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Azure SQL Managed Instance pricing

Modernise SQL Server applications with a managed, always-up-to-date SQL instance in the cloud

Part of the Azure SQL family of SQL database services, Azure SQL Managed Instance combines the broadest SQL Server engine compatibility with all the benefits of a fully managed and evergreen platform as a service.

With SQL Managed Instance, confidently modernise your existing apps at scale and realise up to a 238 percent return on investment.

NEW! Lower price on geo-replicated secondary instances used for disaster recovery. Learn more.

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Prices are estimates only and are not intended as actual price quotes. Actual pricing may vary depending on the type of agreement entered with Microsoft, date of purchase, and the currency exchange rate. Prices are calculated based on US dollars and converted using London closing spot rates that are captured in the two business days prior to the last business day of the previous month end. If the two business days prior to the end of the month autumn on a bank holiday in major markets, the rate setting day is generally the day immediately preceding the two business days. This rate applies to all transactions during the forthcoming month. Sign in to the Azure pricing calculator to see pricing based on your current programme/offer with Microsoft. Contact an Azure sales specialist for more information on pricing or to request a price quote. See frequently asked questions about Azure pricing.

  1. Single instance
  2. Instance pool

General purpose

Standard-series (Gen 5)

Standard-series (Gen 5) logical CPUs are based on Intel E5-2673 v4 (Broadwell) 2.3 GHz, Intel SP8160 (Skylake), Intel Xeon Platinum 8272CL 2.5 GHz (Cascade Lake) and Intel(R) Xeon Scalable 2.8 GHz processor (Ice Lake) processors. In the standard-series (Gen 5), 1 vCore = 1 hyper thread. The standard-series (Gen 5) logical CPU is great for most relational database servers.

vCORE Memory (GB) Included Storage Pay as you go Azure Hybrid Benefit1 Price (% Savings) 1-year reserved capacity 3 year reserved capacity 3 years reserved with Azure Hybrid Benefit
8 40.8 First 32 GB/instance/month $- $-
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16 81.6 First 32 GB/instance/month $- $-
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24 122.4 First 32 GB/instance/month $- $-
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32 163.2 First 32 GB/instance/month $- $-
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40 204 First 32 GB/instance/month $- $-
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64 326.4 First 32 GB/instance/month $- $-
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80 396 First 32 GB/instance/month $- $-
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1Applies to SQL Server Licences with active Software Assurance (SA). Learn more about Azure Hybrid benefit for SQL Server.

Compute is provisioned in virtual cores (vCores). A vCore represents a logical CPU offered with an option to choose between compute generations.

Premium-series

Premium-series logical CPUs are based on the latest Intel(R) Xeon Scalable 2.8 GHz processor (Ice Lake), 1 vCore = 1 hyper thread. The premium-series logical CPU is a great fit for database workloads that require faster compute and memory performance as well as improved IO and network experience over the standard-series hardware offering.

vCORE Memory (GB) Included Storage Pay as you go Azure Hybrid Benefit1 Price (% Savings) 1-year reserved capacity 3 year reserved capacity 3 years reserved with Azure Hybrid Benefit
8 56 First 32 GB/month $- $-
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16 112 First 32 GB/month $- $-
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24 168 First 32 GB/month $- $-
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32 224 First 32 GB/month $- $-
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40 280 First 32 GB/month $- $-
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64 448 First 32 GB/month $- $-
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80 560 First 32 GB/month $- $-
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1Applies to SQL Server Licences with active Software Assurance (SA). Learn more about Azure Hybrid benefit for SQL Server.

Backup storage (point-in-time restore)

By default, seven days of database backups are stored in RA-GRS Standard blob storage. The retention period can be increased to up to 35 days. Any corrupted or deleted database can be restored to any point in time within that period. The storage is used by weekly full backups, daily differential backups, and frequent transaction log backups in between. The backup cost depends on the size of the database, the rate of change and the configured retention period. The backup storage amount equal to the database size is provided at no extra charge. Additional backup storage consumption will be charged in GB/month. Learn more about automated backups, and how to monitor and manage backup costs.

Price
Locally redundant $-/GB/month
Zone-redundant $-/GB/month
Read access geo-redundant $-/GB/month
Read access geo-zone-redundant $-/GB/month

Long-term retention

Many applications have regulatory, compliance, or other business purposes that require you to retain database backups for longer periods of time. By using the long-term retention (LTR) feature, you can store full backups for up to 10 years. You can then restore any backup as a new database. Learn more about long-term retention.

