AZ-204 vs AZ-104: AZ-204 is retired — what to take instead

If you came here to pick between the two, the pick has been made for you. Exam AZ-204 retired on 31 July 2026, and the Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate certification retired with it. One side of this comparison no longer exists. What is left is still worth reading, because the split underneath it — operate the platform, or build software on it — is a real fork in a career, and only one side of it now has an exam behind it.

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The notice is on Microsoft Learn in two places. The AZ-204 study guide says: “This exam was retired on July 31, 2026, at 11:59 PM Central Standard Time.” The Azure Developer Associate certification page says: “This certification and the renewal assessment are retired.” Both statements are current as of this update. There is no grace window and no late sitting.

Why the comparison broke

For years these were siblings on the same rung: AZ-104 for the people who run Azure, AZ-204 for the people who build on it, neither one a prerequisite for the other. The advice was to pick by the job you wanted. That advice is now half-obsolete, and the half that broke is the developer half. Microsoft retires certifications for three stated reasons — relevancy, product alignment, and a change in how a credential is earned — and the renewal FAQ lists all three. It does not say which one applied here, and neither will this page.

The job split is still real. The exam that used to prove one side of it is not.

Which job, and which live exam proves it

Reframe the question. Stop asking which exam to sit and ask which seat you want, then check what is still bookable for that seat.

• Administrator or cloud engineer — you run the platform. AZ-104 is live and is the exam most infrastructure listings name. It covers Microsoft Entra identity and governance, storage, compute, virtual networking, and monitoring and backup, weighted across five areas on the current skills list dated 17 April 2026. It does not assume you can code. This is the route the bootcamp is built around.
• DevOps engineer — you move code into production and keep it observable. AZ-400 is live: source control strategy, build and release pipelines, security and compliance, and instrumentation. It is an expert-tier exam and it has a prerequisite, covered below.
• Azure developer — you write the applications. There is no live exam for this. The path people used is closed, and the honest instruction is to stop shopping for a badge and build the portfolio instead. The App Service, Functions and container work is still the work; it just has to speak for itself in an interview now.

If you already hold AZ-204

Your certification did not vanish when the exam did. Microsoft’s credential expiration policy states that when a credential is retired it “will remain in the Active section of your transcript until it expires,” and role-based associate certifications are valid for one year from the date you complete the requirements. So it is still yours, still verifiable, and still fine on a résumé while it is active.

Two things follow, and both are worth knowing early. First, the renewal assessment is retired, so the free annual renewal that keeps other certifications alive is not available for this one. Second, the standard remedy for an expired certification — earn it again by passing the required exam — does not apply, because the exam no longer exists. Before you write it off, open your certifications in your Microsoft Learn profile and look for a renew button, because the same renewal FAQ says learners holding a retired certification receive a direct email from Microsoft “along with guidance on how long the renewal assessment will be available” — the window can be shorter than a normal one, and it can close before the certification does. If there is no renew button, plan for the credential to lapse and for the skills to have to speak for themselves: take the badge you already have and pair it with two or three things you built and can explain line by line.

If you want an active Azure credential going forward, AZ-104 is the nearest live exam, and AZ-400 is the one that most closely rewards a developer background — Microsoft says a DevOps engineer needs experience both administering and developing in Azure, with strong skills in at least one of the two.

What this does to the AZ-400 path

The DevOps Engineer Expert page still says you must earn at least one of Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate or Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate before AZ-400. Read that carefully: both are still listed, but only one of them can still be earned. For anyone starting now, the route into AZ-400 runs through AZ-104 — the full leap is in AZ-104 to AZ-400. Administrators aiming at design rather than delivery take the other fork, AZ-104 to AZ-305, toward Solutions Architect. If you hold an AZ-204 that is still active, it still shows as a satisfied prerequisite; what Microsoft has not published is how an expired and retired prerequisite is treated, so if AZ-400 is your plan, do not sit on it.

The honest gap: a cert still needs something behind it

This is the part the retirement makes unavoidable. A certificate proves you can pass a test, not that you can do the job — and a whole category of Azure work has just lost its test without losing any of its demand. A hiring manager reading AZ-104 wants to see a virtual network you actually built and can explain. A hiring manager interviewing an Azure developer no longer has a badge to read at all, which means the repository, the deployed app and the walkthrough are the entire case. If you are weighing which credential does the most for employability now, which Azure certifications actually get you hired goes deeper, and the complete Azure certification path lays out every tier that is still standing. And if the question underneath all of this is whether you are an operations person or a developer, cloud engineer vs software engineer is the note to read next.

Questions people also ask

Should I take AZ-104 or AZ-204 in 2026?

There is no longer a choice to make. Exam AZ-204 retired on 31 July 2026, and the Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate certification retired with it, so AZ-104 is the only one of the two you can still sit. If you are aiming at a cloud engineer, Azure administrator or cloud operations job, AZ-104 was already the cert those listings ask for, and it is current — its skills list was last updated on 17 April 2026. If you are aiming at DevOps, AZ-400 is live and sits one tier above.

Is AZ-204 retired?

Yes. The study guide on Microsoft Learn carries the notice: “This exam was retired on July 31, 2026, at 11:59 PM Central Standard Time.” The certification page for Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate carries its own notice: “This certification and the renewal assessment are retired.” You cannot book the exam and you cannot earn the certification.

What replaced AZ-204?

Nothing that Microsoft has published as a direct replacement. There is no successor developer exam named on the Azure Developer Associate page or on the AZ-204 study guide, and the honest position is that the developer skills AZ-204 measured — App Service, Functions, containers, Cosmos DB and Blob Storage from code, Key Vault and managed identities, API Management, Event Grid, Event Hubs, Service Bus and Queue Storage — currently have no Azure certification that covers them as a set. Treat anyone who names a replacement exam as guessing until it appears on learn.microsoft.com.

I already passed AZ-204. Is my certification still valid?

For as long as it has left to run, yes. Microsoft's credential expiration policy states that a retired credential “will remain in the Active section of your transcript until it expires.” Role-based associate certifications are valid for one year from the date you earned them. The difference now is that the renewal assessment is retired too, so you cannot extend it the usual way, and once it expires the normal remedy — pass the exam again — is closed, because the exam is gone. Before you assume the door is shut, check your certifications in your Microsoft Learn profile for a renew button: the renewal FAQ says learners who hold a retired certification get a direct email from Microsoft “along with guidance on how long the renewal assessment will be available.” Keep it on your résumé while it is active, and put the projects it stood for next to it.

Which exam proves Azure developer skills now?

None of them, and it is better to say so than to point you at a substitute that does not fit. AZ-104 proves you can operate Azure, not that you can build on it. AZ-400 proves delivery — pipelines, source control, release and instrumentation — not application development. If your work is writing code that runs on Azure, the proof now has to come from the work itself: a repository, a deployed app, and the ability to walk an interviewer through the decisions in it.

Does AZ-104 still count as the prerequisite for AZ-400?

Yes. The DevOps Engineer Expert page still states that you must earn at least one of Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate or Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate. With the developer certification retired, AZ-104 is the only one of the two that a new candidate can earn, which makes it the practical route into AZ-400.