Azure Virtual Machines Pricing Overview

Azure Virtual Machines offers a variety of pricing options to fit different workloads and budgets. Below is an overview of the key pricing considerations for Azure Virtual Machines.

Pricing Models

Azure Virtual Machines supports several pricing models to help you choose the best option for your needs:

Pay-As-You-Go: This is the most common pricing model, where you are billed by the minute for the resources you use.
Reserved Instances: Save up to 72% on virtual machines by committing to a one or three-year term.
Spot Instances: Access additional compute capacity at a significant discount by purchasing unused capacity.
Burstable VMs: These VMs provide a fixed amount of CPU and GPU resources with the option to burst to higher limits when needed.

Cost Factors

Several factors influence the cost of Azure Virtual Machines:

Instance Size: The size of the virtual machine, including vCPUs, memory, and storage, will impact the cost.
Region: The geographic location of your virtual machine can affect pricing due to differences in resource availability and energy costs.
Performance: VMs with higher performance characteristics will typically cost more.
Usage: The amount of time your virtual machine is running will directly affect your costs.

Example Usage

Here's an example of how you might calculate the cost for a Pay-As-You-Go virtual machine:

Instance Size: Standard_B2s
Region: West Europe
Usage: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

The estimated cost for this VM would be $0.10 per hour, which totals to $2.40 per day.

Learn More

For more detailed information on Azure Virtual Machines pricing, visit the Azure Pricing Calculator.