As of October 3, 2026, the five AI platform vendors compared here offer at least 15 credentials between them, from free course badges to a $300 professional exam. They are not the same kind of thing. The cloud providers sell open, proctored exams with published prices. Anthropic’s proctored exams are open only to members of its partner network, and OpenAI’s open courses lead to badges that OpenAI says are not certifications.
- 01Two different productsA proctored exam tests you under supervision. A course badge records that you finished a course and passed its quiz.
- 02Cloud exams are openGoogle, Microsoft and AWS sell open exams; published prices run from $75 (an AWS beta) to $300.
- 03The labs gate theirsClaude exams are for partner firms; OpenAI’s credential app is invite-only for Enterprise and Edu.
- 04Check the versionMicrosoft retired its Azure AI Engineer exam and AWS is moving its ML Engineer exam to a new version.
01 — ContextExams versus course badges
“AI certification” covers two kinds of credential, and employers weigh them differently. One is a supervised exam that checks your identity and tests you under time pressure. The other is a badge for finishing a course and passing a short online quiz. Both have value; only the first is evidence that someone could not simply look the answers up.
Proctored certification
Booked through a testing provider, identity-checked and supervised online or at a test centre. Usually paid, often time-limited.
Course completion badge
Free courses with a quiz at the end. Shareable and verifiable, but not supervised, and the vendors do not present them as certifications.
02 — The dataAll 15 credentials compared
Prices are US list prices before tax where the vendor publishes one. Microsoft sets exam prices by the country in which the exam is taken; its exam pages show the price for the visitor’s country, which from the US was $99 for AI-901 and $165 for AI-103 and AB-100.
| Credential | Cost | Who can take it | Who it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic: Claude Certified Associate, Foundations | Paid; price not published | Partner Network members | Anyone working on Claude projects, business or technical |
| Anthropic: Claude Certified Developer, Foundations | Paid; price not published | Partner Network members | Engineers building on the Claude API, tools and agents |
| Anthropic: Claude Certified Architect, Foundations | Paid; price not published | Partner Network members | Solution architects designing agent systems with Claude |
| Anthropic: Claude Certified Architect, Professional | Paid; price not published | Partner Network members | Architects of large enterprise deployments: integration, governance, evaluation |
| Anthropic: Claude Academy course badges | Free | Anyone with a free Claude account | Learners who want proof of course completion, not an exam |
| OpenAI: Academy course badges | Free | Anyone with a ChatGPT account | Workers, developers, leaders and educators; 14 courses |
| OpenAI: OpenAI Certified app | Not published | ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu, invite only | Employees of organisations in OpenAI’s programme |
| Google Cloud: Generative AI Leader | $99 | Open; online or test centre | Any job role, no hands-on experience needed |
| Google Cloud: Professional Machine Learning Engineer | $200 | Open; online or test centre | Engineers with 3+ years in industry and 1+ on Google Cloud |
| Microsoft: Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-901) | $99 in the US; set by country | Open; proctored | People starting in AI development, with some Python |
| Microsoft: Azure AI Apps and Agents Developer Associate (AI-103) | $165 in the US; set by country | Open; proctored, Pearson VUE | Python developers building agents and AI apps on Microsoft Foundry |
| Microsoft: Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect Expert (AB-100) | $165 in the US; set by country | Needs a listed associate certification: 13 on the certification page, 15 on the exam page | Senior architects of AI across Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Azure |
| AWS: Certified AI Practitioner (AIF-C01) | $100 | Open; online or Pearson VUE centre | Anyone exploring AI on AWS, technical or not |
| AWS: Machine Learning Engineer, Associate (MLA-C02 beta) | $75 beta; $150 for MLA-C01 | Open; online or Pearson VUE centre | Engineers with a year on SageMaker AI and Bedrock |
| AWS: Generative AI Developer, Professional (AIP-C01) | $300 | Open; online or Pearson VUE centre | Developers with 2+ years building production apps and 1 year implementing generative AI |
03 — The dataPublished exam prices
Google Cloud and AWS publish one US price on each exam page, charted below; Microsoft shows a price for the visitor’s country. Entry exams cost about $100 at all three, and the professional tiers run from $165 to $300.
