Cost breakdown
AZ-700How much does Microsoft Azure Network Engineer Associate cost?
The AZ-700 exam is $165 and the study material is free. What makes this exam different from every other Azure associate is the lab: Azure networking is the part of the platform you cannot practice for nothing, because VPN gateways, Azure Firewall and Application Gateway bill by the hour whether or not traffic passes through them. Budget $165 plus disciplined lab spend, and up to $465 if you add paid training.
Cost breakdown
| Item | Cost | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Exam voucher | $165 | The published US list price for one attempt at AZ-700. |
| Retake | $165 | A second attempt costs the same as the first. |
| Microsoft Learn study path | $0 | Free, and it is the official material. Nothing you buy replaces it. |
| Azure free account for hands-on practice | $0 | Free tier plus a starting credit. Enough to build and break the services the exam asks about. |
| Microsoft Learn path and practice assessment | $0 | The official preparation. The free practice assessment on the exam page is the best signal available for whether the design questions are landing. |
| Virtual networks, peering, NSGs | $0 | The free half of the curriculum. VNets, subnets, peering, network security groups, route tables and private DNS zones cost nothing to create and nothing to keep, so the core networking domain, at 28 percent the largest, is free to practice. |
| VPN gateway lab time | $1 to $2 per hour | A VPN gateway bills hourly from deployment and takes up to 45 minutes to provision, so the working pattern is one long deliberate session rather than a dozen short ones. Delete the gateway, not just the connection, when you finish. |
| Azure Firewall and Application Gateway | Hourly, and not trivial | Both bill by the hour plus data processed. They are worth one session each to see the rule collections and the routing behavior for real, and they are the single easiest way to run up a bill you did not plan for. |
| ExpressRoute | Not practisable | You cannot lab ExpressRoute meaningfully: it needs a connectivity provider and a real circuit. Study it from the documentation and the reference architectures, and accept that this part of the exam is read rather than built. |
Exam pricing from Microsoft Learn, certifications and exam pricing ↗.
Ways to bring the cost down
Split the curriculum into what is free and what is metered, and do the free part first. VNets, peering, NSGs, route tables and private DNS are free to build and cover the 28 percent core networking domain plus much of private access at 13 percent.
Batch the expensive labs. A VPN gateway takes most of an hour to deploy, so plan one session that stands up a site-to-site connection, works through the routing, and tears the whole resource group down at the end. Three unplanned sessions cost more than one planned one and teach less.
Set a budget alert on the subscription before the first gateway, not after the first bill. This is the exam where lab spend most often exceeds the exam fee, and it is entirely avoidable.
Do not buy a course for the free material. Microsoft Learn covers the curriculum and the practice assessment is free; paid training is worth considering only for ExpressRoute and hub-and-spoke design, which are the parts you cannot build.
Microsoft Learn free training
Every Microsoft exam has a complete free study path on Microsoft Learn, written by the same team that writes the skills outline. This is the single biggest cost reduction available on these exams.
Student pricing
Microsoft sells fundamentals and role-based exams at a reduced student rate to verified students at accredited institutions, everywhere except India and China.
Free renewal
Role-based Microsoft certifications renew for free through an online assessment on Microsoft Learn, so the renewal cost is your time only.
For a good share of candidates somebody else pays this fee. The GI Bill, DoD and employer routes, with the rules each one publishes.
What a retake costs
A retake is another $165, at full price, with no partial credit.
Microsoft's ladder applies: 24 hours before a second attempt, 14 days before the third and each one after, five attempts in twelve months.
Read the score report by skill area before rebooking. On AZ-700 the pattern is usually a candidate who built VNets and never built connectivity: core networking is 28 percent and connectivity services are 23 percent, so half the exam sits in two domains that behave very differently under lab conditions.
If the failure is in application delivery or network security, both 18 percent, the fix is cheap: Load Balancer, Application Gateway, Front Door and Azure Firewall can each be stood up, examined and deleted inside an evening. If the failure is in ExpressRoute, the fix is reading, because there is no lab to run.
Retake pricing from Microsoft Learn, certifications and exam pricing ↗.
What renewal costs across the full cycle
AZ-700 is valid for one year and renewal is free, through an unproctored online assessment on Microsoft Learn that opens six months before expiry.
The renewal assessment tracks the current skills outline, which on Azure networking is worth having: the service set moves, and Virtual WAN and Front Door have both changed shape since this exam launched.
Let it lapse and there is no renewal path. Recovery means $165 and the full proctored exam again, so the calendar entry is the cheapest insurance available.
After the exam, the running cost is $0 and an hour a year. Nothing to log, no units to accumulate, no annual fee.
Typical preparation budget
Preparation for Azure Network Engineer can genuinely cost nothing. The realistic range people spend is $0 to $300, and the top of that range buys convenience rather than a better chance of passing.
Our questions, explanations, and cheat sheets are free, and the explanation is never paywalled. That is the part of a paid practice set you are actually buying, so it is the part we do not charge for.
The cheapest way to avoid the $165 line on this page is to be ready before you book. Free Azure Network Engineer practice questions with a full explanation on every answer.
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