Cloud Certifications Ranked by Difficulty: AWS vs Azure vs Google in 2026
Cloud certifications from the three major providers are not equivalent, and the differences are not always where people expect. Here they are ranked by difficulty within and across providers.
Entry level
1. AZ-900, Azure Fundamentals. The easiest of the three entry exams. Mostly conceptual, generous pass mark, and Microsoft's material is thorough. AZ-900 questions.
2. CLF-C02, AWS Cloud Practitioner. Marginally harder than AZ-900 because AWS has more services and the naming is less intuitive. Still very approachable. CLF-C02 questions.
Google's Cloud Digital Leader sits alongside these and is comparable.
Associate level
3. AZ-104, Azure Administrator. A real step up. Hands-on knowledge required, and the questions assume you have actually used the portal and CLI. Widely requested in job listings. AZ-104 questions.
4. SAA-C03, AWS Solutions Architect Associate. Harder than AZ-104 in our view. The scenario questions are long, and several answers are technically correct with only one being optimal for cost or availability. SAA-C03 questions.
Professional and expert level
5. Google Professional Cloud Architect. Consistently rated among the hardest cloud exams. Case studies, long scenarios, and questions that require business judgement alongside technical knowledge. PCA questions.
6. AZ-305, Azure Solutions Architect Expert. Design-focused rather than implementation-focused, which catches out people who are strong operators but have never made architecture decisions. AZ-305 questions.
7. SAP-C02, AWS Solutions Architect Professional. The hardest of the group. Enormous syllabus, extremely long questions, and a time limit that is genuinely tight. SAP-C02 questions.
Which provider should you certify in?
Not a preference question. Certify in whatever your employer runs, or whatever dominates job listings in your city.
If you genuinely have no constraint, AWS has the largest market share and the most job listings globally. Azure is stronger in enterprises with existing Microsoft agreements, which is a very large number of organisations. Google Cloud is a smaller market but the credentials carry a premium where they are asked for.
The path most people should take
Fundamentals, then associate, then stop and get experience before attempting professional level. The professional exams assume years of hands-on work, and passing one without that experience is both very difficult and less useful than it sounds.
If you are coming from an infrastructure background, Network+ first makes the cloud networking content substantially easier.
All three providers covered, current blueprints, lifetime updates. AWS sets, Microsoft sets, and Google Cloud sets.