AI-901 Exam Guide: Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals Explained (2026)

AI-901 is the exam for the Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals certification. It's aimed at people at the start of a career in AI solution development, and it's one of the best first certifications if you want to work with generative AI and agents on Azure.

This guide explains what the exam covers, how it's weighted, what's different from the older AI-900 material, and gives you a study plan. Every other lesson in this free course maps to one part of the official skills outline.

AI-901 at a glance

Price depends on the country where you take the exam, so check the price on the official exam page when you book. Microsoft also offers a free practice assessment and an exam sandbox that shows you the exam interface.

The two skill areas

The exam has just two sections, and the second one is larger:

1. Identify AI concepts and capabilities (40–45%)
   • Principles of responsible AI
   • AI model components and configurations: how generative AI works, choosing a model, deployment options and parameters
   • AI workloads: generative and agentic AI, text analysis, speech, computer vision and information extraction
2. Implement AI solutions by using Microsoft Foundry (55–60%)
   • Generative AI apps and agents: prompts, the Foundry portal, a chat client with the Foundry SDK, a single agent and a client app for it
   • Text and speech: text analysis apps, spoken prompts with a multimodal model, and Azure Speech
   • Computer vision and image generation: visual input in prompts, generating images, and a vision app
   • Information extraction with Azure Content Understanding: documents, forms, images, audio and video

That second section is the big change. You're not just asked to describe AI workloads: you need to recognise how to build small solutions with Microsoft Foundry.

How AI-901 differs from AI-900

If you've seen older AI-900 courses, expect three differences:

• Much more generative AI and agents. Older material spent a lot of time on classic machine learning, such as regression, classification and clustering. AI-901 focuses on large language models, prompts, agents and multimodal models.
• Hands-on Foundry skills. Many objectives start with "Build a lightweight application" or "Create and test". Questions can show short Python snippets and ask what they do or what's missing.
• Content Understanding. Information extraction from documents, images, audio and video now has its own skill group.

The audience profile says you should know Python syntax and be familiar with Azure resources. You don't have to be a developer, but you should be comfortable reading code like this:

response = openai.responses.create(model="gpt-5-mini", input="Summarize this email")
print(response.output_text)

What kind of questions to expect

Fundamentals exams usually mix:

• Scenario questions: "A company wants to … Which workload should it use?"
• Multiple choice and multiple answer questions about concepts and services.
• Drag and drop / matching: for example, matching responsible AI principles to examples.
• Code completion: choose the missing class, method or parameter in a short snippet.

Microsoft notes that most questions cover features that are generally available, but commonly used preview features can appear, and you should be familiar with REST APIs, SDKs and CLIs.

A 3-week study plan

You can pass with about an hour a day. Here's a plan that follows this course:

Week 1: concepts (40–45%)

• Day 1: this guide, then responsible AI
• Day 2–3: how generative AI works
• Day 4: choosing and deploying models
• Day 5–6: AI workloads
• Day 7: retake the lesson quizzes and note anything you got wrong

Week 2: building with Foundry (55–60%)

• Day 8: prompt engineering
• Day 9: deploy a model in the portal (do it for real with a free Azure account if you can)
• Day 10: chat app with the Foundry SDK
• Day 11: build an agent
• Day 12: text analysis
• Day 13: speech
• Day 14: vision and image generation

Week 3: extraction, revision and practice

• Day 15: Content Understanding
• Day 16: the cheat sheet
• Day 17–20: the AI-901 practice test, then Microsoft's free practice assessment
• Day 21: book the exam once you're scoring 80% or more consistently

Tips that make a real difference

• Get hands-on. Even 30 minutes in the Foundry portal, deploying a model and creating an agent, makes the implementation questions far easier.
• Learn the vocabulary precisely. Many questions turn on one word: recognition vs synthesis, classification vs detection, extractive vs abstractive.
• Read the scenario's constraint. "Lowest cost", "data must stay in the EU", "no code" or "guaranteed throughput" usually decides the answer.
• Check the study guide before you book. Microsoft updates exams periodically, and the study guide lists what changed.

Is AI-901 worth it?

It's a low-cost, beginner-friendly way to prove you understand modern AI and can build with Microsoft's platform. Fundamentals certifications don't expire, and the skills lead directly into engineer-level certifications. If you work in IT, data, development, sales or project management around AI, it's a strong first step.

Ready? Start with the AI-901 course outline, which tracks your progress as you go.

XUtilHub is independent and isn't affiliated with Microsoft. Always check the official exam page and study guide for the latest details.