AZ-204 Retired: AI-200 Study Guide for Azure AI Cloud Developers

Posted on Oct 28 • Originally published at epifive.com

Originally published on EpiFive, where it is kept up to date.

AZ-204, the Azure Developer Associate exam, retired on 31 July 2026. The current intermediate Azure developer exam is AI-200, Developing AI Cloud Solutions on Azure, which earns the Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Cloud Developer Associate certification. Microsoft's pages do not call it a like-for-like replacement, and its outline is different. It is a 120-minute proctored exam with a pass mark of 700, and its outline shifts from general Azure development to containers, vector search in databases, messaging, serverless and observability. This guide compares the two outlines and gives a study plan for AI-200.

This is for developers who searched for an AZ-204 study guide, for people who planned to take AZ-204 and missed the date, and for anyone choosing an intermediate Azure developer certification. At the end you will know what AI-200 measures, how the weights should shape your time, which hands-on tasks to practice, and what to do if you hold AZ-204.

The information comes from Microsoft Learn pages checked on 26 October 2026: the AZ-204 study guide and certification page, the AI-200 certification page and the AI-200 study guide (skills measured as of 7 October 2026). Outlines change, so reread the study guide before you book.

The AZ-204 study guide carries this warning: the exam was retired on 31 July 2026 at 11:59 PM Central Standard Time. The Azure Developer Associate certification page warns that the certification and the renewal assessment are retired. Microsoft's last AZ-204 outline (skills measured as of 14 January 2026) had five areas:

Microsoft's pages do not map AZ-204 holders to AI-200 automatically. If you hold the certification, check your Microsoft Learn transcript for its status, and do not assume a renewal is available.

Microsoft describes the certification as validating your ability to design, build and implement AI solutions on Azure, with a focus on back-end services, scalable architectures and the full development lifecycle. The audience profile says you contribute to all phases of implementing AI solutions on Azure, with emphasis on back-end services and components, and that you should be proficient in:

Microsoft strongly recommends registering with a personal Microsoft account, because records tied to an organizational account are lost if you leave the organization. Associate certifications expire annually and can be renewed with a free online assessment, per Microsoft's study guide.

Microsoft's study guide shows 30-35% for the data management area in its summary list but 25-30% in that area's own heading. The change log notes the percentage of the exam increased for that area. Treat it as the largest area and check the study guide for the final figure.

Practice: write a Dockerfile for a small Python API, push it to a registry, run it on Container Apps, add a scale rule, and deploy the same image to AKS with a manifest.

Practice: store embeddings in Cosmos DB and in PostgreSQL with pgvector, run a similarity query with a metadata filter, and compare indexing choices. For the PostgreSQL side, see pgvector in PostgreSQL: HNSW and IVFFlat tuning, and for reading query plans, PostgreSQL EXPLAIN ANALYZE.

Practice: send messages to a Service Bus topic with two subscriptions, force a message to the dead-letter queue and read it, route a custom Event Grid event with a filter, and build an HTTP-triggered function with a queue output binding.

Practice: keep a secret in Key Vault and read it from an app using a managed identity (the outline's wording for this area names Key Vault and App Configuration, so check the study guide for identity-specific objectives), instrument a service with OpenTelemetry, and write KQL to find failed requests. For KQL practice, see Advanced hunting KQL for identity attacks, which uses the same query language in another product.

This is a comparison of the published outlines only. "Not in the outline" means the skill is not listed in the AI-200 study guide, though Microsoft notes that related topics may be covered.

This plan assumes about six hours a week and some existing experience with Azure and Python.

The outline is written as tasks, so you need a subscription to practice. Set a budget and an alert, use the lowest tiers that support each feature, and delete resource groups when you finish a lab. Some services in the outline, such as AKS and managed databases, can incur cost while idle.

The study guide links to Azure documentation for each service, Microsoft Q&A, the Exam Readiness Zone videos and the exam sandbox. Its "Get trained" link still points at the AZ-204 preparation page, so if a link looks stale, start from the AI-200 certification page instead.

For a later step in the Azure path, see AZ-400 study guide: DevOps Engineer Expert.

This guide was researched and drafted with AI assistance and checked against the vendor documentation listed in its References. Read the maintained version and related guides on EpiFive.