Azure pricing explained!

 

Azure Capability	Price	Remarks
Compute (server usage)	$0.12 /instance-hour	Compute charge is not usage based; the charges start adding up once you deploy the application.
Storage (persistent)	Storage @ $0.15 / GB-month stored	This will include Azure Blobs and Azure Tables where the information stored is not transient. Even though Azure Queue is part of the Azure Storage, the information stored being transient, no charges for the data that goes into the queues. However each transaction (item you write to the queue) you perform on the queue accrues charges. Please see the next row for the transaction charge.
Storage Transactions	$0.01/10K transactions	Every CRUDy (Create, Read, Update, Delete) transaction into Azure Queues (this is the only charge for the queues), Azure Tables, Azure Blobs will incur this charge.
SQL Azure: Web Edition	$9.99 /month (1GB RDBMS)	The SQL Server editions support access from on-premise applications through the familiar connection string approach. One can manage the cloud database through on-premise tools and access from on-premise applications
SQL Azure: Business Edition	$99.99 /month (10GB RDBMS)	Same as above.
.NET Services	$0.15/100K messages	A message may be Service Bus request or an Access Control token.
Bandwidth – ingress	$0.10/GB	Bandwidth charges are for the traffic in and out of Azure Cloud infrastructure. There will be no charges for the intra Azure Cloud data transfers. E.g. Web Role –> Azure Queue will not incur any charge.
Bandwidth – egress	$0.15/GB	Same as above.

 

For the original post, read it at https://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2009/07/14/confirming-commercial-availability-and-announcing-business-model.aspx.

-Hanu

 

(Disclaimer: the opinions expressed above are my own and not to be considered as the official response from Microsoft)

Comments

• Anonymous
  August 06, 2009
  Good post, Hanu!  A few comments/observations:

1. Compute is usage based, it's just that the granularity is at the instance level.  The more instances you use, the more you pay.  
2. Also, you can publish an app into Azure and not get charged until you start running it.  In other words, I believe an app can sit there in the cloud without being running and you won't get charged.
3. If you need more space than a SQL Azure business or web edition allows, you can have as many as you want -- you just need to think about how to partion and shard the data.
4.  For a simple Excel spreadsheet that lets you calculate costs based on usage of compute, storage, messages, and bandwidth, see Gregroy Renard's post here: http://blogs.codes-sources.com/redo/archive/2009/07/14/azure-services-platform-windows-azure-sql-services-net-services-calculez-vous-meme-votre-prix-d-hebergement-mensuel.aspx .   You can download the attachment at the bottom to get the Excel file.