Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines Plans Pricing
Azure Virtual Machines is consumption-priced per second (1-minute minimum) with per-hour rate cards published per VM size, region, and OS (Linux, Windows, RHEL, SUSE). The Azure Resource Manager (ARM) management API itself is free. Three commercial commitments reduce cost dramatically — Reserved Instances (1- or 3-year, ~30–72% off pay-as-you-go), Azure Savings Plans for Compute (flexible hourly commit, ~11–65% off), and Spot VMs (up to ~90% off with eviction risk). Azure Hybrid Benefit lets customers bring Windows Server / SQL Server licenses with Software Assurance.
Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines Plans Pricing is the machine-readable pricing-plan profile for Azure Virtual Machines on the APIs.io network, in the API Commons Plans shape.
It defines 10 plans, covering freemium, usage-based, subscription, and enterprise tiers, with named plans including ARM Control Plane (Free), Pay-As-You-Go — B-series (Burstable) Linux, Pay-As-You-Go — D-series (General Purpose) Linux, Pay-As-You-Go — F-series (Compute Optimized) Linux, Pay-As-You-Go — Windows Server premium, and 5 more.
This profile was written by API Evangelist and has not been verified against a page the provider published; treat every figure as unconfirmed until a dated transcription replaces it.
Tagged areas include Cloud Computing, Compute, IaaS, Infrastructure, and Virtual Machines.
generated, dated 2026-05-05.
Plans
Calling the Azure Resource Manager management API to create / read / update / delete VM resources is free. You pay only for the VM-hours and associated resources you provision (disks, network, IPs).
- All ARM CRUD operations on Microsoft.Compute resources
- Subject to Compute throttling token buckets (see rate-limits/)
Cost-efficient burstable VMs that accumulate CPU credits when idle. Examples shown for East US Linux pricing.
- Per-second billing
- Burstable CPU credits
General-purpose VMs with balanced CPU/memory ratio.
- Premium SSD support
- Accelerated networking
High CPU-to-memory ratio for batch / analytics / web servers.
- Higher CPU clock speed
- Suitable for batch / web tier
Windows VMs add a per-vCPU Windows Server license premium on top of base compute. Azure Hybrid Benefit eliminates the premium if you bring your own license.
- Windows Server included by default
- Bring Your Own License (BYOL) via Azure Hybrid Benefit
Surplus capacity with up to 90% discount vs PAYG. Subject to eviction with 30-second notice when Azure needs the capacity.
- Up to 90% discount
- Eviction with 30-sec notice
- Best for fault-tolerant batch / dev
Pre-commit to a specific VM size for 1 year for ~30–40% off PAYG. Single-region or Region Flexibility scope.
- All up-front, partial up-front, or no up-front
- Region/instance flexibility option
- Convertible to other RIs in family
Pre-commit for 3 years. Up to ~72% off PAYG for steady-state workloads.
- Maximum committed-use discount
- Convertible across same VM family
Hourly $-commitment for 1- or 3-year. ~11–65% off PAYG. Flexible across VM family / region / OS / Container Instances / Functions Premium / App Service / Dedicated Host.
- Flexible across compute services
- Auto-applies to lowest-priced eligible VM-hour
Negotiated rates with committed Azure consumption (MACC), volume tier discounts, and Software Assurance benefits.
- Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC)
- Software Assurance / Hybrid Benefit
- Dedicated technical account management
Sources
- https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/linux/
- https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/windows/
- https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/reserved-vm-instances/
- https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/spot-advisor/
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/sizes
Work with this as data
Every plan here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.