Plan and manage your Azure costs
linking:: AZ-900, Azure-Cost
Compare costs by using the Total Cost of Ownership Calculator
With the TCO Calculator, you enter the details of your on-premises workloads. Then you review the suggested industry average cost (which you can adjust) for related operational costs. These costs include electricity, network maintenance, and IT labor. You’re then presented with a side-by-side report. Using the report, you can compare those costs with the same workloads running on Azure.
Working with the TCO Calculator involves three steps:
- Define your workloads.
- Adjust assumptions.
- View the report.
Purchase Azure services
What types of Azure subscriptions can I use?
- Free trial: A free trial subscription provides you with 12 months of popular free services, a credit to explore any Azure service for 30 days, and more than 25 services that are always free.
- Pay-as-you-go
- Member offers
How do I purchase Azure services?
- Through an Enterprise Agreement
- Directly from the web
- Through a Cloud Solution Provider
What factors affect cost?
- Resource type
- Usage meters
- Resource usage
- Azure subscription types
- Azure Marketplace
Does location or network traffic affect cost?
Location
Different regions can have different associated prices. Because geographic regions can impact where your network traffic flows, network traffic is a cost influence to consider as well.
Zones for billing of network traffic
Bandwidth refers to data moving in and out of Azure datacenters. Some inbound data transfers (data going into Azure datacenters) are free. For outbound data transfers (data leaving Azure datacenters), data transfer pricing is based on zones. A zone is a geographical grouping of Azure regions for billing purposes.
How can I estimate the total cost?
The Pricing calculator displays Azure products in categories. You add these categories to your estimate and configure according to your specific requirements. You then receive a consolidated estimated price, with a detailed breakdown of the costs associated with each resource you added to your solution. You can export or share that estimate or save it for later. You can load a saved estimate and modify it to match updated requirements.
Manage and minimize total cost on Azure
- Understand estimated costs before you deploy
- Use Azure Advisor to monitor your usage
- Use spending limits to restrict your spending
- Use Azure Reservations to prepay
- Choose low-cost locations and regions
- Research available cost-saving offers
- Use Azure Cost Management + Billing to control spending
- Apply tags to identify cost owners
- Resize underutilized virtual machines
- Deallocate virtual machines during off hours
- Delete unused resources
- Migrate from IaaS to PaaS services
- Save on licensing costs
- Choose cost-effective operating systems
- Use Azure Hybrid Benefit to repurpose software licenses on Azure
Azure Spot instance
- Take a spot for lesser price, with a chance of eviction
- If it can be stopped and resumed, then it’s a good choice