The short version
AI-200 is Microsoft’s associate-level exam for developers who build the back end of AI applications on Azure. It is less about models and prompts and more about the plumbing around them: containers, vector search in databases, messaging, Functions, secrets, and monitoring. This guide follows the study guide that Microsoft lists as “Skills measured as of October 7, 2026”.
What the exam is
The full title is Developing AI Cloud Solutions on Azure. Passing it leads to the Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Cloud Developer Associate credential, which Microsoft labels intermediate level. Microsoft describes the candidate as someone who contributes to all phases of building AI solutions on Azure, with an emphasis on back-end services and components, from requirements and design through deployment, security, and monitoring.
Notice what the list of skills leaves out. You will not train a model or tune a prompt. You will decide where a container runs, how embeddings are stored and searched, how work is queued, how a function connects to a database without a password, and how you find the slow request in the logs. If you think of the exam as “cloud developer skills, with vector databases added”, you are close.
Who it is for
Microsoft says you should be proficient in the following areas:
- Azure SDKs and third-party SDKs used in Azure
- Azure data management services
- Azure monitoring and troubleshooting
- Azure messaging and eventing
- Vector databases
- Python programming
- Implementing containerized applications on Azure
In practice that means back-end and cloud developers, DevOps and platform engineers who support AI workloads, and developers moving from general Azure work into AI projects. The prerequisites page lists what to know before you start. Microsoft’s Azure Developer Associate certification (AZ-204) is now marked as retired on its certification page; the FAQ below says more.
Format at a glance
| Item | What Microsoft says |
|---|---|
| Exam code | AI-200 |
| Level | Intermediate (associate) |
| Time | 120 minutes |
| Passing score | 700 or higher on a scale of 1 to 1,000 |
| Delivery | Proctored, scheduled through Pearson VUE; may include interactive components |
| Languages | 13, including English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese (Brazil) |
| Number of questions | Not published for this exam; Microsoft says most exams have 40 to 60 |
More detail, including scoring, breaks, and retakes, is on the exam format page.
The four domains and their weightings
| Domain | Weighting |
|---|---|
| Develop containerized solutions on Azure | 20-25% |
| Develop AI solutions by using Azure data management services | 30-35% |
| Connect to and consume Azure services | 20-25% |
| Secure, monitor, and troubleshoot Azure solutions | 20-25% |
Microsoft’s change log says the data management domain increased in weight on October 7, 2026. The “skills at a glance” list shows 30-35%, while the heading further down the same page still showed 25-30% when we checked, so treat 30-35% as the current figure and confirm it on the study guide.
Develop containerized solutions on Azure
Building and storing images in Azure Container Registry, running builds with Registry Tasks, deploying to App Service, and running orchestrated workloads on Azure Container Apps (revisions and KEDA scaling) and Azure Kubernetes Service (manifest files, logs, events, connectivity).
Develop AI solutions by using Azure data management services
The biggest domain. Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL (SDK, indexing, consistency, embeddings and vector search, change feed), Azure Database for PostgreSQL (schemas, indexes, pgvector, retrieval-augmented generation, connection tuning), and Azure Managed Redis (caching and vector indexing).
Connect to and consume Azure services
Azure Service Bus (queues, topics, subscriptions, dead-letter handling), Azure Event Grid (filters, custom events, retries), and Azure Functions (triggers, bindings, configuration, deployment).
Secure, monitor, and troubleshoot Azure solutions
Azure Key Vault (rotation and retrieval), Azure App Configuration, tracing distributed systems with OpenTelemetry SDKs, and writing KQL queries over logs and metrics.
Official source
For the vendor’s own document, see the Microsoft Learn AI-200 study guide. It is the final authority if anything here differs.
More guides for AI-200
- AI-200 Study Plan: 4-Week and 8-Week
- AI-200 Sample Questions With Answers
- Is the AI-200 Exam Hard?
- AI-200 Renewal and Retakes Explained
- Is AI-200 Worth It? An Honest Look
- AI-200 Cheat Sheet: Key Facts to Review
- AI-200 vs AI-300: Which Exam First?
- AI-103 vs AI-200: Which Exam Should You Take?
Next step
Read the domains explained page to see where your time should go. When you want to check yourself, our AI-200 practice tests are original practice sets built around these four domains.
Frequently asked questions
Is AI-200 a replacement for AZ-204?
Microsoft’s AZ-204 certification page says that certification and its renewal assessment are retired. The AI-200 skills list is a different list: it includes vector search in several databases and tracing with OpenTelemetry, so AZ-204 study material alone will probably leave gaps. Microsoft’s pages we checked do not describe AI-200 as a direct replacement, so compare the two skills lists yourself if you studied AZ-204.
Do I need to know machine learning?
Not in the sense of training models. The skills list is about hosting, data, messaging, security, and monitoring around AI applications. You do need to understand what an embedding is and how similarity search uses it.
Does the credential expire?
Microsoft says associate certifications expire annually and can be renewed through a free online assessment on Microsoft Learn. The exam format page has the details.