GitHub Copilot Certification Cost (GH-300): Price by Country, Discounts and Retakes

The GitHub Copilot certification exam (GH-300) costs $99 in the United States, plus any tax, and less in most other countries: £64 in the UK, €76 in Germany or France and ₹3,691 in India. Verified students can earn a free voucher, and every retake costs the full price again.

Below you’ll find GH-300 prices by country, five legitimate ways to pay less, what a retake or a missed appointment costs, what it takes to keep the certification, and the free official prep. Every number comes from GitHub’s and Microsoft’s own pages, and where they don’t publish something, we say so. For what the exam covers and a study plan, see our GH-300 study guide; for Microsoft’s own AI exams, see our Microsoft AI certifications guide.

GH-300 cost at a glance

Checked against Microsoft Learn’s GitHub Copilot certification page, Microsoft’s exam pricing data, retake policy and reschedule policy, and GitHub’s certification FAQ on October 8, 2026.

How much GH-300 costs in your country

Microsoft prices GH-300 by the country or region where the exam is proctored, and the certification page shows your local price when you schedule. These are the amounts in Microsoft’s exam pricing data today, before tax:

GitHub’s own FAQ lists GitHub certification exams at $99 and notes that regional pricing may apply. Tax is added at checkout, so the amount you pay can be a little higher than the table.

For context, $99 puts GH-300 among the cheaper AI-related certifications. Our guide to what AI certifications cost compares it with the rest, and the AI certification cost calculator adds up exams, retakes and renewals for any combination.

5 ways to pay less for GH-300

1. Students: earn a free voucher through the Student Developer Pack

GitHub’s certification FAQ says verified GitHub Student Developer Pack students can earn a voucher through GitHub’s partner DataCamp. Open the DataCamp offer in the Pack, complete the GitHub Foundations learning path (GitHub says most students finish it in about ten hours or less), and DataCamp emails you a voucher for either GitHub Foundations (GH-900) or GitHub Copilot (GH-300). It’s one voucher, so pick the exam you want most, and allow up to two weeks for the email.

The Pack includes 30 days of free DataCamp access. If you already used that, GitHub says DataCamp’s rotating discounts can bring a month as low as $7, which is still far below $99.

2. GitHub Universe 2026: a $30 certification voucher

GitHub’s Universe 2026 site (the event runs October 28–29 in San Francisco and online, and the virtual pass is free) lists a discounted GitHub Certification voucher for $30 among its “Level up” options. The listing doesn’t say which exams it covers, whether you need a pass to buy it, or when it expires, so read those terms at checkout before you count on it for GH-300. If it does cover GH-300, it’s the cheapest paid route we found.

3. Check for academic pricing

Microsoft offers academic pricing on Microsoft Certification exams in most countries (not India or China) once you mark yourself as a student in your Learn profile and verify your academic status. Microsoft’s page doesn’t list which exams qualify, so check whether a student price appears for GH-300 when you register.

4. Ask your employer to pay

If your company pays for Copilot seats, ask whether it will pay for the exam too. Microsoft’s scheduling rules cover company-purchased vouchers, and they come with the same catch as your own money: miss the 24-hour reschedule deadline and the voucher is forfeited.

Register with a personal Microsoft account either way. Microsoft warns that exam records tied to a work or school account are lost if you leave that organization. GitHub’s FAQ asks you to add your work email to that same Learn profile, rather than create a second profile, so your certification can be tracked in GitHub’s partner reporting.

5. Prep for free and pass the first time

The biggest avoidable cost is a second $99 attempt. All of the official prep is free: the Practice Assessment on the certification page, the exam sandbox that shows the exam interface, and the GitHub Copilot Fundamentals Part 1 and Part 2 learning paths.

You don’t need a paid Copilot plan to practice most of it either. GitHub’s plans page lists Copilot Free (inline suggestions are capped at 2,000 completions a month), a free Copilot Student plan for verified students, and Copilot Pro at $10 a month. The organization settings on the outline, such as policies and audit log events, live in organization plans like Copilot Business ($19 per seat per month), so ask an admin at work for a walkthrough rather than buying seats. Our GH-300 study guide has a 3-week plan and hands-on drills.

