Azure Storage Pricing Calculator: Free Tool
Azure Blob Storage pricing looks simple on the rate card and then behaves differently on the invoice, because the per-GB price is only one of five charges. The same data costs a different amount on every access tier, redundancy quietly multiplies the capacity line, and operations and retrieval fees can outweigh storage itself. This Azure storage pricing calculator prices one workload properly: pick a tier and redundancy, enter capacity, write and read operations, retrieval and egress, and it returns a line-item monthly estimate plus the same workload priced on all four tiers side by side.
That all-tier comparison is the part most estimates skip, and it is where the expensive mistakes hide. Archive has the cheapest storage rate in Azure and, in the worked example below, produces the most expensive bill by a factor of four, because its read operations cost $5.50 per 10,000 against $0.0044 on Hot. Storage-only pricing is for a whole Azure architecture; if you need the full multi-service estimate, use the Azure cost calculator linked further down. This page is storage, all of it, in detail.
Rates are Azure list-price samples (first 50 TB band, LRS base, US regions), last checked October 2026. Your region, agreement and account features can change them: confirm final numbers on the official Azure Blob Storage pricing page before budgeting.
Quick Answer
Key takeaways
- Blob Storage bills five things at once: capacity, write operations, read operations, retrieval (on Cool, Cold and Archive) and egress. The per-GB rate is often the smallest problem.
- Redundancy multiplies only the capacity line: ZRS 1.25 times, GRS 2 times, GZRS 2.5 times the LRS sample rates in this tool.
- Archive is offline storage. Its reads cost $5.50 per 10,000 operations, over 1,000 times the Hot rate, so it only wins for data you genuinely almost never read.
- Cool, Cold and Archive carry minimum storage durations of 30, 90 and 180 days. Deleting or moving data earlier still bills the remaining days.
- Quick Answer
- The five charges on an Azure Blob Storage bill
- Worked example: 1 TB of working data, priced four ways
- Redundancy: the multiplier nobody budgets
- Minimum durations and the early-deletion charge
- What competing calculators miss
- Frequently asked questions
- Add This Calculator to Your Website
- References
The five charges on an Azure Blob Storage bill
Every Blob Storage invoice is built from the same five parts, and this calculator prices all five. Capacity is the familiar per-GB monthly rate for the tier. Write operations and read operations are billed per 10,000, at rates that climb steeply as the tier gets colder. Retrieval is a per-GB fee for reading data back out of Cool, Cold or Archive. Egress is the per-GB charge for data leaving Azure, with the first 5 GB each month free.
The shape of the trade-off is consistent: as storage gets cheaper per GB, touching the data gets more expensive. Microsoft sets out the full rate tables on its Azure Blob Storage pricing page, and the tier rules themselves in its access tiers documentation. What neither page does is add your workload up. That is the job of the calculator at the top.
Worked example: 1 TB of working data, priced four ways
The calculator is pre-filled with a small production workload: 1,000 GB stored, 50,000 writes and 200,000 reads a month, nothing retrieved from cold tiers, and 100 GB downloaded. Here is what it returns on Hot with LRS, and what the same workload costs on each tier.
| Line item (Hot / LRS) | Math | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Storage | 1,000 GB x $0.0208 x 1 (LRS) | $20.80 |
| Write operations | 5 x 10k units x $0.055 | $0.28 |
| Read operations | 20 x 10k units x $0.0044 | $0.09 |
| Retrieval | 0 GB (no retrieval charge on Hot) | $0.00 |
| Egress | (100 minus 5 free) GB x $0.087 | $8.26 |
| Total on Hot | $29.43/mo |
Two lessons fall out of this one workload. First, Cold beats Hot here even with 200,000 reads a month, because the capacity saving ($20.80 down to $4.50) dwarfs its higher operation rates at this scale. Second, Archive collapses: its storage line is the cheapest of all at $2.00, and its read line is $110.00, because 200,000 reads at $5.50 per 10,000 is real money. Archive is a write-once, read-almost-never tier. If your access pattern has any regularity at all, run it here before you move data down.
Redundancy: the multiplier nobody budgets
Redundancy decides how many copies of your data Azure keeps, and it multiplies the capacity line only. Operations, retrieval and egress do not change. In this tool's sample rates, ZRS (copies across availability zones in one region) costs 1.25 times LRS, GRS (a second copy in a paired region) costs 2 times, and GZRS costs 2.5 times. Microsoft explains the durability each option buys in its storage redundancy documentation.
On the worked example, switching Hot from LRS to GRS moves storage from $20.80 to $41.60 and the total from $29.43 to $50.23. Nothing about the data or its usage changed; the bill rose 71 percent because a second regional copy exists. That is sometimes exactly what you want to pay for. It should never be a surprise line item, and it is the reason "we store 1 TB" is not a storage budget. For the whole-architecture version of this estimate, with storage as one category among seven, the Azure cost calculator prices the full stack in one pass.
Minimum durations and the early-deletion charge
Cool data is billed for at least 30 days, Cold for 90, Archive for 180, whether or not it stays that long. Delete a Cold blob on day 10 and Azure bills the remaining 80 days at the Cold rate as an early-deletion charge. Moving a blob to a hotter tier early triggers the same charge, and the move itself counts as operations on both tiers.
