DP-700 exam format: questions, score and cost

DP-700 gives you 100 minutes, requires a scaled score of 700 out of 1000 to pass, and is priced per country at the booking step. Microsoft does not publish the number of questions. Here is everything else it publishes, and what it means for your preparation.

The three domains

Every domain carries the same range, so each is roughly a third of the exam. That changes how you revise: a candidate who is strong at transformation but has never opened the Monitor hub, configured a deployment pipeline or read an Eventhouse ingestion error will lose about a third of the marks in predictable places.

Within the domains, the objectives are practical. Implement and manage covers workspace settings, Git and deployment pipelines, the layers of security and orchestration choices. Ingest and transform covers loading patterns, batch and streaming processing. Monitor and optimize covers monitoring, error resolution and performance for lakehouse tables, pipelines, warehouses, Spark, Eventstream and Eventhouse.

The October 2026 update

Microsoft updates the English outline on October 19, 2026 (ten days after this page was written). Its change log marks all three domain headings as unchanged, with minor changes to the workspace settings objective and to the optimize performance objective. The audience profile is unchanged. If you studied from older material, most of it still applies, but check the current outline objective by objective, especially the Apache Airflow workspace settings and the Real-Time Intelligence choices (native tables versus OneLake shortcuts, and query acceleration).

Localised versions follow roughly eight weeks after the English version, so if you sit the exam in another language shortly after an update, you may get the previous outline.

The practice assessment is available

DP-700 has a free official practice assessment on Microsoft Learn. Use it once early, to find your weakest domain, and once late, to confirm readiness. It shows the style and difficulty of the questions, not their exact format. The exam sandbox is worth ten minutes too: it shows the interface and question types without testing any content.

Question types

Expect the usual Microsoft mix:

• Single-answer and multiple-answer multiple choice
• Drag-and-drop ordering, for example the steps of an incremental load
• Dropdown completion of PySpark, T-SQL or KQL snippets
• Yes/no statement series about one scenario, which you usually cannot revisit
• Case studies where several questions share one long scenario

Microsoft says the exam may include interactive components. Because the audience profile names SQL, PySpark and KQL, expect to read and complete code, not only pick a service name.

The passing score is scaled

700 of 1000 is not 70% correct. Microsoft scales scores and weights questions differently, and does not publish the conversion. Aim for a steady 80% or more on realistic practice questions.

Time management

100 minutes is enough if you do not stall. Code questions and case studies are the time risk. Move steadily through standalone questions, keep a rough reserve for the case study, and avoid spending more than a couple of minutes on one item.

Preview features

Most questions cover generally available features, but Microsoft states that preview features can appear if they are commonly used. Fabric changes quickly, so read the current documentation rather than older blog posts.

Retakes, languages and renewal

If you fail, you can retake after 24 hours; later attempts need 14 days between them, with at most five attempts in 12 months, under Microsoft’s retake policy. If the exam is not offered in your language, you can request an extra 30 minutes. The certification renews annually through a free online assessment on Microsoft Learn. For the day itself, see the exam day guide, and for budgeting see certification costs.