AZ-305 Study Guide 2026 — Azure Solutions Architect Expert

The AZ-305 is the one exam standing between an Azure administrator and the Azure Solutions Architect Expert credential — Microsoft's recognized senior-architect badge for its cloud platform. It is the deliberate step up from AZ-104: you stop operating Azure and start designing it.

Here's the part that trips people up. AZ-305 is a design exam, not a hands-on config exam. You won't be spinning up a VM or writing a policy in a live portal. You'll be handed a business scenario and asked which Azure service — and which architecture — best meets the constraints. This guide covers what's tested, the decision trees that show up over and over, and a study plan that works around a full-time job.

What AZ-305 actually is

AZ-305 measures your ability to translate business requirements into secure, scalable Azure designs. That spans identity, governance, monitoring, data storage, business continuity, compute, and networking, all aligned to Microsoft's Azure Well-Architected Framework and Cloud Adoption Framework.

The mental shift matters. An AZ-104 question asks how do you configure X. An AZ-305 question asks given these requirements — lowest cost, minimal administrative effort, a 99.99% SLA — which design do you recommend. Same services, higher altitude.

Who takes it: practicing and aspiring Azure solution architects, senior cloud engineers moving up from operating Azure, and consultants or cloud leads who own architecture decisions. It's the capstone of Microsoft's Azure infrastructure track.

Exam structure

• ~40–60 questions, ~100–120 minutes
• Passing score: 700 on a 1–1000 scale (a scaled score, not a raw percentage)
• Cost: ~$165 USD
• Format mixes long case studies with multiple-choice, multi-select, and drag-and-drop items
• Skills measured were updated in April 2026 — the biggest refresh in years

The case studies are the defining feature. You get a multi-page scenario — a company, its current estate, its goals and constraints — then a cluster of questions that all reference it. This is a design exam wearing case-study clothing, and it's the single biggest reason candidates run out of time. More on that below.

If you're wondering whether the exam is being retired: it is not. AZ-305 is the consolidation — the old AZ-303 and AZ-304 pair was merged into this single exam back in 2022, and the April 2026 update signals Microsoft is investing in it, not sunsetting it.

The four domains

Skills measured, updated April 2026. Weights are published as ranges:

Infrastructure is the largest slice. If you over-invest anywhere, invest there — but note that infrastructure and identity/governance together make up more than half the exam, so those two domains decide your result.

Here's what lives in each.

Design infrastructure solutions (30–35%)

The compute-and-network core:

• Compute: VMs, AKS and Container Apps, Azure Functions — and knowing which fits (long-running vs container-orchestrated vs event-driven serverless)
• Messaging: Service Bus, Event Grid, Event Hubs — enterprise messaging vs event routing vs high-throughput streaming
• API Management (APIM) as the front door for APIs
• Networking: VNets, ExpressRoute vs VPN, load balancing and routing, network security
• Cloud Adoption Framework and Azure Migrate for landing-zone and migration design

Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions (25–30%)

• Monitoring: Azure Monitor and Log Analytics
• Identity: Microsoft Entra ID, managed identities, RBAC, Key Vault
• Governance hierarchy: management groups → subscriptions → resource groups, plus Azure Policy and tagging

Design data storage solutions (20–25%)

• Azure SQL Database and SQL Managed Instance
• Cosmos DB for globally distributed document data
• Blob storage tiers
• Data Factory and Synapse for movement and analytics

Design business continuity solutions (15–20%)

• Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery
• RPO/RTO requirements mapping
• Availability zones vs availability sets, geo-redundancy, and region pairs

The highest-yield material: "which service, and why"

The AZ-305 rewards decision trees, not trivia. If you can look at a set of constraints and name the right service with a one-line reason, you'll clear most of the exam. Drill these four until they're reflexive.

Load balancing — by scope and layer

This is the single most testable decision tree. Memorize the ladder:

• Traffic Manager — global, DNS-based routing
• Front Door — global, Layer 7 (HTTP/S)
• Application Gateway — regional, Layer 7
• Azure Load Balancer — regional, Layer 4

Memory aid: "Global-L7 → Regional-L4." Front Door sits at the top (global, L7), Application Gateway in the middle (regional, L7), Load Balancer at the bottom (regional, L4), with Traffic Manager off to the side doing DNS at global scope. The question keywords are global vs regional and which layer — read for those.

