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Quick answer
A certification exam is not a course. These are proctored, paid credentials issued by the cloud and platform vendors themselves, and their value is concentrated inside that vendor’s ecosystem. Match the exam to the platform your employer actually runs — a Google Cloud credential is worth little in an AWS shop, and the reverse is equally true. With no platform constraint, the choice is a career decision about which ecosystem you want to work in, not a comparison of exam difficulty.
Where we would start on Udemy
We choose this pick only among our affiliate partners’ courses (365 Data Science, DataCamp and Udemy). Our full ranking also includes courses that earn us nothing.
AWS AI Practitioner is the entry-level exam in the table below, and practice papers are the only preparation that measures readiness rather than effort. Nothing in it helps with the other exams on this page.
Why this course, and its limitations
A practice-question bank for AWS AI Practitioner preparation. We value it as a way to identify gaps after studying the exam topics. Practice results do not guarantee an exam pass, and this is not a full teaching course.
Learning: 2.5/5. Credential: 3.2/5. These are separate editorial judgments, not learner ratings or job-placement statistics.
A certification exam is not a course. This page lists the vendor exams — the proctored, paid credentials issued by the cloud and platform vendors themselves — and compares them on what we can verify from each vendor's own page.
Why these are on a separate page from our rankings. Our main rankings score taught learning programmes on six factors: curriculum currency, completion realism, skill value, employer recognition, cost and value, and salary impact, weighted hardest toward the first two. A vendor exam teaches you nothing — it tests you, charges a fee, and in most cases expires. Scoring the two against each other produces a number that is meaningless in both directions, so we do not. Nothing on this page is ranked. We have verified what each credential is, what it costs and how it is sat; we have not assessed them on our six factors, and we are not going to invent scores to fill a column.
Course or exam: which do you actually need?
Read the job advert. If it names a specific credential — "AWS Certified…", "Microsoft Certified…" — you need the exam, and a Coursera certificate will not substitute. If it asks for skills, a course that leaves you with projects is usually the better use of the same money, and our course rankings cover those.
The two are not rivals. The common sequence is a course to learn the material and build something, then an exam only where an employer or a partner agreement actually requires the badge.
The vendor exams, compared
The table below compares 39 vendor certification exams on vendor, level, fee and exam format. Every figure comes from the vendor's own certification page; where a vendor publishes no figure, the cell says so rather than guessing.
| Credential | Vendor | Level | Fee | Exam format | Enrol |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Certified AI Business Strategist Beta exam. | AWS | Business | 50 USD during the beta; 100 USD standard | Beta: 170 minutes · 85 questions | AWS → |
| AWS Certified AI Practitioner | AWS | Foundational | 100 USD | 90 minutes · 65 questions | AWS → |
| AWS Certified Generative AI Developer - Professional | AWS | Advanced | $300 USD | 180 minutes · 75 questions | AWS → |
| AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer – Associate AWS set 28 September 2026 as the last day to take MLA-C01 in English; MLA-C02 replaces it. | AWS | Intermediate | $150 USD (MLA-C01); $75 USD beta pricing for MLA-C02 | MLA-C01: 130 minutes · 65 questions; MLA-C02 beta: 170 minutes · 85 questions | AWS → |
| Claude Certified Architect – Foundations Open only to people at Claude Partner Network organisations, registered with a company email address. | Anthropic | Foundational | $125 USD before partner-tier discounts | 120 minutes · 60 questions | Anthropic → |
