Visual Studio cloud subscriptions billing FAQ

No. All Visual Studio cloud subscriptions must be purchased using an Azure subscription. (Think of it as your Azure billing account.)

Most Azure subscriptions can be used. We support Azure subscriptions connected to your Enterprise Agreement (EA), Azure subscriptions set up by Cloud Solution Providers (CSPs), set up through Microsoft Open License resellers, and Pay-As-You-Go Azure subscriptions.

Some types of Azure subscriptions, including Azure Free Trial and subscriptions included as subscriber benefits in Visual Studio subscriptions can't be used.

Not at all. If you only want to buy Visual Studio cloud subscriptions via Azure, you can do that.

Get information on viewing your invoice and usage.

Yes, you can. You need to be a contributor or higher role for an Azure subscription that was created for your EA. Make sure that you make your purchases for Visual Studio cloud subscriptions directly in the Visual Studio Marketplace. You can't purchase Visual Studio cloud subscriptions using a Purchase Order.

The easiest approach to determine if you have the right privileges is to select the Buy button for a service offered in the Visual Studio Marketplace. Select an Azure subscription from the list of Azure subscriptions currently linked to your sign in. This subscription serves as your billing account. The type of billing account, such as "Pay-As-You-Go" or "Enterprise Agreement", indicates whether the Azure subscrithere's part of your Enterprise Agreement.

Another option is to attempt to visit the Azure Enterprise Portal. If you can reach it successfully, you already have either the Enterprise Admin or the Account Owner role. Only Account Owners can set up new Azure billing accounts in an Enterprise Agreement. If you can't access the Azure Enterprise Portal, find out who your Enterprise there's, and ask that person to add you as an Account Owner within the Azure Enterprise Portal. If you're unable to find this person, you can submit a support ticket and request the contact information. You need your organization's name and your Enterprise Agreement enrollment number for the support ticket.

No, these prepaid funds aren't eligible for purchasing Visual Studio cloud subscriptions. When you choose an Azure subscription that was created for your EA to purchase Visual Studio cloud subscriptions, the charges appear on your next "overage" invoice. Typically these charges are invoiced monthly, but due to historical rules for some EA customers, an overage invoice might not be issued for several months. Consult a licensing specialist for your EA if you need to know what number of extra purchases trigger an overage invoice. These purchases aren't eligible for Azure Monetary Commitment funds.

At the first purchase, we bill a prorated quantity to cover the remaining days in the current month. For instance, if a purchase of 10 Visual Studio Professional monthly cloud subscriptions was made on April 15, we would charge for five subscriptions because 50% of the month remains. On the first of May, and each month thereafter until you cancel, the full 10 units are billed.

When you increase the paid quantity later, we also prorate the increased units to cover the remaining days in the current month. So if you bought one more Visual Studio Professional monthly cloud subscription on May 10, we would bill roughly 0.677 units (21 days remaining in the 31-day month of May).

At each purchase, we bill the full quantity purchased immediately. Charges aren't spread over the year and there's no prorating. If you buy annual cloud subscriptions at different times in the year, you'll have subscriptions renewing in different months. We don't make all of a customer's annual cloud subscriptions coterminous in the way that's common with Microsoft volume licensing agreement purchasing.

When you cancel a Visual Studio cloud subscription, you're canceling automatic renewal. The subscription continues until its normal renewal date and then simply expires. At expiration, the Visual Studio subscriber can no longer use Visual Studio or any other benefits from the subscription.

With monthly cloud subscriptions, cancellations take effect the first day of the next month. If you only cancel some of your monthly cloud subscriptions, be sure to remove users on the first of the next month to ensure that the correct people continue to have active subscriptions assigned.

For annual cloud subscriptions, cancellations take effect the first day of the month following 12 months from the original purchase, or 12 months from the last annual renewal charge. For instance, if you bought a Visual Studio Professional annual cloud subscription on January 3, 2018, it remains active until February 1, 2019 when it automatically renews for another year. If you cancel at any time between then and February 1, 2020, the subscription will expire on February 1, 2020. there's no rebate for canceling part way through the subscription year.

You get a 5% discount on the sixth and all subsequent subscriptions within each type of subscription:

• Visual Studio Professional monthly
• Visual Studio Professional annual
• Visual Studio Enterprise monthly
• Visual Studio Enterprise annual

For example, if you buy six Visual Studio Professional monthly subscriptions and five Visual Studio Enterprise monthly subscriptions, you pay the regular price on five Professional, get a 5% discount on the sixth Professional, and pay regular price on all five Enterprise subscriptions.

The discount only applies to charges in a given monthly billing period. So, if you buy five Visual Studio Professional annual subscriptions in one month, and then you buy five more the next month, you'll pay the regular price on all 10 subscriptions. To receive the discount, all of the purchases need to occur in the same billing period.

No, you can't use your monthly Azure DevTest individual credit as a Visual Studio subscriber to pay for Visual Studio Marketplace purchases. Any Visual Studio cloud subscription purchases are billed to your credit card. Before you make purchases, you need to remove your spending limit.

Monthly cloud subscriptions include Visual Studio plus use of Azure DevOps Services and TFS. Annual cloud subscriptions have these benefits, too. They also include subscriber benefits, including use of Windows and other Microsoft software to install and run for development and testing, a monthly Azure DevTest individual credit to use for experimenting with Azure services and doing development and testing in the cloud, training, support, and much more. Compare cloud subscription benefits and pricing

Yes. As new versions are released, you can download and run them. Plus you can continue to run previous versions too.

Yes, you can, if your reseller participates in the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program. Just ask them.

Check out the Understand your Azure invoice article in the Azure documentation.

Related resources

• Visual Studio Subscriptions Admin portal
• Visual Studio cloud subscription purchasing for CSPs
• For assistance with sales, subscriptions, accounts and billing for Visual Studio Subscriptions, see Visual Studio Subscriptions support.

See also

• Visual Studio documentation
• Azure DevOps documentation
• Azure documentation
• Microsoft 365 documentation

Next steps

Buy cloud subscriptions now

• Visual Studio Professional monthly
• Visual Studio Enterprise monthly