "Azure DevOps certification", but the AZ-400 certification isn't limited to Azure DevOps. The certification page asks for experience implementing both GitHub and Azure DevOps solutions. Most Azure certifications centre on one product; this one expects you to move between Azure Pipelines and GitHub Actions, Azure Repos and GitHub repositories, and Azure Boards and GitHub's own planning tools, and to know when an organisation would pick each.

If you have only used one of them, close the gap before the exam. Build the same small pipeline twice, once in each, deploying to the same Azure resource. Doing it once in each tool teaches you more than reading about both.

Exam format: what Microsoft publishes and what it doesn't

Microsoft does not publish a fixed question count or a fixed duration for AZ-400, and it doesn't say in advance whether your exam will include a lab. Its general exam-duration page says expert exams run 100 minutes, or 120 when they include labs, and that most exams have between 40 and 60 questions. Question types across Microsoft exams include multiple choice, drag-and-drop and case studies, and your exam may mix them. Sites that quote one exact number for AZ-400 are guessing.

What is fixed: you need 700 out of 1,000 to pass, and the score is scaled, so 700 is not 70% of the questions. If you fail, Microsoft's retake policy lets you sit it again 24 hours after the first attempt, with longer waits after that.

AZ-400 cost, retakes and renewal

The exam costs US$165 in the United States as of November 2026. Microsoft sets the price by the country where you take it, so check it on the exam page with your country selected before you book; for comparison, AZ-104 shows ₹4,865 for India. Tax is extra. The certification page also points to Exam Replay, an offer that bundles a retake.

The DevOps Engineer Expert certification is valid for 12 months. Renewing is free: you pass an online assessment on Microsoft Learn, which opens six months before the expiry date. If you let it expire, you have to pass AZ-400 again.

How to prepare for AZ-400

Most people who search for AZ-400 are developers or administrators who already work with Azure. A sensible order:

1. Get AZ-104 first if you don't have an associate certification. It's needed for the badge, and AZ-400 assumes what it teaches. The AZ-104 cert page has the exam overview, and the AZ-104 practice questions cover identity, storage, compute, networking and monitoring.
2. Spend half your study time on pipelines. Build multi-stage pipelines with approvals, environments and a deployment pattern, in both Azure Pipelines and GitHub Actions.
3. Work through the other four areas using the official AZ-400 study guide as a checklist. The exam page lists Microsoft Learn learning paths for each area, and the instructor-led course is AZ-400T00.
4. Test yourself. Microsoft's free practice assessment now runs on AI Skills Navigator; the older version on Microsoft Learn is no longer updated. The exam sandbox lets you try the question formats before the real thing. The CI/CD and DevOps practice questions here drill the concepts behind the pipeline questions, and the CI/CD and DevOps cert page explains what that bank covers.

Someone with daily Azure and pipeline work behind them can often be ready in four to six weeks. Someone starting from AZ-104 should plan for that exam first, then the same again for AZ-400.

Is AZ-400 worth it, and what to take next

AZ-400 is worth it if your job is building and running delivery pipelines on Azure, or you want it to be. It's an expert-level certification, it covers both Microsoft's DevOps tools, and the pipelines half matches the day-to-day work closely. If your work is mostly architecture, AZ-305 (Azure Solutions Architect Expert) is the closer fit; it shares the AZ-104 foundation, as the Azure certification path shows. For how AZ-400 compares with the DevOps certifications from AWS, Google and the Kubernetes world, see best DevOps certification. If you are heading toward AI work instead, the Microsoft AI certification path explains where AI-200 and its siblings fit.

Frequently asked questions

What are the prerequisites for AZ-400?

To earn the DevOps Engineer Expert certification you need AZ-400 plus either Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104) or Azure Developer Associate. AZ-204 retired on 31 July 2026, so AZ-104 is the only associate route you can still earn. An unexpired Azure Developer Associate still counts.

Can I take AZ-400 without AZ-104?

Yes. Microsoft doesn't require a prerequisite to book the exam, and your pass stays on record. You won't hold the DevOps Engineer Expert certification until you also earn a qualifying associate certification.

Is AZ-400 hard?

It's an expert-level exam, and the hard part for most people is breadth: both GitHub and Azure DevOps, plus security and monitoring. Hands-on pipeline experience matters more than reading, because the questions describe situations and ask what you would build.

How much does AZ-400 cost?

US$165 in the United States as of November 2026, plus tax. The price varies by country; check it on the exam page with your country selected before booking.

Does the DevOps Engineer Expert certification expire?

Yes, after 12 months. You can renew it for free by passing an online assessment on Microsoft Learn in the six months before it expires. If it lapses, you have to pass AZ-400 again.