What you’ll really pay: 6 scenarios

What a GH-300 retake costs

A retake costs the full exam price again: a second US attempt is another $99. Under Microsoft’s retake policy, which GitHub’s FAQ repeats for its exams:

• Wait 24 hours after a failed first attempt before you retake.
• Wait 14 days between every attempt after that.
• You can take the exam at most five times in the 12 months after your first attempt. Fail five times and you wait until 12 months after that first attempt.
• You can’t retake an exam you passed unless the certification has expired.

Your score report shows a bar chart for each skill area, which tells you where to focus, but Microsoft doesn’t share which questions you missed.

The GH-300 certification page also links Microsoft’s Exam Replay offer, sold through Pearson VUE: one exam voucher plus one retake of the same exam, both scheduled and taken within 12 months of purchase, and you can only book the retake after failing the first attempt. Microsoft’s offers page doesn’t show a price or list eligible exams, so confirm GH-300 qualifies and compare the price for your country with a single $99 attempt before you buy.

The fee you can lose before exam day

Reschedule or cancel at least 24 hours before your appointment, or the fee is forfeited, per Microsoft’s reschedule and cancellation policy. The same applies to a company-purchased voucher, and a no-show can add a fee for your company. Exam-day rules such as breaks and extra time for non-native speakers are in our GH-300 study guide.

What your $99 buys: the exam in brief

GH-300 runs 100 minutes, proctored online or at a Pearson VUE test center. GitHub’s FAQ says its exams have 60 scored multiple-choice questions plus about 10–15 unscored pretest items (the count varies by exam), and they are closed book: Microsoft lets candidates open Microsoft Learn during associate and expert exams, but not during GitHub exams. You need 700 on a scaled score of 1,000, which Microsoft says may not equal 70% of the points, and most results arrive within minutes. Since July 1, 2025, passing earns a downloadable Microsoft Learn certificate instead of a Credly badge.

The six skill areas and their weights, with what to study for each, are in our GH-300 study guide.

What it costs to keep the certification

GitHub certifications are valid for 2 years. GitHub is moving to Microsoft’s recertification process, which will let you keep a certification current without retaking the full exam. Microsoft’s renewals for its own associate and expert certifications are free online assessments; GitHub hasn’t said yet what its version will cost.

Until the new process is available, GitHub extends any GitHub certification that would expire by 6 months, and its FAQ says people whose certification has already expired can ask GitHub’s certification team for an exam voucher to retest for free (contact details are on the certification page). Our guide to AI certification renewal rules and the renewal tracker help you keep the date.

GH-300 vs other GitHub certifications: what each costs

GitHub’s FAQ gives the $99 price for its exams; GH-600, the newer agentic AI exam, is listed at $165 on Microsoft Learn. GH-900 is a fundamentals certification, so it never needs renewing. The student voucher above covers GH-900 or GH-300 only. If you also build AI apps on Azure, our Microsoft AI certifications page covers AI-901 ($99) and AI-103 ($165), and the AI-103 exam cost page has the details.

Practice questions: what’s free

HOW TO // AI doesn’t have a GH-300 practice bank yet, and we won’t pretend otherwise. Use Microsoft’s free Practice Assessment, which shows the style, wording and difficulty of the questions (Microsoft says its questions are not the ones on the exam), and the exam sandbox. Skip any site selling leaked GH-300 questions: those are dumps, they put your certification at risk, and they won’t teach you Copilot.

For the AI exams we do cover, our free practice exams are on AI Exam Prep, and the AI certification index lists every exam we track →

HOW TO // AI is not affiliated with or endorsed by GitHub or Microsoft. GitHub and GitHub Copilot are trademarks of GitHub, Inc.; Microsoft and Microsoft Learn are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. We reference them descriptively. Prices change, so check the official certification page before you book.

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