How much do cloud certifications cost?
Cloud certification exam fees vary by vendor and level — at the time of writing, AWS charges around US$100 for its foundational exam, around US$150 for associate-level exams and around US$300 for professional and specialty exams, while Azure, Google Cloud and the vendor-neutral certifications each set their own prices, so always check the official page for current figures before you book. Our AWS-specific cost guide covers that vendor’s fee schedule and voucher system in full detail; this article gives the honest cross-vendor picture, plus the costs that sit around the exam fee that a simple price list never shows.
AWS pricing, for reference
AWS prices its exams by tier rather than individually, and at current AWS pricing — always confirm the exact figure in your AWS Certification Account, since fees are quoted before local tax and can vary by region and change over time — the rough shape is: foundational exams (Cloud Practitioner) around US$100; associate exams (Solutions Architect, Developer, CloudOps Engineer) around US$150; and professional and specialty exams around US$300. Our dedicated guide on how much an AWS certification costs covers this in full, including retake fees and AWS’s 50% discount voucher on passing.
Azure, Google Cloud and the vendor-neutral exams
Microsoft prices Azure certifications separately from AWS, and fees vary by region — Microsoft Learn is the authoritative source for the current figure for any given exam, and is worth checking before you budget rather than trusting a number printed elsewhere. Microsoft also runs its own periodic promotions and free-exam initiatives from time to time; check Microsoft Learn for whether one is currently running rather than assuming it applies.
Google Cloud sets its own certification fees too, listed on Google Cloud’s official certification page — again check there directly, since we deliberately are not reproducing a number here that could be stale by the time you read it. The vendor-neutral certifications each have their own pricing as well: the Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate (KCNA) is priced by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, HashiCorp’s Terraform Associate certification is priced by HashiCorp, and ISC2’s Certified in Cybersecurity (CC) is priced by ISC2 — each publishes current pricing on its own certification site, and ISC2 in particular has run free-exam initiatives in the past, so it is worth checking for current offers before assuming the list price applies.
Why we won’t print exact non-AWS figures
You may notice this article is precise about AWS pricing and deliberately vague about everyone else’s. That is intentional, not an oversight: exam fees change, vary by region, and are sometimes subject to time-limited promotions, so a specific number printed in a blog post is a liability the moment it goes stale — and it goes stale faster than most articles get updated. The one reliable source for any vendor’s current fee is that vendor’s own certification page, checked at the time you actually book. Treat any third-party article — including AWS-specific ones like our own — as a useful order-of-magnitude guide, and the vendor’s page as the number that actually matters.
The true cost is more than the exam fee
Whatever the exam fee turns out to be, it is rarely the whole budget. Study materials are the other major line, and the honest news is that a great deal of it is genuinely free — provider-run training such as AWS Skill Builder and Microsoft Learn covers a large share of most syllabuses at no cost, and free-tier accounts give you a real environment to practise in without spending anything. Paid courses and practice-exam subscriptions exist and can be worth it for some people, but treat them as optional extras to fill a specific gap, not a mandatory purchase.
The two costs people consistently underestimate are retakes and time. A failed attempt usually means paying the exam fee again, on every vendor we cover here — so booking only once your practice scores are consistently strong is the cheapest strategy, not the slowest one. And your own study time is a real cost even though it has no line item, which is worth acknowledging honestly when you plan how long a certification path will actually take.
Ways to reduce the cost
A few genuine ways to bring the total down, all worth checking rather than assuming: AWS’s benefit of a 50% discount voucher after passing an exam, redeemable on your next one — see our AWS cost guide for the detail and its caveats; leaning on free official study resources before paying for anything, since Skill Builder, Microsoft Learn and SaveMyCert’s own free revision library between them cover most beginner-to-associate content; and watching for the periodic free-exam or discounted-exam initiatives that vendors including ISC2 and Microsoft have run in the past — these are not permanent, so confirm one is actually live before counting on it rather than assuming last year’s promotion still applies.
Original practice questions, timed mock exams and revision notes. No card, nothing to pay.