This calculator provides a simplified estimate of monthly costs for common Azure services, including Virtual Machines, Blob Storage, and Outbound Data Transfer. Please note that actual Azure pricing can vary based on region, specific service tiers, discounts, and other factors not covered in this basic estimator. This tool is for illustrative purposes only.
Azure pricing is a pay-as-you-go model, meaning you only pay for the resources you consume. However, understanding the various factors that influence costs is crucial for effective budget management. Key factors include:
Service Type: Different services (e.g., Virtual Machines, Databases, Storage, Networking) have distinct pricing models.
Resource Configuration: For VMs, this includes CPU, RAM, OS, and disk type. For storage, it's capacity, redundancy, and access tiers.
Region: Prices can vary significantly between Azure regions due to local market conditions, energy costs, and infrastructure expenses.
Data Transfer: Inbound data transfer (into Azure) is generally free. Outbound data transfer (out of Azure) is typically charged per GB, often with tiered pricing.
Usage Duration/Volume: Many services are billed hourly or per transaction/GB.
Reserved Instances/Savings Plans: For predictable workloads, committing to a 1-year or 3-year term can offer substantial discounts compared to pay-as-you-go rates.
Support Plans: Azure offers various support plans, which add to your overall monthly bill.
Virtual Machine Pricing
Azure VMs are typically priced per hour or per minute, depending on the VM series and operating system. The cost includes the compute resources (vCPUs, RAM) and, for Windows VMs, the Windows Server licensing. Linux VMs are generally cheaper as they don't incur OS licensing fees. Different VM series are optimized for various workloads (e.g., B-series for burstable, D-series for general purpose, E-series for memory-optimized).
Blob Storage Pricing
Blob storage costs are primarily driven by the amount of data stored (per GB per month) and the data redundancy option chosen. Common redundancy options include:
LRS (Locally-Redundant Storage): Data is replicated three times within a single data center. Lowest cost, but vulnerable to data center outages.
GRS (Geo-Redundant Storage): Data is replicated to a secondary Azure region hundreds of miles away, providing protection against regional outages. Higher cost.
ZRS (Zone-Redundant Storage): Data is replicated across three Azure availability zones within a single region. Offers higher availability than LRS within a region. (Not included in this simplified calculator).
Additionally, costs are incurred for data operations (read/write transactions) and data egress (data transferred out of the storage account).
Data Transfer Pricing
Data transfer within an Azure region is generally free. Inbound data transfer to Azure from the internet is also free. However, outbound data transfer (data moving from Azure to the internet or across regions) is charged per GB. The first few GBs per month are often free, with tiered pricing applied thereafter, where the cost per GB decreases as the volume of data transferred increases.