Microsoft lists 65+ always-free Azure services. This page covers the main ones, the 12-month offers, the $200 credit, and billing rules.
Published 2026-03-31 · Reviewed 2026-09-13, corrections outstanding · Figures compiled 2026-03-31 · 1 of 1 figures in the “Recent Azure Changes” table come from our records for 1,580 developer tools · 8 Azure entries tracked
Three tiers, different rules. Azure's free offering splits into three categories. Always Free services never expire — Azure Functions, Cosmos DB (1,000 RU/s + 25 GB), SQL Database and App Service stay free forever within limits. 12-Month Free services (B2pts v2 and B2ats v2 VMs, Managed Disks, Blob Storage) expire after your first year. $200 Trial Credit lasts 30 days and does not cover Marketplace purchases or Spot VMs.
Azure's unique advantage: Cosmos DB's always-free tier (1,000 RU/s + 25 GB) is the most generous lifetime-free managed database from any major cloud provider. It's multi-model (document, graph, key-value, column-family) and globally distributable — no equivalent exists on AWS or GCP's always-free tiers.
The hidden costs: The free account has the spending limit turned on by default, so your card is not charged. At 30 days or when the credit runs out, your account and services are disabled unless you move to pay-as-you-go. Only pay-as-you-go has no spending cap: once you exceed free limits there, charges start immediately. Log Analytics ingestion, managed disk charges on deallocated VMs, and App Service F1 compute limits catch the most developers. We cover all of them below.
Comparing clouds? See our Cloud Free Tier Comparison for a side-by-side matrix of AWS vs GCP vs Azure vs DigitalOcean.
These services remain free indefinitely within their monthly limits. No expiration, no surprise bills after 12 months. This is the safest tier for long-running projects.
| Service | Free Limits | Category |
|---|---|---|
| ★ Azure Functions | Flex Consumption: 250,000 executions and 100,000 GB-s/month. Legacy Consumption plan: 1M executions and 400,000 GB-s/month Source ↗ | Compute |
| ★ Azure Cosmos DB | 1,000 RU/s throughput + 25 GB storage (lifetime) Source ↗ | Database |
| Azure SQL Database | Up to 10 General Purpose serverless databases, each with 100,000 vCore seconds and 32 GB/month, for the lifetime of your subscription Source ↗ | Database |
| App Service | 10 web/mobile/API apps (F1 tier), 1 GB storage, 60 min/day compute Source ↗ | Compute |
| Container Apps | 180,000 vCPU seconds, 360,000 GiB seconds and 2 million requests/month Source ↗ | Containers |
| Azure DevOps | 5 users, unlimited private Git repos, 1 Microsoft-hosted CI/CD job (60 min a run, 1,800 min/mo) once the organization is linked to an Azure subscription Source ↗ | DevOps |
| Azure Active Directory (Entra ID) | 50,000 stored objects (300,000 with a verified domain), SSO for all apps Source ↗ | Identity |
| Azure AI Search | 3 indexes, 50 MB storage per service (F tier) Source ↗ | Search |
| Foundry Tools: Language | 5,000 text records/month Source ↗ | AI/ML |
| Foundry Tools: Translator | 2 million characters/month Source ↗ | AI/ML |
| Bandwidth | 100 GB outbound data transfer/month (15 GB outbound for the first 12 months is separate) Source ↗ | Networking |
| Azure Maps | 1,000 to 5,000 transactions/month for specific mapping and location insights features Source ↗ | Location |
| Azure IoT Hub | 8,000 messages/day (F1 tier) Source ↗ | IoT |
| Notification Hubs | 1 million pushes, 100 free namespaces, 500 active devices per namespace Source ↗ | Messaging |
| Azure Advisor | Unlimited cost, security, reliability, performance recommendations Source ↗ | Management |
| Azure Policy | Free, up to 200 policy assignments per scope Source ↗ | Governance |
| Azure Resource Manager | Free, up to 980 resource groups per subscription and 50 tags per resource Source ↗ | IaC |
Available for 12 months from account creation. Customers who try Azure free must move to pay as you go within 30 days to continue receiving 12 months free services. When the 12 months end, pay-as-you-go rates apply, and Microsoft will send you an email notifying you when it's time to upgrade.
