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Provider guide

Azure free tier

Azure has 14 services with a free tier -13 always-free, 1 time-limited, and 0 credit-based. Average FTV score across the set: 39/100. Last verified Aug 18, 2026.

What you actually get free on Azure

Azure splits its free offer into a handful of permanently-free service tiers plus a time-limited signup credit, layered on top of Microsoft’s broader cloud platform. Across Azure's 14 services, 13 give you a permanent monthly allowance, 1 is a time-limited introductory or trial offer, and 14 of 14 publish a pricing page, linked in the table below.

Always free vs free trial vs free credit

Azure's free offers come in three shapes. Each badge links to the full definition of that type.

Always free

13
Free tier

Products that ship with a permanent free tier - typically a usage cap that resets each month, with paid plans available when you need to scale beyond it.

Free trial

1
Intro tier

Free tiers with an introductory phase that hands new accounts a larger allowance for the first few months, then steps down to a smaller permanent free tier.

Free credit

0

None. No Azure service hands out a one-time signup credit - free access comes as an ongoing allowance instead.

Azure free tier limits, service by service

ServiceTypeWhat's freeFTVEst. value
Azure Cosmos DBFree tier
  • 1,000 RU/s provisioned throughput free for the lifetime of one Azure Cosmos DB account per Azure subscription.
  • 25 GB storage free each month for the lifetime of one Azure Cosmos DB account per Azure subscription.
  • Up to 25 containers sharing 1,000 RU/s at the database level with shared throughput databases.
  • Up to 5 shared throughput databases per free tier account.
52—
Azure Event GridFree tier
  • Free usage per month: 1,000,000 MQTT operations in Event Grid Standard tier.
  • Free usage per month: 1,000,000 event operations in Event Grid Standard tier.
  • Free usage per month: 100,000 operations in Event Grid Basic tier.
  • Free event retention for 7 days on namespace topics in Standard tier.
  • Free event retention for 1 day in Basic tier.
52—
Azure Container AppsFree tier
  • The first 180,000 vCPU-seconds per subscription per month are free.
  • The first 360,000 GiB-seconds per subscription per month are free.
  • The first 2 million requests per subscription per month are free.
49$7.00 / month
Azure DevOpsFree tier
  • First 5 users free for Azure DevOps Basic access.
  • 1 Microsoft-hosted CI/CD parallel job with 1,800 minutes per month.
  • 1 self-hosted CI/CD parallel job with unlimited minutes per month.
  • 2 GiB free Azure Artifacts storage per organization.
  • Azure Boards access for creating, editing, searching, and viewing work items.
  • Azure Pipelines access for continuous integration and deployment, plus release approvals.
  • Azure Repos access for unlimited private Git repositories.
  • Stakeholder access to view charts, widgets, dashboards, and wikis.
48$6.00 / month
Azure FunctionsFree tier
  • Monthly free grant of 400,000 GB-s of resource consumption for Consumption plan, per subscription.
  • Monthly free grant of 1 million executions for Consumption plan, per subscription.
  • Monthly free grant of 100,000 GB-s of on-demand resource consumption for Flex Consumption plan, per subscription.
  • Monthly free grant of 250,000 on-demand executions for Flex Consumption plan, per subscription.
  • Free preview use of Functions on Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes during preview, excluding underlying Kubernetes infrastructure costs.
  • Free use with Azure IoT Edge at no charge.
46$6.87 / month
Azure Virtual MachinesIntro tier
  • 750 hours each of B2pts v2 (Arm-based) burstable Linux VMs for 12 months.
  • 750 hours each of B2ats v2 (AMD-based) burstable Linux VMs for 12 months.
  • 750 hours each of B2pts v2 (Arm-based) burstable Windows VMs for 12 months.
  • 750 hours each of B2ats v2 (AMD-based) burstable Windows VMs for 12 months.
46$21 / month
Azure MonitorFree tier
  • Azure Activity Logs available at no charge for ingestion.
  • Platform metrics ingestion included at no cost with unlimited standard metrics.
  • Platform metric queries include the first 1,000,000 API calls per month.
  • Ping web tests are free.
  • Activity Log alert rules are limited to 100 rules per subscription.
  • Metric alerts include 10 monitored metric time-series per month.
  • Notifications include 1,000 emails per month.
  • Notifications include 1,000 push notifications per month.
  • Notifications include 1,000 ITSM connector create or update events per month.
  • Notifications include 1 secure web hook.
  • Notifications include 100,000 web hooks per month.
  • Voice calls include 0-10 calls for supported countries.
  • SMS includes 0-100 notifications in the United States.
44$3.00 / month
Azure SQL DatabaseFree tier
  • Up to 10 databases with 100,000 vCore seconds of serverless compute free each month, for the lifetime of the subscription.
  • 32 GB of storage free per database each month, for the lifetime of the subscription.
43—
Microsoft Entra IDFree tier
  • Support for multifactor authentication for cloud users.
  • Unlimited single sign-on across any SaaS app.
  • Basic reports.
  • Self-service password change for cloud users.
  • Manage users and groups in the cloud.
  • Sync on-premises directory with Microsoft Entra ID.
41$3.00 / month
Azure Notification HubsFree tier
  • Access to 1 million pushes per subscription per tier.
  • Up to 100 namespaces per tier.
  • Up to 100 hubs per namespace.
  • Up to 500 active devices per namespace.
  • Cross-platform push to individual devices.
  • Push variables support.
  • Limited telemetry.
  • Queryable audience via registration queries.
  • Flexible disaster recovery region availability.
38$1.00 / month
Azure App ServiceFree tier
  • Free plan for trials, experimentation, and learning the service.
  • No SLA included for free and shared plans.
  • Metered on a per-app basis.
  • Shared compute with 60 CPU minutes per day.
  • 1 GB RAM included.
  • 1 GB storage included.
37$2.00 / month
Azure Kubernetes ServiceFree tier
  • No SLA for the Free tier; suitable for experimentation and development only.
  • Pay only for underlying resources while using the Free tier.
  • Free tier clusters are not meant to run at scale beyond 10 nodes.
  • Free tier is not intended for workloads requiring high availability.
  • Monthly uptime goal above 99.5% for the Kubernetes API server on the Free plan.
34$1.00 / month
Azure Static Web AppsFree tier
  • Free plan: $0/app/month, for hobby and personal projects.
  • 100 GB of bandwidth included per subscription.
  • 0.50 GB of storage included, up to 0.25 GB per app deployment.
  • 2 custom domains per app with free SSL certificates.
17$3.00 / month
Azure AI SearchFree tier
  • Free tier: 50 MB of storage per service, shared infrastructure.
  • Up to 3 indexes on the Free tier.
  • No hourly search-unit charge on the Free tier.
0—

