Once AZ-900 is behind you, or once you decide to skip it, the Azure catalogue narrows to a genuine fork: AZ-104 Azure Administrator Associate or AZ-204 Azure Developer Associate. They sit at the same level, they cost the same, and they both feed the expert credentials above them. They test almost nothing in common.
Here is how to pick the one that matches the job you want.
The Short Version
| AZ-104 Azure Administrator | AZ-204 Azure Developer | |
|---|---|---|
| Role | Administrator | Developer |
| Level | Associate, intermediate | Associate, intermediate |
| Exam time | 100 minutes | Longer than AZ-104, confirm the current figure when you book |
| Scoring | 1 to 1000, pass at 700 | 1 to 1000, pass at 700 |
| Fee | USD 165 in most regions, per region pricing, subject to change | USD 165 in most regions, per region pricing, subject to change |
| Renewal | Free online assessment every 12 months | Free online assessment every 12 months |
| Core skill | Configure, secure, and operate Azure resources | Build, deploy, and instrument applications on Azure |
| Code required | No, but PowerShell, the CLI, and Bicep or ARM are expected | Yes, you must be able to read and write application code |
Same shape, different job.
What Each Exam Actually Covers
AZ-104 is built around five domains: manage Azure identities and governance (20 to 25 percent), implement and manage storage (15 to 20 percent), deploy and manage Azure compute resources (20 to 25 percent), implement and manage virtual networking (15 to 20 percent), and monitor and maintain Azure resources (10 to 15 percent).
Read that as a job description. Role assignments and their scope. Policy, locks, and tags. Storage firewalls and shared access signatures. Virtual machines, scale sets, and template deployments. Peering, network security groups, routing, and DNS. Backup, restore, and alerting. It is the work of keeping an estate running and safe.
AZ-204 is built around developing solutions: compute solutions such as functions and container apps, storage access from application code, securing solutions with identity and Key Vault, instrumenting applications with Application Insights, and connecting services through API Management, Event Grid, Event Hubs, and Service Bus.
Read that as a different job description. You are expected to write and debug code against SDKs, handle authentication in an application, and reason about messaging patterns.
The Overlap Is Smaller Than It Looks
Both exams touch storage, identity, and monitoring, and that is where people assume the effort transfers. It mostly does not.
- Storage. The administrator is asked how to restrict access to a storage account with a firewall and how to revoke one partner’s token. The developer is asked how application code authenticates and which SDK operation to use.
- Identity. The administrator manages users, groups, licensing, and role assignments. The developer implements authentication in an application and reads secrets from Key Vault.
- Monitoring. The administrator builds alert rules and queries the activity log. The developer instruments the application and reads its telemetry.
The services share names. The questions do not share answers.
Which Is Harder?
Neither is harder in the abstract. Each is hard in the direction of the other’s comfort zone.
AZ-104 is hard if you have never traced a packet through two network security groups or predicted what a complete mode deployment deletes. Its questions are long, scenario first, and they hide the decisive constraint in the middle of a paragraph. We go through that in detail in how hard is AZ-104.
AZ-204 is hard if you do not write code. That is not a figure of speech. The exam shows code and expects you to spot the bug or complete the call. A strong administrator who has never built an application will struggle in a way that no amount of portal experience fixes.
Choose AZ-104 If
- Your title contains, or you want it to contain, the words cloud, infrastructure, platform, systems, or operations.
- You come from Windows or Linux administration, virtualization, or networking and you want to move that experience into Azure.
- You are heading toward AZ-305 Solutions Architect Expert or AZ-400 DevOps Engineer Expert, both of which assume you can already administer the platform.
- Job postings you want to apply for name AZ-104 by its code, which most Azure operations roles do.
- You would rather spend an evening building a hub and spoke network than debugging an SDK call.
Choose AZ-204 If
- You already write application code for a living and Azure is where it runs.
- Your work is functions, containers, queues, and APIs rather than subscriptions, subnets, and vaults.
- You are aiming at a developer or platform engineering role where shipping the application matters more than operating the estate.
Can You Do Both?
Yes, and plenty of people eventually do, because the combination is exactly what a platform engineering role asks for. The order matters more than the destination.
If your day job is infrastructure, take AZ-104 first. It converts what you already do into Azure vocabulary and gives you the governance and networking grounding that makes AZ-204’s deployment topics obvious later.
If your day job is development, take AZ-204 first for the same reason in reverse, then pick up AZ-104 when you find yourself asking who owns the subscription and why the storage account rejects your connection.
Do not attempt them in parallel. Both are 100 hours or more of preparation, and splitting attention between a role assignment scope model and a messaging pattern is how both attempts fail.
What About AZ-900 First?
AZ-900 is not a prerequisite for either. It is a useful four week on-ramp if cloud vocabulary is new to you, and it never expires, which makes it a low risk first credential. If you already run infrastructure for a living, going straight to AZ-104 is a perfectly reasonable choice, and our AZ-900 mock exam bundle will tell you within one sitting whether you need the fundamentals layer at all.
Deciding in Practice
Open three job postings you would actually apply for. Count how many name an administrator credential and how many name a developer one. That count is your answer more reliably than any comparison article, including this one.
If it comes out administrator, start with the AZ-104 exam guide 2026 for the full picture, then measure yourself against the free 20-question AZ-104 practice test. When you want the full rehearsal, the Sailor.sh AZ-104 mock exam bundle gives you 8 timed 100-minute mock exams of 50 questions each plus the free sample, 420 unique questions in total, scored on the same 1 to 1000 scale with the same 700 passing bar as the real exam. Follow the 30-day AZ-104 study plan if you want the schedule written for you.