| Service | Free Limits | Category |
|---|---|---|
| Azure Virtual Machines | 750 hours/month each of B2pts v2 (Arm-based) and B2ats v2 (AMD-based) burstable VMs, for Linux and again for Windows | Compute |
| Azure Database for PostgreSQL | 750 hours/month of Flexible Server, Burstable B1MS instance, with 32 GB storage and 32 GB backup storage Source ↗ | Database |
| Azure Database for MySQL | 750 hours/month of Flexible Server, Burstable B1MS instance, with 32 GB storage and 32 GB backup storage Source ↗ | Database |
| Managed Disks | 2× 64 GB P6 SSD managed disks, 1 GB snapshots, 2M I/O ops | Storage |
| Azure Blob Storage | 5 GB LRS hot storage, 20K read / 10K write operations | Storage |
| Azure Files | 100 GB file storage (LRS), 2M transactions | Storage |
| Foundry Tools: Vision | 5,000 transactions/month for each S1, S2 and S3 tier Source ↗ | AI/ML |
| Azure Service Bus | 750 hours and 13 million operations/month, Standard tier base unit | Messaging |
New accounts get $200 in Azure credits valid for 30 days. Unlike GCP's $300/90-day trial, Azure's credit expires faster. It does not cover Marketplace purchases or Spot VMs, and free trials start with zero GPU quota and aren't eligible for limit or quota increases.
| Service | Free Limits | Category |
|---|---|---|
| ★ $200 Azure Credit | $200 credit, valid for 30 days. Not for Marketplace purchases or Spot VMs Source ↗ | Credits |
| Microsoft Foundry | Access to GPT-4o and Llama models with credit | AI/ML |
| Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) | Free cluster management, pay only for VMs (use with $200 credit) Source ↗ | Containers |
| Microsoft Fabric | Free trial capacity for data analytics and AI workloads | Analytics |
| Azure OpenAI Service | GPT-4o, Whisper with trial credit | AI/ML |
Common developer use cases and which Azure free services to combine. All stacks below can run at zero cost within free tier limits.
Azure Functions + Cosmos DB (1,000 RU/s + 25 GB) + Blob Storage (5 GB, free for 12 months). Serverless and scales to zero; Functions and Cosmos DB stay free within limits. The Cosmos DB integration with Functions is first-class — input/output bindings make it seamless.
App Service F1 (10 apps) or a B2ats v2 VM (12-month) + Azure SQL Database (serverless, always free) + Blob Storage (12-month). For persistent hosting, use the VM. For hobby apps that can sleep, App Service F1 works. See our hosting alternatives for more options.
Azure Active Directory / Entra ID (50K objects) + App Service for SSO. Includes SAML, OIDC, and MFA. For comparison, Amazon Cognito's free tier is 10,000 MAUs (50,000 for user pools created by November 22, 2024). Firebase Authentication includes email, social and anonymous sign-in at no cost; SMS needs the pay-as-you-go Blaze plan.
Foundry Tools (Language and Translator always free, Vision free for 12 months) + Azure OpenAI (with $200 credit) + Azure Functions for inference endpoints. Or use Microsoft Foundry for a managed playground. See our AI/ML tools guide for more options.
Azure DevOps (5 users, 1 free parallel pipeline, 1,800 min/mo) + Azure Container Apps (always free) + Azure Container Registry. A complete CI/CD pipeline with hosted agents, boards, and artifact feeds — free for small teams. See our CI/CD alternatives for comparison.
Azure's free tier is generous, but these costs catch developers off guard. The free account's spending limit is on by default; once you move to pay-as-you-go there is no spending cap, and Azure bills immediately when free limits are exceeded.
The first 5 GB a month per billing account are free. After that, ingestion is billed per GB at a regional rate: $2.30/GB in East US. Resource logs are collected only once you create a diagnostic setting.
The free account has the spending limit turned on by default, so your card is not charged. Once you move to pay-as-you-go, services bill the moment you exceed free limits: a spending limit isn't shown in the Azure portal and you can't enable one. Budgets send alerts, but your consumption isn't stopped.