When the free tier runs out

For Azure services that publish a paid plan, here's the cheapest next step up once you outgrow the free allowance.

Azure free tier gotchas

Two different clocks: 12 months vs always free

Azure runs two overlapping programs: a set of services with a genuinely permanent free tier, and a separate batch that’s free only for a new account’s first 12 months before reverting to standard pay-as-you-go billing. Confirm which bucket a service falls into before relying on it long-term.

The signup credit is a separate pool

New accounts also receive a time-boxed dollar credit at signup, usable across any Azure service. That credit is unrelated to the always-free and 12-month-free service lists - it’s a separate allowance that expires on its own clock and doesn’t extend the free tiers below.

Free tiers are restricted by region and SKU

The free App Service and Virtual Machine tiers are only available on specific VM sizes and in a subset of Azure regions. Deploying to an unsupported region or picking a larger SKU silently drops you onto standard billing rather than erroring.

Change timeline

Last verified Aug 18, 2026.

FAQ

Is Azure's free tier permanent?

Of the 14 Azure services with a free tier, 13 offer a permanent recurring free allowance, 1 is a time-limited introductory or trial offer, and 0 hand out a one-time signup credit.

Which Azure service has the best free tier?

Azure Cosmos DB scores highest of Azure's services with a free tier, with an FTV score of 52 out of 100.

How many Azure services have a free tier?

14 Azure services offer a genuine free tier.

What happens when I outgrow Azure's free tier?

Each service moves to its own paid plan. 14 of 14 Azure services publish a price for what comes after the free tier.

See every Azure product's full listing in our Microsoft Azure company profile, or browse the other provider guides: AWS, GCP, Cloudflare.