1.1 Current Exam Facts

Why current GH-900 facts beat every blog you bookmarked

GitHub Foundations, exam code GH-900, is the beginner GitHub certification. GitHub and Microsoft Learn publish the official pages; Pearson VUE delivers the proctored appointment. GitHub Docs describes the credential as a way to highlight foundational topics and concepts of collaborating, contributing, and working on GitHub. Microsoft Learn last updated the GitHub Foundations credential page on 19 February 2026. That date is your freshness test: if a tutorial, dump site, or older exam-meta block still says 75 scored questions, 120 minutes, a 70 percent pass mark, three-year validity, or PSI delivery, it is describing an exam that is no longer the one you will sit.

GH-900 is a beginner product-fundamentals exam, not a developer-only gate. Microsoft Learn tags it to the GitHub product and the DevOps subject, and lists roles such as Administrator, App Maker, Developer, DevOps Engineer, and Solution Architect. The audience sentence on both the credential page and the study guide is broader than those role chips: the exam is designed for non-developers, developers, and all GitHub users who want stronger GitHub fundamentals. There is no listed prerequisite exam.

GH-900 is also not the GitHub Actions, GitHub Advanced Security, GitHub Administration, or GitHub Copilot certification. Those are separate GitHub Certifications with their own outlines. Booking the wrong voucher is an expensive way to discover that Foundations is the entry credential covering Git basics, GitHub products, repositories, and collaboration.

Two Azure-habit traps show up before you even open a repository. First, many Microsoft fundamentals exams use a 45-minute exam duration; GH-900 is 100 minutes. Second, some Microsoft associate and expert exams let you open Microsoft Learn in a split screen during the test. Microsoft's exam-duration and exam-experience page states that Learn access is not available on Fundamentals exams or GitHub exams. You cannot search docs.github.com or learn.microsoft.com from inside GH-900. The 100 minutes are closed-book product knowledge, plus whatever interactive item types Pearson VUE presents.

Current logistics (memorize this table, not a 2024 PDF)

Time, check-in, and interactive items

The credential page is explicit: you will have 100 minutes to complete this assessment. The exam is proctored. Microsoft also warns that you may have interactive components to complete. That does not turn GH-900 into a hidden lab practical, but it does mean you should not assume every item is a single radio button. Before test day, launch the exam sandbox so drag-and-drop, hot-area, build-list, mark-for-review, and the review screen do not cost you minutes of panic.

Microsoft's general exam-duration page distinguishes exam duration (time on the questions) from seat duration (check-in, the Microsoft Certification Exam Candidate Agreement, comments). GH-900's published exam duration is 100 minutes. Put extra calendar time around the appointment for identity checks and, if you test online, the Pearson VUE OnVUE room scan. Unscheduled breaks are available on Microsoft-delivered exams, but the clock keeps running and you cannot return to items you already viewed. Five minutes of break buffer is built into Microsoft exam timing; extra wandering is on you.

Question count: what Microsoft publishes versus what GitHub Learn describes

Do not memorize 75 questions. The Microsoft Learn GH-900 page does not publish a live item count. Microsoft's broader scoring documentation says the number of questions on a certification exam is subject to change as forms are updated. GitHub Learn's credentials FAQ has described the GitHub certification exam family as 60 scored multiple-choice questions and approximately 10–15 pretest items, varying by exam. Cite that as GitHub's family description, not as a Microsoft Learn GH-900 field. Pretest items are unscored research questions. You will not be told which is which, so answer every item. Microsoft scoring docs add that there is no penalty for guessing, multi-part items can award partial credit, and some questions may never enter your score.

Registration, fee, languages, and the personal Microsoft account trap

Schedule GH-900 through Pearson VUE from the Microsoft Learn credential page. The commonly published list price is $99 USD, and Microsoft notes that price depends on the country or region where the exam is proctored. The exam is offered in English, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Korean, and Japanese. Localized forms can lag the English update by about eight weeks; if your preferred language is unavailable, Microsoft lets you request an extra 30 minutes.

Microsoft strongly recommends that you register with a personal Microsoft account (MSA). If you register with an organizational work or school Azure Active Directory (AAD) / Microsoft Entra ID account, your exam records will be lost if you leave the organization and they will be unrecoverable. That sentence is on the GH-900 page for a reason. A company-issued login feels official until you change jobs and the transcript vanishes. Use the same personal MSA later to open your Learn profile, badge, and Pearson VUE score report.

If you need extra time or assistive devices, request an accommodation through Microsoft before you schedule. The sandbox is a place to feel how those devices behave in the item UI; using them on the real exam still requires an approved accommodation because the live secure browser blocks unapproved third-party tools.

Retakes and the two-year clock

Fail the first attempt and Microsoft's retake policy, linked from the credential page, lets you sit again 24 hours later. Subsequent waits vary on the credential page; the full Microsoft policy for fundamentals, role-based, and specialty exams imposes a 14-day wait between later attempts and a cap of five attempts in 12 months counted from the first try. GitHub Learn documents the same 24-hour first retake, 14-day later holds, and five-attempt yearly cap. You pay for the retake unless a promotion such as Exam Replay applies. You generally cannot retake an exam you already passed unless the certification has expired.

GitHub Learn states that GitHub certifications are valid for 2 years. Renewal is by retaking the exam (GitHub has historically offered a retake discount when a credential is near expiry). Do not apply Microsoft's annual Learn renewal assessment model to GH-900. Those free online assessments renew Microsoft associate, expert, and specialty certifications that expire annually. GitHub Foundations is a GitHub certification hosted on Microsoft Learn; it does not become an Azure-style yearly quiz, and it is not a three-year CompTIA-style cycle.

January 2026 rewrite

The GH-900 study guide changelog is blunt: the exam changed significantly in January 2026. Objectives were added, removed, moved across functional groups, and reworded. A six-domain outline, a 120-minute timer, a 70 percent pass line, or a PSI logo is a stale-source alarm, not a study plan.

Scenario: Maya books the wrong exam in her head

Maya is a technical writer. A 2025 blog still says GitHub Foundations is 75 questions, 120 minutes, 70 percent, PSI, valid three years. She blocks two hours, studies a six-domain PDF, and registers with her employer's Entra ID because that is the account on her laptop. The live Microsoft Learn page would have told her 100 minutes, Pearson VUE, a scaled 700, a personal MSA, and seven January 2026 domains that now include Copilot agents and Enterprise Managed Users. On test day the timer, the vendor, and the new product items would all be surprises. Official pages beat third-party memory every time.

What to lock in this week

1. Open the GitHub Foundations credential page and confirm 100 minutes, Pearson VUE, languages, and the personal MSA warning.
2. Create or confirm a personal MSA and use it for Pearson VUE — not a work Entra ID.
3. Launch the exam sandbox once so the item UI is not new on test day.
4. Discard any prep that still quotes 75 questions, 120 minutes, 70 percent, PSI, or three-year validity.