Azure pricing explained!
Azure Capability |
Price |
Remarks |
| Compute (server usage) | $0.12 /instance-hour | Compute charge is not usage based; the charges start adding up once you deploy the application. |
| Storage (persistent) | Storage @ $0.15 / GB-month stored | This will include Azure Blobs and Azure Tables where the information stored is not transient. Even though Azure Queue is part of the Azure Storage, the information stored being transient, no charges for the data that goes into the queues. However each transaction (item you write to the queue) you perform on the queue accrues charges. Please see the next row for the transaction charge. |
| Storage Transactions | $0.01/10K transactions | Every CRUDy (Create, Read, Update, Delete) transaction into Azure Queues (this is the only charge for the queues), Azure Tables, Azure Blobs will incur this charge. |
| SQL Azure: Web Edition | $9.99 /month (1GB RDBMS) | The SQL Server editions support access from on-premise applications through the familiar connection string approach. One can manage the cloud database through on-premise tools and access from on-premise applications |
| SQL Azure: Business Edition | $99.99 /month (10GB RDBMS) | Same as above. |
| .NET Services | $0.15/100K messages | A message may be Service Bus request or an Access Control token. |
| Bandwidth – ingress | $0.10/GB | Bandwidth charges are for the traffic in and out of Azure Cloud infrastructure. There will be no charges for the intra Azure Cloud data transfers. E.g. Web Role –> Azure Queue will not incur any charge. |
| Bandwidth – egress | $0.15/GB | Same as above. |
For the original post, read it at https://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2009/07/14/confirming-commercial-availability-and-announcing-business-model.aspx.
-Hanu
(Disclaimer: the opinions expressed above are my own and not to be considered as the official response from Microsoft)