US list price per exam attempt, before tax
Google Cloud and AWS certification pages, read October 3, 2026. The AWS ML Engineer price is for the MLA-C02 beta; the outgoing MLA-C01 costs $150.04 — The dataExam length, questions and validity
| Credential | Length | Questions | Valid for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Generative AI Leader | 90 min | 50–60 | 3 years |
| Google Professional ML Engineer | 2 hours | 50–60 | Renewal window; see Google’s FAQ |
| Microsoft AI-103 | 120 min | Not stated | Not stated on the page |
| AWS AI Practitioner | 90 min | 65 | 3 years |
| AWS ML Engineer (MLA-C02 beta) | 170 min | 85 | 3 years |
| AWS Generative AI Developer | 180 min | 75 | Not stated on the page |
| OpenAI Academy badges | 30 to 180 min courses | 10–20 | Not stated |
| Claude Academy badges | Varies by course | Course quizzes | Do not expire |
Two version changes matter if you are booking now. Microsoft’s Azure AI Apps and Agents Developer Associate (exam AI-103) now sits where the Azure AI Engineer Associate (AI-102) used to; Microsoft’s page marks the older certification and its renewal assessment as retired. AWS offered the English version of its ML Engineer exam, MLA-C01, only until September 28, 2026, and its replacement, MLA-C02, is in beta at a $75 beta price. Microsoft also plans to update the English AB-100 architect exam on October 14, 2026.
05 — AnalysisWhat the AI labs themselves offer
Anthropic expanded its programme to four role-based Claude certifications on July 23, 2026: Associate, Developer, Architect Foundations and Architect Professional. Its announcement says every exam is proctored and identity-checked, delivered by Pearson with badges through Credly, and that more than 36,000 consultants at over 1,300 organisations had been certified since March. The exams are available only to members of the Claude Partner Network, which firms join for free; the Claude Academy courses are free to anyone, and their badges are separate from the exams.
OpenAI’s Academy help page lists 14 free courses open to anyone with a ChatGPT account, each with a 10 to 20 question assessment and a pass mark of 80%. It states that the resulting badges “are not certifications”. The credential itself runs through the OpenAI Certified app, built with Coursera inside ChatGPT, which is available only to Enterprise and Edu workspaces by invitation. OpenAI’s December 2025 announcement restated its aim of certifying 10 million Americans by 2030.
Claude certifications count towards a firm’s tier in Anthropic’s partner network, so for a consultancy they are a commercial asset as well as a skills signal. Our guide to the Claude Partner Network covers the tiers and what each requires.
06 — Practical implicationsWhich credential to take
For hiring managers, the useful question is less which badge a candidate holds than whether it was earned under supervision and how recently. A three-year validity window is long in a field where several of these exams changed version during 2026. Our guide to hiring forward deployed engineers and the note on Anthropic’s Frontier Academy cover the more hands-on end of AI training. For a team-wide plan rather than individual exams, our AI transformation work includes skills planning.
07 — MethodMethod and as-of date
A comparison of published credential terms. Digital Applied did not sit any of these exams for this page.
- What was collected
- For 15 credentials from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Cloud, Microsoft and AWS: cost, who may take it, intended candidate, exam length, number of questions and validity, where published.
- Sources
- Anthropic’s July 23, 2026 certification announcement and Claude Academy FAQ; OpenAI’s December 2025 announcement and two help articles; Google Cloud, Microsoft Learn and AWS certification pages. No third-party exam guides were used.
- As-of date
- October 3, 2026.
- Exclusions
- Partner-only sales accreditations, university courses, third-party certificates built on these vendors’ tools, and other vendor AI exams such as the AWS Certified AI Business Strategist.
- Limitations
- Anthropic does not publish its exam price or length on the pages read, and Microsoft prices vary by country; the Microsoft prices given are those its pages showed a US visitor on October 3, 2026. Google’s ML Engineer validity is given only through its renewal FAQ.
- Refresh
- Re-read every vendor page quarterly and whenever an exam version changes. Corrections are made in place with a dated note.
Pick the exam that matches the work you do
Start from the platform you use every day and the role you hold, not from the most famous brand. A $99 or $100 entry exam is a cheap way to test whether a structured syllabus helps you; save the $300 professional exams for when you build on that cloud for real.