Cost breakdown
MD-102How much does Microsoft 365 Certified: Endpoint Administrator Associate cost?
The MD-102 exam is $165, the Microsoft Learn path is free, and a lab tenant is the only other cost worth planning for. Budget $165 for a self-studied first attempt in a developer or trial tenant, and up to $465 if you add paid training and a few months of Intune and Windows 365 licenses to practice the parts a trial does not cover.
Cost breakdown
| Item | Cost | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Exam voucher | $165 | The published US list price for one attempt at MD-102. |
| 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, and the free practice assessment is linked from the study guide. MD-102 is a portal exam: many questions turn on which blade, which profile type and which policy platform, and the assessment surfaces where your habits differ from the documented route. |
| Lab tenant | $0 to trial | Intune is not usable without a tenant. Microsoft 365 trials include Intune, and a developer or trial tenant is enough for enrolment, compliance, configuration profiles, app deployment and update rings. Autopilot needs a device or virtual machine with a hardware hash you can register. |
| Intune Suite and Windows 365 | Licensed, and optional | Endpoint Privilege Management, Remote Help, Cloud PKI, Tunnel for MAM and Advanced Analytics are a named objective group, and Cloud PC provisioning sits in the largest skill area. A short paid period covers them; the rest of the curriculum does not need either. |
| Test devices | $0 if you already own them | A Windows 11 virtual machine covers most of it. The mobile enrolment objectives are easier to understand having enrolled one personal Android or iOS device once, then removed it. |
| Paid training | $0 to $300 | Optional. Most useful for the security objectives, where Defender for Endpoint integration, attack surface reduction and App Control policies are hard to reason about without having watched one land on a device. |
Exam pricing from Microsoft Learn, certifications and exam pricing ↗.
Ways to bring the cost down
Use a trial tenant and let it do the work. Enrolment, compliance, Conditional Access, configuration profiles, Win32 app packaging and update rings are all inside a standard Microsoft 365 trial, and between them they cover most of the exam.
Buy the add-ons for a month, not a year. The Intune Suite and Windows 365 objectives are a minority of the exam and a single billing period is enough to see each feature configured once, which is what the questions ask about.
Practice Autopilot on a virtual machine. Export the hardware hash, register it, watch the Enrollment Status Page run, and reset it. The deployment modes and their differences are asked about far more often than any hardware detail.
Do not pay for the free material. The Learn path covers the study guide and the practice assessment costs nothing. If you buy anything, buy it for the security domain.
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, with no reduced rate and nothing carried over from the first attempt.
Microsoft's ladder applies: 24 hours after a first failure, 14 days before the third and each later attempt, and five attempts in twelve months.
Read the score report against the five skill areas. Manage and maintain devices is the largest at 25 to 30 percent, so a short bar there is worth more study time than a short bar under the 10 to 15 percent optimization area, and the report is the only way to know which you have.
The July 2026 revision added a whole skill area, optimizing endpoint operations with automation, monitoring and reporting, and moved weight into preparing infrastructure. A candidate who failed on older material should re-read the current study guide before booking again, because the shape of the exam changed.
Retake pricing from Microsoft Learn, certifications and exam pricing ↗.
What renewal costs across the full cycle
MD-102 is valid for one year and renews free through the online assessment on Microsoft Learn, with the window opening six months before expiry.
The assessment tracks the current study guide, which is worth having on a product where the admin center and the policy platforms are reorganised regularly.
A lapsed certification cannot be renewed; recovery means $165 and the full proctored exam again.
Running cost after the exam is $0 and an hour a year, with no maintenance fee and nothing to log.
Cycle length: 1 year. Microsoft associate certifications expire annually and are renewed at no cost by passing a free online assessment on Microsoft Learn.
Typical preparation budget
Preparation runs $165 to $600 for most candidates.
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 MD-102 Endpoint Administrator practice questions with a full explanation on every answer.
Keep reading
- MD-102 Endpoint Administrator practice questions
Free sample questions with the full explanation on every answer.
- Free MD-102 Endpoint Administrator practice test
10 original questions, playable now. No account, no card.
- MD-102 Endpoint Administrator exam objectives
The full official blueprint, with practice pages on covered objectives.
- MD-102 Endpoint Administrator exam format
How many questions, how long, what the items look like, and how long it stays valid.
- MD-102 Endpoint Administrator passing score
The exact cut score, what kind of number it is, and the retake terms.
- How hard is MD-102 Endpoint Administrator?
An honest difficulty read from the format, the clock and the weights.
- MD-102 Endpoint Administrator guide
Who it is for, study plans by experience level, and whether it is worth it.
Practice MD-102 Endpoint Administrator for free while you decide
Original questions written from the published objectives, with the concept, the reasoning, and a note on every wrong option. No account needed to start.
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