Azure VM Pricing Calculator: Compare All VM Models
One Azure virtual machine can be bought at least six different prices, and the cheapest headline is often the most expensive mistake. This Azure VM pricing calculator prices a single VM decision properly: pick from 25 VM sizes, choose Linux or Windows, set your hours and region, and it returns the monthly and annual cost under pay-as-you-go, 1-year and 3-year reservations, spot, dev/test and Hybrid Benefit, side by side, with disks, a public IP and egress added on top.
The detail that separates this tool from per-hour toys is commitment honesty. A reservation is not a discount on the hours you use; it is a bill for the full 730-hour month whether the VM runs or not. On a part-time dev VM that single fact flips the answer, and the tool shows it in dollars instead of footnotes. For storage-only pricing, use the Azure storage pricing calculator; for a whole multi-service architecture, use the Azure cost calculator. This page is virtual machines, priced every way Microsoft sells them.
| Pricing model | Monthly (all VMs) | Annual | Vs pay-as-you-go | Terms |
|---|
Figures are planning estimates from representative East US list prices. The Windows license is modeled at about $0.046 per vCPU per hour, which lands within roughly 2 percent of published D-series Windows rates. Confirm final numbers in Microsoft’s official pricing calculator before committing to a reservation.
Quick Answer
Key takeaways
- Reservations bill the full 730-hour month. At 160 hours of use, a D2s v5 costs $15.36 pay-as-you-go against $43.45 reserved: the “discount” model is nearly three times the price.
- Windows adds about $0.046 per vCPU per hour. On a D4s v5 that is $0.184 an hour, taking one VM from $140.16 to $274.48 a month. Hybrid Benefit removes exactly that license line.
- Spot is the cheapest metered price in the table (about 60 percent off in this model) and the only one Azure can take back with short notice.
- Disks, public IPs and egress are not in the VM’s hourly rate. A stopped VM still bills its disks.
- Quick Answer
- Choose a pricing model before you choose a size
- Worked example: a load-balanced pair of D4s v5 VMs
- The reservation trap: when the discount costs more
- Windows, licenses and what Hybrid Benefit really does
- Popular sizes at pay-as-you-go, for orientation
- What competing calculators miss
- Frequently asked questions
- Add This Calculator to Your Website
- References
Choose a pricing model before you choose a size
The model decides what an hour costs and, for reservations, how many hours you pay for. A size decision made under the wrong model is wrong at every size. The calculator’s result table prices your exact VM under all six models at once; the sections below explain the traps inside each row.
Use the pricing model picker in the calculator to set the headline result, then read the full table underneath it rather than the headline alone. Microsoft’s own official pricing calculator evaluates one configuration at a time; the point of the table here is that the comparison is the answer.
Worked example: a load-balanced pair of D4s v5 VMs
The calculator is pre-filled with the standard small production shape: two D4s v5 Linux VMs, full month, East US, no add-ons. Every figure below is what it returns.
| Pricing model | Monthly (2 VMs) | Annual | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay-as-you-go | $280.32 | $3,363.84 | The baseline everything else is measured against |
| 1-year reserved | $173.80 | $2,085.58 | 38% off, billed for 730 hours either way |
| 3-year reserved | $131.75 | $1,581.00 | 53% off, three years of commitment |
| Spot | $112.13 | $1,345.54 | Cheapest, and evictable |
| Dev/test | $154.18 | $1,850.11 | Visual Studio subscribers, non-production only |
| Hybrid Benefit | $280.32 | $3,363.84 | No change on Linux: no license to remove |
Per VM, the pay-as-you-go line is $0.192 times 730, which is $140.16. That number is worth memorizing as a yardstick: it is the price a general-purpose 4 vCPU VM “should” be near in East US, and Microsoft’s published D4s v5 Linux rate matches it. The storage those VMs attach lives on a separate meter entirely, priced in detail by the Azure storage pricing calculator, and the VM’s own OS disk options are in the add-ons section of the tool above.
The reservation trap: when the discount costs more
A reservation feels like a coupon. It behaves like a lease. The committed models in this calculator bill 730 hours a month at the discounted rate, because that is what a reservation is: a commitment to pay for the capacity for the whole term, used or not. Microsoft describes the mechanics in its reservations documentation, but the consequence is easiest to see in numbers.
