General Availability: Azure SQL Database Basic, Standard, and Premium service tiers

Three new Azure SQL Database service tiers—Basic, Standard, and Premium—are generally available. The tiers target seven performance levels, so they're flexible enough for light to heavyweight workloads. You can look forward to:

• 99.99 percent uptime SLA*, one of the highest for Azure services.
• Hourly billing for greater flexibility and budget management.
• Reduced prices (up to 50 percent from previously published generally available pricing).

Or, choose our new Standard performance level for a cost-effective solution that falls between Basic and S1. All general availability pricing for Basic, Standard, and Premium tiers will take effect on November 1, 2014. 

	Basic	Standard	Premium
Uptime SLA	Now increased to 99.99%*
Database size limit	2 GB	250 GB	500 GB
Self-service restore	Any point within 7 days	Any point within 14 days	Any point within 35 days
Disaster recovery	Geo-restore to alternate Azure region	Standard geo-replication, standby secondary	Active geo-replication, up to 4 readable secondaries
Performance objectives	Transaction rate per hour	Transaction rate per minute	Transaction rate per second

*99.99 percent uptime SLA does not apply to SQL Database Web and Business editions, which are supported at 99.9 percent.

• Basic: Designed for applications with a light transactional workload. Performance objectives for Basic provide a predictable hourly transaction rate.
• Standard: Designed as the go-to option for getting started with cloud-designed business applications. It offers mid-level performance and business continuity features. Performance objectives for Standard deliver predictable per-minute transaction rates.
• Premium: Designed for mission-critical databases, offers the highest performance levels and access to advanced business continuity features. Performance objectives for Premium deliver predictable per-second transaction rates.

 For more information on the new service tiers, please visit the Microsoft Azure Blog, and the SQL Database Pricing Details and Azure SQL Database Service Tiers (Editions) webpages.