GitHub Foundations
GitHub Foundations certifies familiarity with the platform: repositories, collaboration, issues and projects, actions, security features and the administrative surface around them.
A hundred minutes, no code to write, and no prerequisite.
Exam facts
- Exam code
- GH-900
- Level
- Foundational
- Field
- Development & DevOps
- Duration
- 100 minutes
- Questions
- multiple choice and interactive item types; no code to write
- Passing score
- 700 on Microsoft's scale of 1 to 1,000
- Languages
- English, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Japanese
- Price
- 99 USD (read 12 September 2026)
- Validity
- never expires
- Exam delivery
- Pearson VUE (test centre or online proctored); registration through Microsoft Learn
Prerequisites: None.
Renewal: None under Microsoft's rule for fundamentals exams; GitHub Learn's older fact box still lists 24 months from the period before the move to Microsoft Learn
Source: exam page at GitHub · Price: Price in the United States; Microsoft prices by the country where the exam is proctored and shows it at Pearson VUE checkout (read 2026-09-12)
How to prepare
1. The vendor's free learning path
GitHub publishes the exam objectives and a learning path free of charge — the authoritative source for scope and weighting. Open the learning path (opens in a new tab)
2. A practice test in the exam format
MeasureUp sells a practice test for GH-900 with questions in the exam format, an explanation for every answer and a timed mode; the price shows in your currency on the shop page. Affiliate link.
Practice test for GH-900 at MeasureUp (opens in a new tab)Book the exam
Delivered by Pearson VUE (test centre or online proctored); registration through Microsoft Learn. Schedule with GitHub (opens in a new tab)
Affiliate disclosure: the practice-test link above is affiliate links — buying through them may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. The vendor's learning path and booking links carry no commission.
The diagnosis is right and the prescription is wrong for most people
Almost everyone uses version control badly
Git is learned by absorption. Somebody shows you three commands in your first week, you use those three for a decade, and you never learn what the tool would do for you if you asked. That gap is real and it costs time every week. What is not obvious is that a platform certificate is the right response to it, because the certificate examines the product around the tool rather than the tool itself.
For a working developer, a weekend spent properly learning branching, rebasing, bisecting and how to recover from your own mistakes returns more than this exam does, and costs nothing. The knowledge is also portable to any host, whereas this certificate describes one. If the goal is to be better at your job rather than to have a line on a CV, that is the honest recommendation.
Where it earns its fee
With people whose work has moved into repositories without them being developers: technical writers, product managers, data analysts, and increasingly anybody whose organisation has put its documentation or configuration under version control. For that reader the platform genuinely is the thing to learn, the interactive format suits a tool used through an interface, and a structured syllabus beats picking it up from colleagues who are themselves improvising. It is also a reasonable first certificate for a career changer, being inexpensive, permanent and about something employers can see you using.
| Skill area | Share | What it actually asks |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction to Git and GitHub | 25 to 30 % | What a commit, a branch and a remote are, and what the platform adds on top |
| Working with repositories | 10 to 15 % | Creating, cloning, forking, and the files a repository expects to find |
| Collaboration features | 10 to 15 % | Issues, pull requests, reviews, discussions |
| Modern development | 10 to 15 % | Actions, Codespaces and the AI assistant: knowing what each one is for |
| Privacy, security and administration | 10 to 15 % | Who may see and change what, and the settings that decide it |
| Project management | 5 to 10 % | Projects, boards and the fields that turn issues into a plan |
| Benefits of the GitHub community | 5 to 10 % | Open source, profiles, and why any of it matters to an employer |
A quarter of the paper is the tool underneath the product, which is the quarter a developer already holds and the quarter a non-developer most needs. The rest is the product: the collaboration surface, the automation, the administration. That distribution confirms the argument above. If the largest section is your weak point, the exam is teaching you something a tutorial would teach for free; if the other three quarters are your weak point, the exam is teaching you the platform your colleagues already live in, and that is a fair use of a hundred minutes and a modest fee.
- A hundred minutes, with interactive item types alongside multiple choice, and no code to write.
- 700 passes on Microsoft's scale, since the certification now lives on Microsoft Learn.
- Five exam languages: English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean and Japanese.
