AZ-305 vs AZ-400: which expert exam first?
Take AZ-305 first if you design or advise on Azure infrastructure, and AZ-400 first if you spend your days on pipelines, source control and releases. Both are expert-level Microsoft exams, both build on the Azure Administrator Associate certification, and neither requires the other. AZ-305 asks which Azure services meet a set of business requirements; AZ-400 asks how to build and automate the delivery of software to them.
The two exams side by side
| AZ-305 | AZ-400 | |
|---|---|---|
| Exam title | Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions | Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions |
| Certification | Azure Solutions Architect Expert | DevOps Engineer Expert |
| Level | Expert | Expert |
| Prerequisite certification | Azure Administrator Associate | Azure Administrator Associate (the Azure Developer Associate option is retired) |
| Passing score | 700 | 700 |
| Languages offered | 10 | 10 |
| Renewal | Free, annually | Free, annually |
| Main verb in the objectives | Recommend, design, evaluate | Design, implement, configure |
The prerequisite difference matters. If you hold AZ-104, both certifications are open to you. Microsoft’s certification page still names the Azure Developer Associate (exam AZ-204) as an alternative for AZ-400, but marks that certification and its renewal assessment as retired, so new candidates should plan on AZ-104. The architect credential has always required the administrator certification.
Domains compared
| AZ-305 domain | Weight | AZ-400 domain | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions | 25–30% | Design and implement processes and communications | 10–15% |
| Design data storage solutions | 20–25% | Design and implement a source control strategy | 10–15% |
| Design business continuity solutions | 15–20% | Design and implement build and release pipelines | 50–55% |
| Design infrastructure solutions | 30–35% | Develop a security and compliance plan | 10–15% |
| Implement an instrumentation strategy | 5–10% |
AZ-305 spreads its weight over four broad Azure areas. AZ-400 puts more than half of its weight on a single area: pipelines, covering package management, testing, YAML pipelines, deployments and infrastructure as code. The AZ-400 weights come from the study guide updated July 27, 2026.
Where they overlap
The overlap is smaller than people expect, but real:
- Identity and secrets. Managed identities, service principals and Key Vault appear in both. AZ-305 asks which to recommend for an architecture; AZ-400 asks how a pipeline authenticates without storing a secret.
- Monitoring. Azure Monitor, Application Insights and Log Analytics appear in both, as a design choice in AZ-305 and as telemetry for a delivery process in AZ-400.
- Deployment and infrastructure as code. AZ-305 treats automated deployment as one design objective; AZ-400 makes it a major domain.
- Resilience. Deployment strategies such as blue-green and canary in AZ-400 relate to the availability thinking in AZ-305.
What is different
AZ-305 has no pipeline questions. It covers relational and non-relational data, backup and disaster recovery, networking and migration, which AZ-400 barely touches. AZ-400 has no storage tier or migration design. It covers GitHub and Azure DevOps in depth: branching, pull request policies, GitHub Actions, Azure Pipelines, package feeds, dependency scanning and flow-of-work metrics. A strong architect with no CI/CD experience will find AZ-400 unfamiliar; a strong DevOps engineer with no storage, networking or recovery design background will find AZ-305 equally so.
Which is harder?
It depends on your background. AZ-305 is a breadth-and-judgement exam across Azure services, and the difficulty is choosing between answers that all work. AZ-400 is a tooling-and-practice exam, and the difficulty is the volume of GitHub and Azure DevOps detail. See is AZ-305 hard? for the architect side.
Which first?
| If you are | Start with |
|---|---|
| An infrastructure or cloud admin heading to architect roles | AZ-305 |
| A developer or platform engineer owning CI/CD | AZ-400 |
| A consultant advising on designs | AZ-305 |
| A site reliability or release engineer | AZ-400 |
If you hold AZ-104 already and your role mixes both, take the one that matches your current project, since you will retain more. The other exam then becomes much easier, because identity, monitoring and deployment ideas transfer.
Where to go next
Read the AZ-305 exam format and the study plan, the AZ-104 section for the shared prerequisite, and the AZ-400 section for the DevOps route. To weigh the architect credential on its own, see is AZ-305 worth it?.