AZ-400 study resources

The best AZ-400 resources are free: Microsoft’s study guide, the official practice assessment, the documentation of Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions and Azure Monitor, and your own pipelines. Add realistic practice questions to find your weak domain. Be careful with outdated material: the outline was updated on July 27, 2026, and older courses may use classic release pipelines and names that have since changed.

Start with the official material

The study guide. Microsoft’s AZ-400 study guide lists every skill measured as of July 27, 2026, with sub-bullets, a change log and links to documentation. Read it before anything else and keep it open.

The exam page. The AZ-400 exam page shows languages, price at booking, the free practice assessment and the instructor-led course.

The practice assessment. A free official practice assessment exists for AZ-400. Take it at the start and near the end. It shows the style and difficulty of the questions, not their exact format.

Learn training. The exam page lists self-paced learning paths for Git at enterprise scale, continuous integration with Azure Pipelines and GitHub Actions, release strategy, secure continuous deployment, infrastructure as code, dependency management, continuous feedback and security validation of code bases. Use them for structure.

Exam prep videos and sandbox. The Exam Readiness Zone on Learn has AZ-400 preparation videos, and the exam sandbox shows the interface and question types.

Documentation. The study guide itself points to the Azure DevOps documentation, Azure Pipelines, Azure Repos, Azure Boards, Azure Monitor and Key Vault. For GitHub-side topics such as Actions, Advanced Security and Dependabot, use GitHub’s own documentation.

Lab work is the differentiator

AZ-400 shows you a pipeline or a policy and asks what is wrong or what to change. Six labs cover most of it:

1. Protect a branch twice. Branch policy in Azure Repos and branch protection in GitHub, with required reviews and a required build.
2. Two pipelines, one app. The same build and test in Azure Pipelines YAML and in GitHub Actions, with path filters and a PR trigger.
3. Reusable pipeline. A template (or reusable workflow) used by two repositories, with a variable group.
4. Safe release. Deploy to an App Service staging slot, add an environment approval, swap, then roll back.
5. IaC in the pipeline. A Bicep file deployed by the pipeline with a what-if step, using a federated credential rather than a secret.
6. Scan and watch. CodeQL and Dependabot enabled, Application Insights on the app, an availability test and an alert that notifies you.

Delete resource groups after each session so lab costs stay small.

Worth paying for

Practice questions written against the current outline. Their value is diagnosis. The free 20-question practice test here is weighted like the real exam.

A small Azure budget and a free Azure DevOps organization. Both are enough for every lab above.

What to avoid

Outdated courses that centre on classic release pipelines or never mention YAML templates, federated credentials, GitHub Advanced Security or Azure Deployment Environments.

Braindumps. They break Microsoft’s exam agreement, risk revocation of your certifications and do not help with scenario questions.

Memorising portal click paths. Menus move; the exam asks which feature meets a requirement.

A sensible order

1. Read the study guide and take the practice assessment cold.
2. Follow the four-week study plan and the five domain guides.
3. Take the practice test and find your weakest domain.
4. Repeat that domain’s lab and documentation.
5. Book once you score 80% or more on realistic questions twice in a row.

Not sure the exam fits you? See is AZ-400 worth it?.