Vendor exams on sale on 2026-10-08: AWS Cloud Practitioner $100, Solutions Architect Associate $150, DevOps Engineer Professional $300; Google Associate Cloud Engineer $125, Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer $200; Microsoft AZ-900 and AZ-104 priced by country. source
The vendor exams are the cheapest credential in cloud and the thing most paid courses are built around. They suit anyone who can self-study with the free vendor material and wants a line on a resume without a program. Before paying for a bootcamp, price out the exam plus free training first, and treat a certification as a door opener, not evidence you can run production systems.
The facts
| Category | Cloud and DevOps |
|---|---|
| Website | aws.amazon.com/certification |
| Based | Remote |
| Format | online-self-paced |
| Programs | AWS Cloud Practitioner, SAA, DevOps Engineer Professional, Google Associate Cloud Engineer, Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer, Microsoft AZ-900, AZ-104, AZ-400 |
| Length | Exams only; vendor pages give recommended experience (AWS DevOps Pro: 2+ years on AWS; GCP DevOps: 3+ years industry, 1+ on Google Cloud) rather than study time. unknown |
| Tuition | $100 to $300 AWS: $100 (Cloud Practitioner, 90 min), $150 (SAA, 130 min), $300 (DevOps Pro, 180 min), each valid 3 years with a 50% discount on the next exam. Google: $125 (ACE, 2 hours, valid 3 years), $200 (Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer, 2 hours). Microsoft: 'Price based on the country or region in which the exam is proctored'; the US figure was not readable from the page, so it is unverified here. Free vendor training (Microsoft Learn, AWS Skill Builder free tier, Google Cloud Skills Boost) is separate from exam fees. verified |
| Financing | upfront, employer Pay per exam attempt. Microsoft lets you retake 24 hours after a first failure and renews role-based certs free every 12 months via an online assessment; AWS certs last 3 years. |
| Admission | open No prerequisites for any of the listed exams. |
| Stack | AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, IaC, CI/CD, Monitoring |
Outcomes
This program does not publish job-placement or salary outcomes. Treat any number you hear from admissions as unverifiable.
Interview-prep depth
1 / 5
Exam guides: architecture and operations scenarios at associate and professional level; no interview content.
Whatever the program covers, the interview itself is free to prepare for here: coding patterns, system design, practice prompts, company guides.
What a careful reader should know
Included as the price floor for the category: a bootcamp that mainly prepares you for one of these exams should be judged against the $100 to $300 exam fee plus free vendor training. Microsoft shows exam prices only at scheduling time, so the AZ-104 figure is left unverified rather than quoted from memory.
Sources (6)
- aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-cloud-practitioner/
- aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-solutions-architect-associate/
- aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-devops-engineer-professional/
- cloud.google.com/learn/certification/cloud-engineer
- cloud.google.com/learn/certification/cloud-devops-engineer
- learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/azure-administrator/
This directory takes no lead fees or placement payments from any program. Where a program runs an affiliate scheme we say so on its page and mark the link. Facts carry a badge: verified means we read it on a primary source on the date shown, reported means a third party said it, unknown means nobody we trust has published it.
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