VM Pricing for CPU usage

Question

Hello everyone,

I'm currently learning Azure fundamentals concepts and I have one question about pricing :

When a create a single Ubuntu VM with a size of B1|S in West Europe, the pricing showed is 0.0051 euro/h (basedo nly on the size choosen if I understand). This is the price for the CPU and RAM usage.
But, in the documentation, it is mentionned that price can change base on usage meters (CPU give as an example). Does it mean that if I just create a VM and don't use it at all, I will pay less than if I use it a lot during the month or am I wrong ?

I feel like this is wrong but I'm not sure.

Thank you

Answer 1

Hi @DUBOIS Jérôme ,

The CPU usage does not affect the cost that you will pay for the Azure VM, VMs acquire costs for the VM itself, any premium software running on the VM, the storage account\managed disk associated with the VM, and the networking bandwidth transfers from the VM.

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If the reply was helpful please don't forget to upvote and/or accept as answer, thank you!

Best regards,
Leon

Answer 2

Hello, @DUBOIS Jérôme !

Adding to what @Leon Laude has said, the key here is overall CPU time, not overall CPU use. This is why you'll see pricing listed as an amount per hour of use:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/windows/

This is an important concept to understand as you are still billed for a stopped VM that has not been deallocated. So for example if you shut down your VM, the VM will have no CPU use but the hardware is still reserved (allocated) for your use and you will still be charged the hourly rate. Once you deallocate your VM, you will not be charged for your virtual machine resource (but keep an eye on your other resources like storage).

There is a great blog for new Azure users by Sonia Cuff that goes into more detail on this:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/itops-talk-blog/am-i-billed-for-an-azure-virtual-machine-if-it-s-shut-down/ba-p/2456669

Another tool that I like to make sure new users are aware of is cost analysis, which you can use to check out costs for resources as you use them to better understand what your charges are. You can view this in your resource group by going to Cost Management > Cost analysis.

Answer 3

Thank you both for your answers, it it now clear for me !