The same logic runs in your favor for genuine 24/7 production VMs, where the reservation is the single biggest saving available and the hours objection disappears. The dividing line is utilization: below roughly 450 to 500 hours a month, run the part-time test on your own size before committing. A related lever is the schedule itself. A D4s v5 left running costs $140.16 a month; stopped outside an 8-hour, 5-day pattern (about 173 hours), the compute falls to about $33.25, saving roughly $106.91 a month per VM, and auto-shutdown is free. Teams often buy reservations to solve a scheduling problem.
Windows, licenses and what Hybrid Benefit really does
Windows Server pricing is compute plus a license metered per vCPU, modeled here at $0.046 per vCPU per hour. On a 4 vCPU D4s v5 that is $0.184 an hour, which nearly doubles the VM: one Windows D4s v5 costs $274.48 a month pay-as-you-go against $140.16 for Linux. Published Microsoft Windows rates for this size sit within about 2 percent of that figure.
Azure Hybrid Benefit is not a percentage discount and should never be modeled as one. It is the removal of the license line for customers who already own Windows Server licenses with Software Assurance, as Microsoft sets out in its Hybrid Benefit licensing guidance. On the same D4s v5, Hybrid Benefit takes the monthly cost from $274.48 back to $140.16, a saving of $1,611.84 a year per VM. On Linux it does nothing, and the calculator says so rather than inventing a saving. If your estate is mostly Windows, this line is worth more than any reservation negotiation; if it is mostly Linux, ignore the row.
Popular sizes at pay-as-you-go, for orientation
These are single-VM, Linux, full-month East US figures from the same catalog the calculator uses. They are the fastest way to smell-test a quote.
| VM size | vCPU / RAM | Hourly | Monthly (730h) |
|---|---|---|---|
| B1s (burstable) | 1 / 1 GB | $0.0120 | $8.76 |
| B2s (burstable) | 2 / 4 GB | $0.0420 | $30.66 |
| D2s v5 | 2 / 8 GB | $0.0960 | $70.08 |
| D4s v5 | 4 / 16 GB | $0.1920 | $140.16 |
| D8s v5 | 8 / 32 GB | $0.3840 | $280.32 |
| E4s v3 (memory) | 4 / 32 GB | $0.2520 | $183.96 |
| F4s v2 (compute) | 4 / 8 GB | $0.1692 | $123.52 |
| NC6s v3 (GPU) | 6 / 112 GB | $3.0600 | $2,233.80 |
Notice the D-series pattern: the price doubles as vCPUs double, so cost per vCPU is flat at $35.04 a month across the family. Moving up a size inside a family buys proportionate capacity at a proportionate price; the savings live in the model choice and the hours, not in size games. When the VM is one line in a bigger architecture, roll it into the Azure cost calculator, which prices VMs alongside App Service, databases, networking and AI in one estimate. And if the VM exists to serve media or downloads, sanity-check the egress assumption against the streaming cost calculator before you commit to a size.
What competing calculators miss
We reviewed the top-ranking Azure VM pricing pages and tools for this search before rebuilding this page.
Winning move 1: commitment-honest reservations. Guide pages price a D4s v5 “four ways” in static tables, and simple tools multiply a reserved hourly rate by whatever hours you type. Both hide the governing fact: the reservation bills 730 hours. Here the committed billing is in the math, the verdict warns you when a reservation costs more than pay-as-you-go at your hours, and the part-time case is worked in dollars ($15.36 against $43.45).
Winning move 2: the license as a line, not a fog. Windows pricing is usually shown as a second, unexplained price column. This tool exposes the license rate per vCPU, shows it in the spec strip for the selected size, and models Hybrid Benefit as its removal, which is what the program actually is. The saving on a Windows D4s v5 is stated exactly: $1,611.84 a year.
Winning move 3: add-ons in the same result. Disks, a public IP and egress are where VM estimates quietly understate, and stopped VMs keep billing disks. They are inputs here, priced per VM and added after the model math, never discounted by a compute commitment they do not belong to. One honest limit: spot pricing in Azure moves with capacity, and the 60 percent figure here is a planning approximation, as the table’s own note says.
