Is AZ-104 Hard? An Honest Difficulty Check

The short version

AZ-104 is harder than a fundamentals exam, and most of the difficulty comes from breadth and detail, not from any single deep topic. Microsoft lists it at intermediate level. If you have worked in Azure, it feels like a fair test of daily work. If you have only read about Azure, it can feel like a wall of near-identical options. Nobody can promise an outcome, but you can measure your readiness.

What makes it hard

Breadth. Five domains cover identity, governance, storage, virtual machines, containers, App Service, networking, monitoring, and backup. Each has its own vocabulary and its own limits. You cannot be strong in one corner and skip the rest.

Hands-on expectations. Microsoft expects experience with the portal, Azure CLI, PowerShell, and templates or Bicep. Questions describe a task and ask what you would configure. People who learned from videos alone often recognize the terms but freeze when a scenario asks them to choose.

Neighbouring features. Many answers are real features that fit a different scenario. Service endpoints and private endpoints, a Recovery Services vault and a Backup vault, account SAS and user delegation SAS: all of these are right somewhere and wrong in the question you are reading. One short phrase in the stem usually decides it.

Time pressure. You have 100 minutes. Microsoft does not publish the question count for this exam, so you cannot pace by a fixed number. Microsoft Learn is open during the exam, but the clock keeps running while you look things up.

Interactive formats. The exam may include interactive components, and Microsoft says labs can appear or be removed at any time. You do not control that, which is why practicing with the exam sandbox helps.

Who tends to find it easier

  • People who administer Azure at work and touch several of the five areas each month.
  • Network and systems administrators who already understand subnets, routing, DNS, and virtual machines, and are learning how Azure names them.
  • Anyone who has deployed with Bicep or ARM templates and read the errors.
  • People who have built a small environment in a personal account and broken it on purpose.

Who tends to find it harder

  • Newcomers to cloud who have not yet worked with virtual networking. Networking is where many people lose points.
  • Developers who deploy to App Service all day but never touch storage firewalls, NSGs, or backup.
  • People who read the study guide once and rely on memory without building anything.
  • People whose experience is mostly on another cloud and who have not yet learned Azure’s names, scopes, and defaults.

Common reasons people fall short

  1. Too little hands-on practice. Reading about a private endpoint is not the same as setting up its DNS.
  2. Skipping a domain. With five domains, an area you ignore will cost points, and Microsoft’s score report only shows a bar per skill area, not the missed questions.
  3. Missing the deciding word. Phrases such as “least privilege”, “without changing the application”, or “from the secondary region” decide the answer. Underline them as you read.
  4. Weak time management. Spending ten minutes in Learn on one question leaves too little for the rest.
  5. Old material. The outline changed in April 2026. Microsoft marks the changes as minor, but notes from before that date may not match the current bullets.

How to judge your readiness

A passing score on the real exam is 700 on a scaled range, and a scaled score is not 70 percent of the questions. That is why a simple percentage on a practice test is only a signal.

  • Take practice sets under timed conditions, without notes.
  • Aim for scores that are consistently comfortably above your target, not one good run. Our sets use a pass mark of 80 percent, and 85 percent on the last one, as a deliberate margin.
  • Check by domain. If one domain stays far below the others, fix it before booking.
  • Review every explanation, including right answers. A lucky guess is a gap in disguise.
  • Check yourself on the details in the skills outline: can you do each bullet in a portal or a shell without a guide?
  • If you are close but unsure, a few more hands-on days usually do more than another full read of the notes.

If you do not pass on the first try, Microsoft’s rules allow a retake after 24 hours, then after 14 days between later attempts. Use the score report’s bar chart to pick what to fix.

More guides for AZ-104

Next step

Match your weakest areas against the prerequisites self-check, then plan your time with the study plan. When you want to measure yourself, start with the first of our AZ-104 practice tests as a cold baseline.

Frequently asked questions

Is AZ-104 harder than AZ-900?

Yes. AZ-900 is a fundamentals exam that tests concepts. AZ-104 expects you to configure and troubleshoot, and it has a longer time limit for good reason.

Can I pass without work experience?

Some people do, but it takes more lab time. A personal Azure account lets you build most of what the exam covers.

Try the AZ-104 practice exams