95 articles on azure — what drives the cost, how it is priced, and where the savings actually are.
Stream Analytics bills per streaming unit-hour, the provisioned capacity that runs your streaming query, whether or not data flows. Right-sizing streaming units to real throughput and stopping idle jobs are the levers. Here is the model.
Communication Services bills per usage across channels, per minute for calling, per SMS, per email, per chat message, with pay-as-you-go rates and no fixed platform fee. Channel volume drives the bill. Here is the per-channel model.
Sentinel bills per GB of data ingested and analyzed (on top of Log Analytics storage), with commitment tiers that discount at volume. High-volume log sources drive the bill. Filtering and tiering ingestion are the levers. Here is the model.
Defender for Cloud bills per protected resource per month, per plan (servers, containers, databases, storage, and more), each priced separately. Enabling every plan on every resource over-pays. Here is how the plan-based model works.
Logic Apps has two models: Consumption bills per action execution and connector call (scales to zero), while Standard runs on a hosting plan billed for allocated compute. Match the model to workflow volume. Here is the comparison.
Azure AI Services (formerly Cognitive Services) bill per transaction for APIs like Vision, Language, and Speech, with free and standard tiers and volume discounts. Chatty clients and premium features drive the bill. Here is the model.
Azure Container Instances bills per vCPU-second and memory-GB-second while a container runs, with no cluster to manage or idle. It suits bursty and short-lived containers; steady workloads are cheaper on AKS. Here is the model.
Data Lake Storage Gen2 prices like blob storage, hot, cool, cold, and archive tiers plus transaction and data-retrieval charges, with a hierarchical namespace. Matching tier to access frequency and minimizing transactions are the levers. Here is the model.
Front Door Standard has a modest base fee plus usage; Premium costs several times more but bundles managed WAF rules, bot protection, and Private Link. Paying for Premium features you do not use is the overspend. Here is how to choose.
Azure OpenAI bills per 1,000 tokens by model on the standard pay-as-you-go option, or per Provisioned Throughput Unit (PTU) for reserved, predictable capacity. Model choice and token volume drive standard cost. Here is how to control it.
Azure Cache for Redis bills per hour by tier (Basic, Standard, Premium, Enterprise) and cache size, provisioned regardless of use. Basic has no replica; Standard and above add availability. Here is how the tiers price and how to choose.
Cosmos DB serverless bills per request unit (RU) consumed plus storage, with no provisioned throughput to pay for when idle. It suits spiky or low-traffic workloads; steady high traffic is cheaper on provisioned throughput. Here is how to choose.
Synapse bills dedicated SQL pools per DWU-hour, serverless SQL per TB scanned, and Spark pools per vCore-hour, plus data integration. Pausing dedicated pools and using serverless for ad-hoc queries are the big levers. Here is the breakdown.
Data Factory bills orchestration per activity run, data movement per DIU-hour, and mapping data flows per vCore-hour, plus pipeline monitoring. Chatty pipelines and always-on data flow clusters are the usual overspend. Here is the breakdown.
Managed disks bill by type and provisioned size (Premium SSD, Standard SSD, Standard HDD, Ultra), so you pay for capacity whether or not you use it. Ultra and Premium v2 add provisioned IOPS and throughput. Here is how to pick the right tier.
Azure Firewall charges a fixed hourly deployment fee (around $1.25/hour, roughly $900/month) plus about $0.016 per GB processed. The always-on hourly fee, not data processing, is what shocks teams. Here is the breakdown and cheaper alternatives.
Azure Bastion bills a fixed hourly fee by tier (Basic around $0.19/hour, roughly $140/month) plus outbound data transfer. It runs around the clock whether or not anyone connects, so it is worth it for shared access, not one rarely-used VM.
Azure NAT Gateway charges about $0.045 per hour plus about $0.045 per GB processed, the same shape as the AWS NAT gateway. It is often cheaper and simpler than Azure Firewall for outbound-only needs. Here is how it prices and where it fits.
Application Insights bills by data ingested (around $2.30 per GB after a free allowance) plus retention beyond 90 days. Sampling and trimming noisy telemetry are the main levers. Here is how the ingestion-based model works.
API Management ranges from Consumption (per-call, scales to zero) to Premium (per-unit hourly, thousands a month). Picking a tier heavier than you need is the classic overspend. Here is how the tiers price and how to choose.
Service Bus Basic and Standard bill per operation (plus a base fee on Standard), while Premium bills per messaging unit by the hour for predictable performance. Here is how the tiers price and when Premium is worth its fixed cost.
Event Hubs Standard bills throughput units by the hour plus per-million ingress events; Premium and Dedicated allocate reserved capacity. Under-provision throughput units and you throttle; over-provision and you overpay. Here is how to size it.
ACR charges a fixed daily fee by tier (Basic around $5/month, Standard around $20, Premium around $50) that includes storage and throughput, plus overages and data transfer. The tier, not usage, sets most of the bill. Here is how to choose.
Standard Key Vault bills about $0.03 per 10,000 operations, so software-protected secrets are nearly free. HSM-protected keys (Premium) and Managed HSM add fixed or per-key costs. Here is where the money actually is.