AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud Certifications: How the Entry-Level Exams Actually Compare

If you're choosing which cloud provider to certify in first, the honest starting point is comparing the actual entry-level exams against each other — not comparing brand reputation or job-listing counts, which change constantly and vary heavily by region and industry. Here's how AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900), and Google Cloud's Cloud Digital Leader actually stack up, pulled directly from each vendor's own certification pages.

The three exams, side by side

	AWS Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02)	Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)	Google Cloud Digital Leader
Price	$100 USD	~$99 USD (varies by region)	$99 USD
Duration	90 minutes	45 minutes	90 minutes
Questions	65 (50 scored, 15 unscored)	Not published by Microsoft	50–60
Prerequisite	None	None	None
Validity	3 years	Does not expire	3 years
Prior technical background required	None	None	None

A genuine difference worth noting: Azure Fundamentals doesn't expire once earned, while both the AWS and Google Cloud equivalents need renewal every three years. Microsoft's own certification page also declines to publish a fixed exam price, stating pricing is "based on the country or region in which the exam is proctored" — the $99 figure widely cited is the commonly reported US price, not a fixed global one, and the same regional variation applies to some degree to all three vendors' local pricing.

They're testing genuinely different things, not the same content with different logos

All three are explicitly built for people with no prior hands-on experience with that platform, but what they emphasise differs:

AWS Cloud Practitioner weights "Cloud Technology and Services" (34%) and "Security and Compliance" (30%) most heavily — it leans toward recognising what individual AWS services do and how the shared responsibility model works.
Azure Fundamentals covers cloud concepts, core Azure services, and Azure management/governance tooling — Microsoft's own description frames it around Azure-specific administration and governance features more than a general cloud-concepts primer.
Google Cloud Digital Leader is explicitly aimed at people who collaborate with technical professionals rather than people heading into a hands-on technical role themselves — Google's own recommended-experience line is "experience collaborating with technical professionals," a noticeably more business-facing framing than the other two.

That last distinction matters if you're choosing based on the role you're aiming for: Cloud Digital Leader is Google's most deliberately non-technical of the three, useful for product, sales, or management roles working alongside GCP engineers rather than becoming one.

So which one should you actually sit first?

If you're not yet committed to a specific cloud provider, the honest answer is: whichever one matches the jobs you're actually applying for, not whichever exam looks easiest on paper — the three are close enough in price, format, and difficulty that none of them offers a meaningful shortcut over the others. Check job listings in your target role and location; if AWS dominates, start there. If your target company or industry runs primarily on Azure or Google Cloud, the same logic applies in reverse.

If you're specifically weighing AWS against the alternatives because you're unsure whether AWS certification is worth pursuing at all: AWS remains the most widely deployed public cloud platform by market share, which is why it tends to have the broadest base of job listings referencing it directly — but that's a market-share observation, not a claim that the AWS exam itself is superior in content or difficulty to its Azure or Google Cloud equivalents.

If AWS is the direction you land on, our guide on choosing your first AWS certification picks up exactly where this comparison leaves off, and our Cloud Practitioner practice question bank is built around the real weighted domains covered above.

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