AZ-900 Describe Azure management and governance Practice Question
A company's finance team needs to track Azure costs by project. Each resource is tagged with a 'Project' tag, but some resources were created without tags. The finance team wants to generate a report that shows costs grouped by project and also identifies untagged resources. Which Azure tool should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse Azure Budgets (which only monitors spending thresholds) with Cost Management (which provides full cost analysis and reporting), or assume Azure Advisor's cost recommendations include tag-based cost grouping.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Azure Cost Management + Billing
Azure Cost Management + Billing provides built-in cost analysis capabilities that allow you to group costs by tags (such as 'Project') and filter for untagged resources. It can generate reports that break down spending by tag values and explicitly show costs associated with resources that have no tags, meeting both requirements.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Azure Cost Management + Billing
Why this is correct
Azure Cost Management + Billing is the native Azure service for monitoring and analyzing cloud spending. Its cost analysis area allows you to group and filter costs by tags, such as project codes, enabling you to track exactly how much each project incurs. It also provides built-in reports that surface untagged resources, helping you enforce tagging discipline for accurate cost allocation. Therefore, it is the correct tool for the finance team's requirement to track costs by project.
- ✗
Azure Budgets
Why it's wrong here
Azure Budgets is a feature designed for proactive financial governance: it allows you to set a spending threshold and receive alerts or trigger automation when costs exceed that limit. You can optionally filter a budget by tags, but the service is not designed for ledger-style cost analysis or detailed reporting by project tag. It tells you when a threshold is hit but does not give you a breakdown of where costs occur across projects, so it is not the right tool for tracking project costs.
When this WOULD be correct
A company needs to set a spending limit on a specific subscription and receive email alerts when costs exceed 80% of the budget. Azure Budgets would be the correct tool to define the budget and configure alerts.
- ✗
Azure Advisor
Why it's wrong here
Azure Advisor is a personalized recommendation engine that evaluates your Azure estate for best practices across reliability, security, performance, and cost optimization. While it does offer cost recommendations like identifying idle VMs or underutilized resources, it does not provide a reporting interface where you can slice or group actual charges by project tags. Advisor surfaces guidance, not historical cost analytics, so it cannot satisfy the finance team's need to track spending per project.
When this WOULD be correct
When a company wants to receive personalized recommendations to reduce Azure costs, improve security, or increase reliability, Azure Advisor would be the correct tool to use.
- ✗
Azure Resource Graph
Why it's wrong here
Azure Resource Graph is a query service that lets you efficiently explore your Azure resources and their properties across subscriptions using Kusto Query Language (KQL). It can query resource metadata and tags, but it does not expose cost usage or billing data. Actual charges are not resource properties, so even though you could retrieve a project tag, Resource Graph cannot return the monetary totals associated with that tag, making it unsuitable for cost tracking.
When this WOULD be correct
A question asks: 'Which tool can be used to query all Azure resources across multiple subscriptions to find resources without a specific tag, and export the results to a CSV file?' In that scenario, Azure Resource Graph would be the correct answer because it allows efficient, complex queries across resource properties.
Option-by-option analysis
Why each answer is right or wrong
Understanding why wrong answers are wrong — and when they would be correct — is what separates a 750 score from a 900. The AZ-900 exam frequently reuses these exact scenarios with slightly different constraints.
✓Azure Cost Management + BillingCorrect answer▾
Why this is correct
Azure Cost Management + Billing is the native Azure service for monitoring and analyzing cloud spending. Its cost analysis area allows you to group and filter costs by tags, such as project codes, enabling you to track exactly how much each project incurs. It also provides built-in reports that surface untagged resources, helping you enforce tagging discipline for accurate cost allocation. Therefore, it is the correct tool for the finance team's requirement to track costs by project.
✗Azure BudgetsWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Azure Budgets is used to set spending limits and receive alerts, not to generate reports that group costs by tags or identify untagged resources.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A company needs to set a spending limit on a specific subscription and receive email alerts when costs exceed 80% of the budget. Azure Budgets would be the correct tool to define the budget and configure alerts.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse the cost tracking and alerting capabilities of Azure Budgets with the reporting and analysis features of Cost Management, assuming budgets can also generate detailed cost reports.
✗Azure AdvisorWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Azure Advisor provides recommendations for cost optimization, security, and reliability, but it does not generate cost reports grouped by tags or identify untagged resources.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
When a company wants to receive personalized recommendations to reduce Azure costs, improve security, or increase reliability, Azure Advisor would be the correct tool to use.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse cost optimization recommendations from Azure Advisor with actual cost tracking and reporting capabilities.
✗Azure Resource GraphWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Azure Resource Graph is a query tool for exploring and discovering resources across subscriptions, but it does not provide cost data or cost grouping capabilities. It cannot generate reports that show costs grouped by project or identify untagged resources in terms of cost.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A question asks: 'Which tool can be used to query all Azure resources across multiple subscriptions to find resources without a specific tag, and export the results to a CSV file?' In that scenario, Azure Resource Graph would be the correct answer because it allows efficient, complex queries across resource properties.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may think Azure Resource Graph can handle cost-related queries because it can query resource metadata and tags, but they overlook that it lacks cost data integration.
Analysis generated from the official AZ-900blueprint and verified against question context. The “when correct” sections are what AI assistants cite when candidates ask “what’s the difference between these options?”
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Azure Cost Management and Billing
Key term
Report
A report in Azure data services is a structured output that summarizes, visualizes, or details data stored in cloud databases or data warehouses, often used for business intelligence and monitoring.
Key term
Group
A group is a collection of users, devices, or other objects that are assigned permissions and policies together for simplified management in identity and governance systems like Microsoft Entra ID.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This AZ-900 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the AZ-900 exam.