- Priced per country of sitting, shown at Pearson VUE checkout; the cost table records the United States figure.
- A retake is available after 24 hours, which is the shortest waiting period on this site.
Does it expire? Two answers are in circulation
Microsoft's rule for fundamentals exams is that they do not expire, and this certification now falls under it. GitHub's own learning site still displays an older fact box showing a 24-month validity from the period before the move to Microsoft Learn. We record both because a candidate will meet both. The rule that governs is Microsoft's; the stale figure is a page nobody has updated.
What a question looks like
Written by us in the exam's style. It is not a real question from any question bank, and we do not publish those.
A repository should allow contributions from outside the organisation while ensuring that nothing reaches the main branch without review and a passing build. Which combination of repository settings and workflow achieves this?
Several settings each provide part of the answer and the question wants the combination, including the part that most people configure last or not at all. It tests whether you have set up a repository properly rather than whether you have worked in one somebody else configured, which is the practical difference between using the platform and administering it.
What it costs to get and to keep
| Item | Amount | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Exam fee | 99 USD | priced by the country where the exam is proctored, so this is one market's figure rather than a global price (read 12 September 2026) |
| Renewal | not published | none under the rule covering fundamentals exams. An older fact box on the vendor's own learning site still shows a two-year figure from before the certification moved, which is worth knowing if you meet it (read 12 September 2026) |
| Retake | not published | permitted after a short waiting period at the same fee (read 12 September 2026) |
How much preparation, from where you are
- You use the platform daily as a developer
- Very short, and the question is whether to bother. The unfamiliar parts will be administration, security features and whichever automation your team set up years ago.
- Your work moved into repositories and you are not a developer
- The intended reader. Expect the collaboration and project-management material to be immediately useful, and the automation section to take the most time.
- You are changing career into technology
- A sensible inexpensive first certificate, and permanent. Pair it with actually using the platform for something real, because an interviewer will ask what is in your repositories.
What passing this does not prove
- Git itself, in any depth, which is the skill people actually lack.
- Whether you can resolve a conflict without losing work.
- Any ability to write code, deliberately.
- Anything about a host other than this one.
Against the alternatives
- AZ-900 — Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals
- A broader fundamentals paper from the same stable covering platform concepts rather than one product. The better purchase when only one entry paper can be justified.
- AZ-400 — Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert
- The expert delivery exam, which covers this platform's automation in far greater depth alongside the practices around it. The serious destination if the automation is what interests you.
- 200-901 — Cisco CCNA Automation (formerly DevNet Associate)
- Also assumes version control as part of a wider automation syllabus, aimed at networks. One does not gate the other.
GH-900 — quick answers
Should a developer take it?
Usually not. You will be examined on a product you already use, and the gap you actually have is in the underlying tool, which this does not cover. A weekend with a good Git tutorial returns more and costs nothing. Consultants needing something a client will recognise are the exception.
Does it expire?
Not under the rule covering fundamentals exams, which is what it now falls under. You may still meet an older fact box on the vendor's learning site showing a two-year figure from before the certification moved home. We record both because the discrepancy is live and confusing.
Is it enough to get a job?
No, and no fundamentals certificate is. What it does is demonstrate familiarity with a tool nearly every technical team uses, which is worth having on a CV for a non-developer role and worth very little on a developer's. Put something in a public repository alongside it.
What are the interactive items?
Questions answered by doing rather than choosing: arranging steps, selecting parts of an interface, completing a workflow. They suit a platform used through a browser and they reward having clicked through it. An afternoon in a free account covers them.
Is there anything about the AI assistant on the exam?
Only as far as knowing what it is and what it does, inside the modern-development section, which is worth 10 to 15 percent of the paper. Nothing asks you to use it well, and the certificate should not be read as evidence that you can.
What comes next
Concepts this exam draws on
Glossary entries with the reason each one matters for GH-900.
- Python
Code examples and Actions workflows on the exam assume basic scripting literacy.
- Containers
GitHub Actions, Codespaces and packages introduce container concepts.
- Git
The platform is built around the tool, and a quarter of the paper is the tool itself.
- REST API
Automation and integration with the platform run through its API.
Last reviewed 12 September 2026 · Getting Digital