Frequently asked questions
On Linux in East US, $140.16 for one VM running the full 730-hour month at the $0.192 hourly list rate. The same VM costs about $86.90 on a 1-year reservation, $65.88 on a 3-year reservation and $56.06 as a spot instance. On Windows it costs $274.48 pay-as-you-go because of the per-vCPU license, or $140.16 with Hybrid Benefit.
Effectively yes. A reservation is a commitment billed across the full month (modeled here as 730 hours) for the term, whether the VM runs or not. That is why a part-time VM can cost more reserved than pay-as-you-go: a D2s v5 at 160 hours costs $15.36 pay-as-you-go against $43.45 on a 1-year reservation in this calculator.
For workloads that tolerate eviction, spot instances, at roughly 60 percent off in this pricing model. For steady production, a 1-year or 3-year reservation. For part-time workloads, plain pay-as-you-go with an auto-shutdown schedule beats both, because you stop paying for idle hours entirely. The cheapest headline rate is only cheapest under the usage pattern it assumes.
Compute charges stop when the VM is stopped and deallocated, but its managed disks keep billing, and a reserved public IP keeps billing too. A stopped VM with a P20 disk and a public IP still costs about $22 a month in this pricing model. Delete the VM and its disks to stop the charges completely.
It removes the Windows Server license charge for customers with licenses covered by Software Assurance. Modeled at $0.046 per vCPU per hour, that is $0.184 an hour on a 4 vCPU VM, worth $1,611.84 a year per D4s v5. It does nothing for Linux VMs, because there is no license charge to remove.
Microsoft prices monthly VM estimates on 730 hours, the convention this calculator uses. A VM running 24/7 for a 31-day month actually runs 744 hours, so a full-calendar-month bill can land about 2 percent above the 730-hour estimate. The difference is small but it is why an estimate and an invoice rarely match to the cent.
The catalog rates are representative East US list prices and match Microsoft on the common sizes (a D4s v5 at $0.192 an hour on Linux, for instance). The Windows total lands within about 2 percent of published D-series Windows rates. Your agreement pricing, region and any negotiated discounts will differ, so treat these as planning figures and confirm commitments in the official calculator.
Discounted rates, modeled here at 45 percent off, for Visual Studio subscribers running non-production workloads such as development and test environments. It carries no commitment and bills only for hours run, which is why it beats a reservation for part-time dev VMs even though its headline discount is smaller.
Add This Calculator to Your Website
References
- Microsoft Azure, “Pricing: Linux Virtual Machines” – the official per-series Linux VM rate tables this catalog is benchmarked against. Microsoft Azure: Linux Virtual Machines Pricing. Accessed October 2026.
- Microsoft Azure, “Pricing: Windows Virtual Machines” – the official Windows VM rates including the license-included pricing the per-vCPU license model is checked against. Microsoft Azure: Windows Virtual Machines Pricing. Accessed October 2026.
- Microsoft Azure, “Azure Pricing Calculator: Virtual Machines” – Microsoft’s official estimator, which evaluates one VM configuration at a time. Microsoft Azure: Pricing Calculator for Virtual Machines. Accessed October 2026.
- Microsoft Learn, “Save compute costs with Azure Reservations” – how reserved instances commit and bill across the term, the basis for the committed 730-hour billing model. Microsoft Learn: Save Compute Costs with Azure Reservations. Accessed October 2026.
- Microsoft Learn, “Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server” – the licensing rules for applying existing Windows Server licenses to Azure VMs. Microsoft Learn: Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server. Accessed October 2026.
- Microsoft Learn, “Use Azure Spot Virtual Machines” – spot pricing, eviction policy and the workloads spot is suited to. Microsoft Learn: Azure Spot Virtual Machines. Accessed October 2026.
- Microsoft Learn, “Azure savings plan for compute” – how savings plan commitments apply discounts to usage-metered compute, and why they do not stack on reservations. Microsoft Learn: Azure Savings Plan for Compute. Accessed October 2026.