The F1 tier gives 60 minutes of compute/day, no custom domain SSL, no always-on. Apps sleep after 20 min idle. For persistent hosting, a B2ats v2 or B2pts v2 VM (12-month free) is better.
1,000 RU/s sounds generous, but a single complex query can consume 50+ RUs. Exceed the limit and requests get HTTP 429 throttled. Monitor RU consumption from day one.
Data transfer between Azure regions is billed: $0.02/GB within North America or Europe, $0.05/GB from those continents to others, and up to $0.16/GB elsewhere. Keep resources in the same region.
When the 12 months end, these services are billed at pay-as-you-go rates. Microsoft will send you an email notifying you when it's time to upgrade. Set a calendar reminder for your anniversary date as well.
Stopping a VM from the OS doesn't deallocate it — you still pay. You must 'Stop (Deallocate)' from the Azure Portal or CLI to stop billing. Public IP charges continue separately.
Even when a VM is deallocated, you pay for its managed disks. A 64 GB P6 SSD costs $9.29/month in East US 2 and $10.21/month in East US. Delete disks you don't need.
Azure excels in enterprise features (Active Directory, DevOps, .NET ecosystem) and has the best lifetime-free database (Cosmos DB). Here's how it compares for developers. See our AWS Free Tier guide and GCP Free Tier guide for full breakdowns of each.
| Provider | Key Free Tier | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| AWS | Always Free: Lambda 1M req/mo, DynamoDB 25 GB, 30+ services | Serverless backends, broadest ecosystem |
| GCP (Google Cloud) Source ↗ | Always Free: e2-micro VM, BigQuery 1 TiB, Cloud Run 2M req/mo | Side projects needing a persistent VM |
| Railway Source ↗ | $5 free trial credit, usage-based pricing after | Quick prototypes, hobby projects Sign up via our referral link and get $20 in credits What you have to do to get it
|
| Render Source ↗ | Free web services (512 MB RAM), free PostgreSQL (30 days) | Replacing Heroku for small apps |
| Supabase Source ↗ | 500 MB database, 50K MAU auth, 1 GB storage | Firebase alternative with SQL |
| Neon Source ↗ | 100 CU-hours and 1 GB of storage per project, auth up to 60k MAU, branching | Serverless Postgres with branching and scale-to-zero |
| Cloudflare Source ↗ | Workers 100K req/day, R2 10 GB, D1 5 GB, Pages unlimited | Global edge apps, static sites, storage |
| Vercel Source ↗ | Hobby plan (personal, non-commercial use only): 100 deployments/day, 100 GB Fast Data Transfer/month, 1M function invocations/month. | Frontend apps and Jamstack sites |
Microsoft offers some of the most generous startup programs in the industry.
Free to join, no funding required. B2B tech startups get $200 on sign-up and up to $150K as they verify the business and use Azure. GitHub Enterprise and Microsoft 365 offers are for startups backed by Microsoft's Investor Network.
Investor Network-backed startups also get GitHub Enterprise and Visual Studio Enterprise offers. Combined with the free tier services above, this gives startups a complete development platform at zero cost.
AWS Activate: up to $200K credits (Portfolio needs an Activate Provider Org ID). Google for Startups: up to $200K, or $350K for AI-first startups (VC funding, pre-seed to Series A). Microsoft for Startups: up to $150K with no investor needed. See our Startup Credits guide for a full comparison of all programs.
Azure pricing changes we've tracked. See the full timeline for all 424 tracked changes across all providers.
| Date | Service | Change | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| discovered Sep 2, 2026 · effective date unknown | Microsoft for Startups | The program now offers up to $150,000 in credits. Unconfirmed. We could not check this change against an archived copy of Microsoft for Startups's page, so it does not count toward the rating. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Feb 13, 2026 | Microsoft Partner Developer Benefits | Per-user monthly Azure credits eliminated, replaced with organization-level bulk Azure credits. Visual Studio license in all benefit tiers now exclusively VS Enterprise IDE Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
A source check reads each cited page for that service's name and a price. The figures in the tables above are from our own records, except for the services whose entry below dates them to a read of the vendor's own page.
Search Azure free tier services, compare with alternatives, and track pricing changes — all from your AI coding assistant.
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