This is why lifecycle policies need care. A rule that pushes 60-day-old data to Cold and a process that deletes it at day 75 combine into paying for storage you no longer have. The calculator shows each tier's minimum next to its comparison line so the commitment is visible before you choose. Teams that serve media or downloads from blob storage should also test the egress line hard: a workload that stores little but serves a lot can spend more on egress than on everything else combined, and pairing storage with the compute that serves it is what the Azure VM pricing calculator and a service like the streaming cost calculator help sanity-check from the delivery side.
What competing calculators miss
We reviewed the top-ranking Azure storage tools and pricing guides for this search before rebuilding this page.
Winning move 1: the same workload on every tier, in the result. The official pricing page gives you rate tables and leaves the workload math to you. Guide-style pages warn that Archive reads are expensive in the abstract. This calculator prices your exact workload on Hot, Cool, Cold and Archive in one result, so the Archive trap appears as a dollar figure ($120.81 against $15.66 on Cold in the example), not as a warning you have to imagine.
Winning move 2: redundancy priced as the multiplier it is. Several guides quote LRS rates and mention redundancy in a footnote. Here redundancy is an input with an explicit multiplier on capacity, and the GRS case is worked in dollars: same data, same usage, $29.43 becomes $50.23.
Winning move 3: the rules are enforced, not just described. Archive with ZRS is not offered by Azure, so the calculator refuses that combination with an explanation instead of pricing a product that does not exist. Minimum durations sit next to the comparison lines they apply to. One honest limit: this tool uses flat sample rates in the first 50 TB band and a flat egress rate, so very large or egress-heavy estates should confirm tiered volume pricing on the official page before signing a budget.
Frequently asked questions
It depends on how often the data is read. Archive has the lowest storage rate, but its read operations cost $5.50 per 10,000, so with 200,000 reads a month it is the most expensive tier overall in the worked example ($120.81 against $15.66 on Cold). Rarely touched data belongs on Cold or Archive; regularly read data usually belongs on Hot or Cool. Run your own operation counts in the calculator to see where your workload lands.
Archive blobs are stored offline and must be rehydrated to an online tier before they can be read, which takes hours at standard priority. Reads cost $5.50 per 10,000 operations plus a $0.022 per GB retrieval fee in this tool's sample rates, against $0.0044 per 10,000 reads and no retrieval fee on Hot. Archive is priced for data you expect almost never to touch.
No. Azure does not offer zone-redundant storage for the Archive tier. Use LRS, GRS or GZRS for archived data. The calculator blocks the Archive plus ZRS combination and tells you why instead of pricing it.
Yes, the first 5 GB of outbound data transfer per month is free in the pricing this tool models. Beyond that, this calculator prices egress at a flat $0.087 per GB. Heavy egress at multi-terabyte scale moves into lower tiered rates on the official Azure bandwidth pricing, so confirm there for very large download volumes.
Cool, Cold and Archive data carries a minimum storage duration of 30, 90 and 180 days. If a blob is deleted or moved to a hotter tier before that period ends, Azure bills the remaining days at that tier's rate as an early-deletion charge. Lifecycle rules that move data down and processes that delete it soon after can combine into paying for storage you no longer hold.
Redundancy multiplies only the capacity charge. In this tool's sample rates, ZRS multiplies LRS capacity by 1.25, GRS by 2 and GZRS by 2.5. On the worked example, moving Hot from LRS to GRS doubles storage from $20.80 to $41.60 and lifts the total from $29.43 to $50.23, with operations and egress unchanged.
Azure sells reserved capacity for Blob Storage in 100 TB and 1 PB blocks for one or three years, with discounts of roughly 38 percent on Hot for a one-year commitment in published examples. This calculator shows pay-as-you-go sample rates, so treat reservations as a further discount to negotiate once your capacity is stable and measured in tens of terabytes.
The rates are samples based on US regions in the first 50 TB band. Other regions price higher, sometimes noticeably. Use this calculator to choose the right tier and redundancy for your access pattern, then confirm the exact per-GB rates for your region on the official Azure Blob Storage pricing page before you budget.
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References
- Microsoft Azure, "Azure Blob Storage pricing" - the official rate tables for capacity, operations, retrieval and redundancy by region and account type. Microsoft Azure: Blob Storage Pricing. Accessed October 2026.
- Microsoft Learn, "Access tiers for blob data" - the official definitions of the Hot, Cool, Cold and Archive tiers, their intended access patterns and minimum retention periods. Microsoft Learn: Access Tiers for Blob Data. Accessed October 2026.
- Microsoft Learn, "Azure Storage redundancy" - how LRS, ZRS, GRS and GZRS replicate data and what durability each option provides. Microsoft Learn: Azure Storage Redundancy. Accessed October 2026.
- Microsoft Azure, "Bandwidth pricing details" - outbound data transfer rates and the free monthly allowance this calculator applies to egress. Microsoft Azure: Bandwidth Pricing Details. Accessed October 2026.
- Microsoft Learn, "Optimize costs by automatically managing the data lifecycle" - lifecycle management policies for moving blobs between tiers, and the early-deletion implications. Microsoft Learn: Azure Blob Storage Lifecycle Management. Accessed October 2026.
- Microsoft Learn, "Save costs with reserved capacity for Azure Blob Storage" - the 100 TB and 1 PB reserved capacity blocks and their one-year and three-year terms. Microsoft Learn: Reserved Capacity for Blob Storage. Accessed October 2026.