Storage matrix — pick the data shape first

Match the data shape to the service:

• Relational → Azure SQL (Database vs Managed Instance: Managed Instance when you need near-full SQL Server compatibility / instance-level features)
• Document / globally distributed → Cosmos DB
• Files and objects → Blob (then pick the tier by access frequency)
• Cheap, high-volume logs → Table

Memory aid: "Relational → SQL, Document → Cosmos, Files/objects → Blob, Cheap logs → Table."

Business continuity — requirements → RPO/RTO → service

Work it in order. Read the scenario for two numbers — how much data can be lost, and how long the system can be down — then choose:

• RPO = the data you can afford to lose (Recovery Point Objective)
• RTO = the time you can afford to be down (Recovery Time Objective)
• Then map to the tool: Azure Backup for point-in-time restore, Site Recovery for failover/replication, geo-redundant replicas for regional resilience
• And pick the resilience tier: availability zones (protect against datacenter failure within a region) vs availability sets (protect against rack/hardware failure) vs region pairs (protect against regional failure)

Memory aid: "RPO = data you can lose, RTO = time you can be down."

Governance vs security — two different questions

These get confused constantly:

• Azure Policy = compliance and guardrails — what is allowed to exist (allowed regions, required tags, permitted SKUs)
• RBAC = who can do what — identity and permissions

If the scenario is about enforcing standards across subscriptions, it's Policy. If it's about granting a team access to a resource group, it's RBAC.

Study plan

Assumes you already have hands-on Azure experience (see the prerequisite note below) and can put in ~8–10 hours a week.

Weeks 1–2: Infrastructure (the heaviest domain)

Compute choices (VM vs AKS vs Container Apps vs Functions), the messaging trio, APIM, and the full networking picture including ExpressRoute vs VPN and the load-balancing ladder. Build the load-balancing decision tree from memory until you can reproduce it on a blank page.

Week 3: Identity, governance, and monitoring

Entra ID, managed identities, RBAC, Key Vault, the management-group hierarchy, Azure Policy vs RBAC, and Azure Monitor / Log Analytics. Nail the Policy-vs-RBAC distinction.

Week 4: Data storage

Walk the storage matrix. Drill SQL Database vs Managed Instance vs Cosmos DB vs Blob vs Table until a one-line requirement maps instantly to a service.

Week 5: Business continuity + Well-Architected / Cloud Adoption Frameworks

RPO/RTO mapping, Backup vs Site Recovery, zones vs sets vs region pairs. Then zoom out: reread the five pillars of the Well-Architected Framework, because case-study questions are graded against exactly that lens.

Week 6: Case-study practice and timed review

This week is about the format, not new content. Do full case studies under a clock. Practice reading a scenario, extracting the constraint keywords, and committing to the best answer fast. Aim to leave the last third of your time for the case studies.

Frequently asked questions

How much does the AZ-305 cost in 2026?

About $165 USD. Renewal is separate — and free (see below).

What's the passing score?

700 on a 1–1000 scale. It's a scaled score, so it doesn't map cleanly to "X questions right" — treat 700 as the bar and aim comfortably above it in practice.

Do I need AZ-104 first?

Yes — with a nuance. AZ-305 is an Expert certification, and Microsoft only awards the Azure Solutions Architect Expert credential once you also hold the Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104). You can sit and pass AZ-305 without AZ-104, but the Expert cert isn't granted until AZ-104 is in hand. Most candidates take AZ-104 first for a reason: the AZ-305 design questions assume you already know how these services behave in practice.

Does the certification expire?

It expires annually, but renewal is free via a short online assessment on Microsoft Learn — no re-sitting the full proctored exam. Keep an eye on your renewal window in the six months before expiration.

Is AZ-305 being retired?

No. It's the consolidation of the retired AZ-303/AZ-304 exams, and it just received its biggest update in years in April 2026.

How hard is it, honestly?

Design-heavy and time-pressured. We break down the difficulty, the hardest topics, and the failure points in How Hard Is the AZ-305 Exam?. The official skills outline lives on Microsoft Learn under Azure Solutions Architect Expert — always confirm current weights there before your exam.

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Test yourself. Run 30 free AZ-305 practice questions — no card, no email-trap — and see whether your service decision trees hold up under scenario pressure.