| Claude Certified Architect – Professional Open only to people at Claude Partner Network organisations, registered with a company email address. | Anthropic | Professional | $175 USD before partner-tier discounts | 120 minutes · 63 questions | Anthropic → |
| Claude Certified Associate – Foundations Open only to people at Claude Partner Network organisations, registered with a company email address. | Anthropic | Foundational | $99 USD before partner-tier discounts | 120 minutes · 60 questions | Anthropic → |
| Claude Certified Developer – Foundations Open only to people at Claude Partner Network organisations, registered with a company email address. | Anthropic | Foundational | $125 USD before partner-tier discounts | 120 minutes · 53 questions | Anthropic → |
| CompTIA SecAI+ Launched 17 February 2026; not entry-level, and CompTIA recommends 3–4 years in IT with 2+ in cybersecurity. | CompTIA | Intermediate | $298 USD (US list price for the exam voucher) | 60 minutes · up to 60 questions · Pearson VUE centre or online | CompTIA → |
| Databricks Certified Generative AI Engineer Associate | Databricks | Intermediate | $200 registration fee | 90 minutes · 45 scored questions · valid 2 years | Databricks → |
| Databricks Certified Machine Learning Associate No prerequisite; Databricks recommends 6+ months of hands-on machine learning experience. | Databricks | Intermediate | $200 registration fee | 90 minutes · 48 scored questions · valid 2 years | Databricks → |
| GitHub Certified: Agentic AI Developer Operating and governing AI agents in the software lifecycle, with GitHub as the control plane; Microsoft expects experience with GitHub Copilot, MCP servers and agent customization. | GitHub | Intermediate | $165 USD (varies by country/region) | 120 minutes | GitHub → |
| Generative AI Leader | Google Cloud | Foundational | $99 (plus tax where applicable) | 90 minutes · 50–60 questions · valid 3 years | Google Cloud → |
| Professional Machine Learning Engineer | Google Cloud | Advanced | $200 (plus tax where applicable) | 2 hours · 50–60 questions | Google Cloud → |
| Artificial Intelligence Governance Professional (AIGP) | IAPP | — | $799 USD; $649 for IAPP members | 2.75 hours · 100 questions · Pearson VUE test centre or OnVUE online | IAPP → |
| ISACA Advanced in AI Audit (AAIA) Requires an active CISA, or one of the audit and accounting designations ISACA lists (CIA, CPA and equivalents) with an IT audit or IT advisory focus. | ISACA | Advanced | $599 USD; $459 for ISACA members | 150 minutes · 90 questions · PSI test centre or remote | ISACA → |
| ISACA Advanced in AI Risk (AAIR) Requires an active CISA, CISM, CRISC, CGEIT, CDPSE or one of the outside designations ISACA lists. | ISACA | Advanced | $599 USD; $459 for ISACA members | 150 minutes · 90 questions · PSI test centre or remote | ISACA → |
| ISACA Advanced in AI Security Management (AAISM) Requires an active CISM or CISSP. | ISACA | Advanced | $599 USD; $459 for ISACA members | 150 minutes · 90 questions · PSI test centre or remote | ISACA → |
| LangChain Certified Agent Engineer (LCAE) Open to anyone; valid for 24 months, with one free resit. | LangChain | — | $99 USD | 120 minutes · 40 questions · online, live proctored | LangChain → |
| Microsoft Certified: AI Agent Builder Associate Builds agents in Microsoft Copilot Studio; Microsoft expects familiarity with Power Fx, Dataverse and Power Platform. | Microsoft | Intermediate | $165 USD (varies by country/region) | 120 minutes | Microsoft → |
| Microsoft Certified: AI Business Professional For Microsoft 365 Copilot users; no coding and no prerequisite. | Microsoft | Foundational | $99 USD (varies by country/region) | 45 minutes | Microsoft → |
| Microsoft Certified: AI Transformation Leader For business decision-makers leading AI adoption; no coding, and Microsoft expects change-management experience. | Microsoft | Foundational | $99 USD (varies by country/region) | 45 minutes | Microsoft → |
| Microsoft Certified: Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect Expert Requires an active Microsoft Associate certification from its listed set as well as the AB-100 exam; Microsoft updates the English exam on 14 October 2026. | Microsoft | Advanced | $165 USD (varies by country/region) | English only; duration not published | Microsoft → |
| Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Apps and Agents Developer Associate | Microsoft | Intermediate | $165 USD (varies by country/region) | 120 minutes | Microsoft → |
| Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals | Microsoft | Foundational | $99 USD (varies by country/region) | 45 minutes | Microsoft → |
| Microsoft Certified: Machine Learning Operations Engineer Associate Replaced DP-100 (Azure Data Scientist Associate), which Microsoft retired on 1 June 2026. | Microsoft | Intermediate | $165 USD (varies by country/region) | 120 minutes · English only | Microsoft → |
| NVIDIA-Certified Associate Generative AI LLMs | NVIDIA | Beginner | $125 | 60 minutes · valid 2 years | NVIDIA → |
| NVIDIA-Certified Professional Generative AI LLMs Registration not yet open — the fee and format are the vendor's published figures for the announced exam. | NVIDIA | Intermediate | $200 | 120 minutes · 60–70 questions · valid 2 years | |
| NVIDIA-Certified Professional: Agentic AI (NCP-AAI) For practitioners with hands-on production agentic AI experience; valid for two years. | NVIDIA | Intermediate | $200 | 120 minutes · 60–70 questions · online, remotely proctored | NVIDIA → |
| Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Enterprise AI Professional Labelled NEW by Oracle. | Oracle | Professional | Shown only after you sign in to register | 90 minutes · 50 questions · 68% to pass · online proctored | Oracle → |
| PMI Certified Professional in Managing AI (PMI-CPMAI) Completion of the 21-hour PMI-CPMAI Exam Prep Course is required before you can schedule the exam. | PMI | — | $899 USD; $699 for PMI members — exam and the required prep course together | 160 minutes · 120 questions, 20 of them unscored · Pearson VUE | PMI → |
| SAS Certified Specialist: Forecasting and Optimization Using SAS Viya One of the three exams behind the SAS Certified Professional: AI and Machine Learning credential. | SAS | — | $180 USD | 90 minutes · 50 questions · Pearson VUE test centre or online | SAS → |
| SAS Certified Specialist: Machine Learning Using SAS Viya One of the three exams behind the SAS Certified Professional: AI and Machine Learning credential; holders of SAS Certified Predictive Modeler Using SAS Enterprise Miner (version 7 or higher) do not need to take it. | SAS | — | $180 USD | 90 minutes · 50–55 questions · Pearson VUE test centre or online | SAS → |
| SAS Certified Specialist: Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision Using SAS Viya One of the three exams behind the SAS Certified Professional: AI and Machine Learning credential. | SAS | — | $180 USD | 110 minutes · 60 questions · Pearson VUE test centre or online | SAS → |
| SnowPro Advanced: Data Scientist Requires SnowPro Core certification. | Snowflake | Advanced | $375 USD (20% less for exams delivered in India) | 115 minutes · 65 questions · online proctored or test centre | Snowflake → |
| SnowPro Advanced: MLOps Engineer Requires SnowPro Core certification. | Snowflake | Advanced | $375 USD (20% less for exams delivered in India) | 115 minutes · 65 questions · online proctored or test centre | Snowflake → |
| SnowPro Core Certification No prerequisite. | Snowflake | — | $175 USD (20% less for exams delivered in India) | 115 minutes · 100 questions · online proctored or test centre | Snowflake → |
| SnowPro Specialty: Gen AI No prerequisite; Snowflake's candidate profile is 1+ years of Gen AI work on Snowflake in an enterprise environment. | Snowflake | — | $225 USD (20% less for exams delivered in India) | 85 minutes · 55 questions · online proctored or test centre | Snowflake → |
| SnowPro Specialty: Snowpark | Snowflake | — | $225 USD (20% less for exams delivered in India) | 85 minutes · 55 questions · online proctored or test centre | Snowflake → |
Fees are the vendor's list price before local tax, and several vendors price by region. Renewal is the cost people forget: most of these expire in two or three years, so the real figure is the fee multiplied by however long you intend to keep the credential current.
