Pricing - Windows Virtual Machines | Microsoft Azure (2024)

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Frequently asked questions about Azure pricing

General

• No. All new virtual machines have an operating system disk and a local disk (or “resource disk”). We don’t charge for local disk storage. The operating system disk is charged at the standard rate for disks. See all virtual machine configurations.

• Read our Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances FAQ.

• You can find more information about spot virtual machines on our website.

• A temporary disk is storage that’s attached directly to the deployed VM. Data on a temporary disk is lost once the VM is shut down. If you need persistent storage, there are a number of types and sizes of persistent data disks available, which are charged for separately. Please see storage pricing for information. For persistent VM storage, we recommend that you use Managed Disks to take advantage of better management features, scalability, availability and security.

• Maybe. If the status says “Stopped (Deallocated)”, you aren’t being billed. If it says “Stopped Allocated”, you’re still being billed for allocated virtual cores (not the software licence itself). Full details on virtual machine states are available on the documentation page.

  State	Billed	Details
  Starting	Yes	The initial starting state of virtual machines as they’re going through the boot cycle. This period is billed as the virtual machines are running.
  Running (Started)	Yes	The running state of the virtual machine.
  Stopped	Yes	You are billed for allocated cores, but not software licences. Note: To put a virtual machine in “Stopped” status, use the power option within the virtual machine, not from the Microsoft Azure classic portal.
  Deleted (Deallocated)	No	Cores are no longer allocated to the virtual machine, and are no longer billed. Note: The only way to stop all virtual machines in a cloud service is to delete both the staging and production deployments.

• Virtual machine prices include local disk storage only. You can see the cost to attach Premium (SSD based) and Standard (HDD based) disks to your virtual machines on the Managed Disks pricing page.

• Previously, all usage for A0, A2, A3, and A4 Standard and Basic virtual machines was emitted as fractions (for A0) or multiples (for A2, A3, and A4) of A1 virtual machines meter minutes. We heard this caused some confusion for our customers, so we’ve implemented a change to assign per-second usage to dedicated A0, A2, A3, and A4 meters. Because of this transition, the resource GUIDs for A0, A2, A3, and A4 virtual machines will change. If any of your billing routines rely on the resource GUIDs, they’ll need to be modified to take these new billing meters into consideration.

  Deployment size	Usage emitted as multiple of A1 through January 10, 2016	Usage emitted on dedicated meter as of January 11, 2016
  A0	0.25 of A1 hour	1 of A0 hour
  A2	2 of A1 hour	1 of A2 hour
  A3	4 of A1 hour	1 of A3 hour
  A4	8 of A1 hour	1 of A4 hour

• We charge for the number of whole minutes your virtual machine is running, so you are not billed for any extra seconds. In this example, you would be billed for 6 minutes.

• It’s a new preview feature for Azure Virtual Machines with private IP addresses. The internally load-balanced endpoint is only accessible within a virtual network (for virtual machines within a virtual network) or cloud service (for virtual machines outside a virtual network). Internal load balancing is useful for multi-tier applications where some of the application tiers aren’t public-facing, yet require load balancing functionality.

• You can check the status of your virtual machines in the Virtual Machines tab and also in the virtual machine Dashboard. If virtual machine status says “Stopped”, you’re still being billed. Only “Stopped (Deallocated)” indicates that you’re not being billed.

  To ensure you aren’t being billed, always stop virtual machines from the management portal. You can also stop the virtual machine via Powershell by calling ShutdownRoleOperation with “PostShutdownAction” equal to “StoppedDeallocated”.

• Each instance is charged for its data egress across regions.

• No. Tax will be added separately.

• As you transition your workloads to Azure, take advantage of Azure Hybrid Benefit to reuse your existing Windows Server licences with Software Assurance or Windows Server subscriptions for significant savings. For each licence, Azure covers the cost of the OS, while you pay for just the VM compute costs. Additionally, through Azure Hybrid Benefit for Linux, you can use your pre-existing on-premises Red Hat and SUSE software subscriptions on Azure. Learn more.

Spot VMs

• Workloads are evicted when Azure no longer has available compute capacity and must reallocate its resources.

  Workloads will also be evicted when the current price exceeds the maximum price that you agreed to pay before the VMs were allocated.

• For pricing transparency across all Azure regions and to ensure fairness when allocating available compute capacity, all of our customers will enter maximum prices in US dollars. Spot pricing in local currency figures displayed on this page are provided for your information only. These figures only represent an estimate of the actual costs you will incur and will vary based on currency exchange rates.

• Spot pricing in local currency displayed on this page is provided for your information only. You may pay your Azure bill in one of the supported local currencies below. However, spot pricing in local currency figures displayed on this page are provided for your convenience and only represent an estimate of the actual costs you will incur and will vary based on currency exchange rates.

  AUD Australia – Dollar ($) AUD	JPY Japan – Yen (¥) JPY
  TWD Taiwan – Dollar (NT$) TWD	KRW Korea – Won (₩) KRW
  GBP United Kingdom – Pound (£) GBP	NZD New Zealand – Dollar ($) NZD
  CAD Canada – Dollar ($) CAD	NOK Norway – Krone (kr) NOK
  CNY China – Yuan (CN¥) CNY	RUB Russia – Ruble (руб) RUB
  DKK Denmark – Krone (kr) DKK	SEK Sweden – Krona (kr) SEK
  EUR Euro Zone – Euro (€) EUR	CHF Switzerland – Franc (chf) CHF
  INR India – Rupee (₹) INR

  For all other currencies not listed above, you will have to transact Spot VMs in US dollars and pay your bill in US dollars.

Windows Server

• No. Microsoft provides the Windows Server licence keys for any running instances.

• No. You’ll need to supply a licence for the image.

Promo VMs

• The H series and NC series promos are no longer available and normal H series and NC series instances will we decommissioned soon. The promo virtual machines already deployed will continue to run until the associated H series and NC series decommission dates. Please read the H series migration guide and NC series migration guide for additional information and next steps.