Salesforce Agentforce Certifications Explained (2026)

Salesforce now has two credentials most people mean when they say "the Agentforce certifications": the Agentforce Specialist (exam AI-201), which was called AI Specialist until March 2025, and the Data 360 Consultant (exam Data-Con-101), which was called Data Cloud Consultant until March 2026. Both are active, neither is retiring, and both center on the same shift: Salesforce moving from static automation to AI agents that reason over your data. This guide explains what each one is, how the names changed, and which order makes sense.

What "Agentforce certification" actually refers to

Agentforce is Salesforce's platform for building AI agents, the assistants that used to be branded Einstein Copilot. As Salesforce leaned into the Agentforce name across its products, it renamed the certifications to match. That created a lot of confusion, because the exam codes stayed the same while the credential names changed underneath them. If you are searching for a "Salesforce AI certification," you are almost certainly looking at one of these two exams, plus the platform admin credential that supports both.

The Agentforce Specialist, formerly AI Specialist

The Salesforce Agentforce Specialist certification is the hands-on agent-building exam. It has 60 scored questions, runs 105 minutes, costs US$200, and requires 72 percent to pass. There is no prerequisite certification, though Salesforce recommends the Administrator credential and real Agentforce experience first.

Its six-section outline is deliberately top-heavy. AI Agents is 35 percent on its own, covering Agent Builder, agent types, and the standard and custom topics and actions that define what an agent can do. Prompt Engineering and Data 360 Fundamentals add 20 percent each, so grounding an agent in real Salesforce data is nearly as important as building it. The remaining weight sits in testing and deployment, governance and observability, and a small multi-agent orchestration section. A common trap is studying an older five-section outline that still says "Data Cloud for Agentforce" and folds governance into other sections. The current guide splits governance out as its own 10 percent topic.

The Data 360 Consultant, formerly Data Cloud Consultant

The Salesforce Data Cloud Consultant certification goes deeper on the data platform that Agentforce grounds on. Salesforce renamed both the product and the credential from Data Cloud to Data 360 in March 2026, keeping the exam code Data-Con-101. It is a consultant-level exam: 60 questions, 105 minutes, US$200, and no required prerequisite. The outline weights activation and ingestion most heavily, because a data platform earns its keep when unified profiles actually flow somewhere useful, whether that is a marketing segment, a CRM record, or grounding for an AI agent.

One honest caveat: the passing score for this exam is hard to pin down. Salesforce does not headline a fixed percentage, and figures online range from roughly 62 to 70 percent. Confirm the current number in the official exam guide rather than trusting a prep site.

How the two fit together

Think of them as the agent layer and the data layer. The Agentforce Specialist builds the agent; the Data 360 Consultant makes sure the data feeding it is clean, unified, and activated. A specialist who understands identity resolution and retrievers will find the Data 360 Fundamentals section of AI-201 much easier, which is why some people do them back to back. For teams standing up Agentforce, the two credentials cover the build and the data foundation between them, and browsing a catalog of ready-made AI agents can help you see what good agent design looks like before you build your own.

A quick timeline of the name changes

The renaming is the single most confusing thing about these credentials, so it helps to see it laid out. The AI Specialist became the Agentforce Specialist in March 2025, when Salesforce made Agentforce the umbrella name for its agent platform and retired the Einstein Copilot branding. A year later, in March 2026, the Data Cloud Consultant became the Data 360 Consultant, following the product rename from Data Cloud to Data 360. Neither change touched the exam code, and neither required existing holders to do anything. If you earned the AI Specialist in early 2025, your Trailblazer profile already shows Agentforce Specialist. The lesson for studying is simple: judge whether material is current by its language, not its date. Anything still saying Einstein Copilot, AI Specialist as a current name, or Data Cloud for Agentforce predates the outline you will actually be tested on.

What these certifications do for your career

Agentforce is the area Salesforce is investing in most heavily, and the talent pool of people who can genuinely build and ground agents is still small. That scarcity is the whole career argument. A certified Agentforce Specialist signals to an employer or a consulting client that you can take an agent from an idea to a tested, governed deployment, not just talk about AI in the abstract. The Data 360 Consultant signals the same for the data layer underneath. In practice, the two credentials open different doors: the specialist toward hands-on build roles on delivery teams, the consultant toward data-platform and architecture conversations. Holding both is uncommon enough to be a differentiator on its own, because it says you understand the agent and the data that makes it trustworthy.

How to prepare for both

Study for the specialist first and the consultant second, because the specialist exam introduces Data 360 concepts at a fifth of its weight, which gives you a running start on the deeper consultant material. For both, the fastest gains come from active recall against the current outline rather than passive rereading. Build agents in a Trailhead playground, then turn your own notes into practice questions so you are testing yourself on the exact terminology and weights the live exams use. Track which sections you miss and go back to those, rather than re-covering the material you already know.

Are any of these certifications retiring?

No. Salesforce announced that 24 certifications will retire on February 1, 2027, and renamed 16 more on July 24, 2026, but neither the Agentforce Specialist nor the Data 360 Consultant is on either list. Their name changes happened separately and earlier. If you want the full picture of what is changing, our breakdown of the Salesforce certifications being retired in 2027 lists every affected credential. One thing to watch: do not confuse the Agentforce Specialist with the AI Associate, a separate entry-level credential that Salesforce did retire, in February 2026.

Which should you take first?

For most people the answer is the Agentforce Specialist. It is the credential employers name in job postings for Agentforce work, it has no prerequisite, and its content maps directly to building agents. Take the Data 360 Consultant next if your role touches the data platform, or if you found the grounding and retriever material on AI-201 the part you least understood. Whichever you start with, build practice questions from your own notes so you are testing recall against the current outline, not rereading slides. Upload your study material to the Agentforce Specialist practice exam generator and drill the sections that carry the most weight.