Not sure this is the right one for you?
Tell the picker about your background and what you want the certificate to do, and it narrows the list to the one or two courses we would start with. It suggests only our affiliate partners’ courses, and says so before it suggests anything.
Try the AI Certification Picker →Exams that no longer exist
These still appear in older guides and job adverts. They cannot be sat.
- Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate — retired. Replaced by Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Apps and Agents Developer Associate (AI-103).
- Exam AI-900: Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals — retired. Replaced by Exam AI-901: Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals, which earns the same Azure AI Fundamentals certification but expects Python and familiarity with REST APIs and SDKs.
- AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty — retired. No replacement named by the vendor; holders stay certified for three years from the date they earned it.
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Scientist Associate — retired. Replaced by Microsoft Certified: Machine Learning Operations Engineer Associate (AI-300).
- TensorFlow Developer Certificate — retired. No replacement named by the vendor.
- Salesforce Certified AI Associate — retired. Replaced by Agentblazer Status, a Trailhead programme recognising AI and Agentforce skills rather than a proctored exam.
How to choose between them
Match the exam to the platform your employer actually runs. A Google Cloud credential is worth little in an AWS shop, and the reverse is equally true — these are vendor credentials and their value is concentrated inside that vendor's ecosystem. If you have no platform constraint, the question becomes which ecosystem you want to work in, which is a career decision rather than a certification one.
Level matters more than brand. A foundational exam aimed at business roles and a professional exam aimed at practitioners are not interchangeable regardless of whose logo is on them.
Ready to start?
Bought once, with what Udemy calls lifetime access. Udemy's price swings between its list price and a sale price, sometimes within days — check it on the day rather than trusting any figure you read, here or anywhere else.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between an AI course and an AI certification exam?
A course teaches you material and issues a completion certificate; anyone who finishes it gets one. A certification exam teaches you nothing — it is a proctored test you pay to sit, and you can fail it. Employers reading a job application treat them differently, which is why a job advert naming a specific vendor credential will not accept a course certificate instead.
Being able to fail is the entire source of the difference. A completion certificate says you got to the end; a proctored pass says somebody watched you demonstrate it without notes, which is a claim the first cannot make at any price. That is also why the two are complements rather than alternatives: take the course to learn the material, sit the exam to certify it.
Are these exams ranked on this page?
No. Our six scoring factors were built for learning programmes and we have not assessed these exams against them. What this page gives you is verified fact — vendor, level, fee and format, taken from each vendor's own certification page — so you can compare like with like. Inventing scores to make it look like a ranking would tell you nothing true.
The factors genuinely do not transfer, which is why this is a refusal rather than a gap. Two of the six are curriculum currency and completion realism — questions about a course's teaching and how many people finish it — and an exam has neither a curriculum nor a completion rate in that sense. Scoring them anyway would produce numbers that look comparable to our course ratings and mean something different.
Do AI certification exams expire?
Most of them do. The NVIDIA and Databricks credentials here are valid two years and Google Cloud's Generative AI Leader three, per each vendor's own page. That recurring cost belongs in the decision: a credential you intend to hold for six years costs several times its sticker price.
Weigh the renewal effort alongside the fee, because they differ more than the prices do. Some vendors renew through a short free online assessment; others require you to sit the current version of the full exam, which is days of preparation every cycle rather than an afternoon. Check which applies before committing to a credential you plan to keep.
Which vendor exam should I take?
The one for the platform your employer runs. These are vendor credentials and their value sits almost entirely inside that vendor's ecosystem, so a Google Cloud certification is worth little in an AWS shop. If nothing constrains you, choose the ecosystem you want to work in and take the entry-level credential there first.
If you genuinely have no constraint, let the local job market choose rather than the global one. Cloud adoption varies sharply by city and sector, and twenty job adverts where you actually intend to work will tell you which ecosystem to enter more reliably than market-share figures — which describe worldwide spending rather than the interviews available to you.