Price
Locally redundant $-/GB/month
Zone-redundant $-/GB/month
Read access geo-redundant $-/GB/month
Read access geo-zone-redundant $-/GB/month

Explore additional savings

Azure Hybrid Benefit

Save up to 55% off the costs of running workloads in the cloud and get more for your virtualised workloads by using your existing SQL Server licences with active Software Assurance.

Reservation pricing

Manage costs and help optimise budgeting and forecasting when you pre-commit to a 1 or 3-year term. Save up to 33 percent on compute resources and even more when you combine with Azure Hybrid Benefit.

Development and test pricing

Receive discounted rates on Azure to support your ongoing development and testing.

Unique capabilities to reduce total cost of ownership

Fully managed service does more for you

SQL Managed Instance automates updates, provisioning and backups so you can focus on application development.

Maintain the broadest SQL Server compatibility

Accelerate app modernisation with your existing skills, tools and experience, without worrying about application compatibility or performance changes.

Enhance performance with built-in AI

Built-in intelligence continuously monitors databases and dynamically adapts to changing workloads by applying tuning recommendations.

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Additional resources

Azure SQL Managed Instance

Learn more about Azure SQL Managed Instance features and capabilities.

Pricing calculator

Estimate your expected monthly costs for using any combination of Azure products.

SLA

Review the Service Level Agreement for Azure SQL Managed Instance.

Documentation

Review technical tutorials, videos, and more Azure SQL Managed Instance resources.

Frequently asked questions

Frequently asked questions about Azure pricing

Azure SQL Database Managed Instance pricing

  • Managed Instance allows for scaling compute and storage independently. Customers pay for compute measured in vCores storage and backup measured in gigabytes (GB).

    Managed Instance has two price options:

    • Licence included: Excludes Azure Hybrid benefit for SQL Server. This option is for customers who choose not to apply their existing SQL Server licences with Software Assurance to Managed Instance.
    • Base rate: Reduced price that includes Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server. Customers can opt into this price by using their SQL Server licences with Software Assurance.

  • A virtual core (vCore) represents the logical CPU available for your server, offered with a choice between generations of hardware. For servers created using Gen4 vCores, the vCores are based on Intel E5-2673 v3 (Haswell) 2.4 GHz processors. For servers created using standard-series (Gen5) vCores, the vCores are based on Intel E5-2673 v4 (Broadwell) 2.3 GHz, Intel SP8160 (Skylake) and Intel Xeon Platinum 8272CL 2.5 GHz (Cascade Lake) processors. For servers created using premium-series vCores, the vCores are based on the latest Intel(R) Xeon Scalable 2.8 GHz processors (Ice Lake).

  • Managed Instance is billed on a predictable, hourly rate based on the service tier, provisioned compute in vCores, provisioned storage and backup in GB per month. Backup storage up to 100 per cent of your total database storage is included; beyond this, you’ll be billed in GB per month.

  • The Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server helps you maximise the value from your current licensing investments and accelerate your migration to the cloud. Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server is an Azure-based benefit that enables you to use your SQL Server licences with active Software Assurance to pay a reduced rate (“base rate”) on SQL Database. Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server is available to all vCore-based options: SQL Database Managed Instance, Single Database and Elastic Pool. You may apply this benefit even if the SKU is active but note the base rate will be applied from the time you select it in the portal. No credit will be issued retroactively.

    You can activate the Azure Hybrid Benefit via the Azure Portal by attesting you have sufficient active licences with Software Assurance. The Azure Hybrid Benefit works as follows:

    • If you have Standard Edition per core licences with Software Assurance, you can get one vCore in the General Purpose or Hyperscale tier option for every one licence core you own on-premises.
    • If you have Enterprise Edition per core licences with Software Assurance, you can get one vCore in the business critical option for every one licence core you own on-premises. Note: The Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server for the Business Critical option is only available to Enterprise Edition customers.
    • If you have highly-virtualised Enterprise Edition per core licences with Software Assurance you can get four vCores in the General Purpose or Hyperscale tier option for every one licence core you own on-premises. This is a unique virtualisation benefit available only on Azure.

    Azure Hybrid Benefit is not available in the serverless compute tier of SQL Database.

  • Your licences must be used either on-premises or in the cloud; however, you have a 180-day grace period during which you can use licences both on-premises and in the cloud to facilitate migration.

  • No. Azure Hybrid Benefit cannot be applied retroactively.

  • To use Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server, you need active Software Assurance. If your Software Assurance expires and you don’t renew it, you’ll be moved to the licence included pricing of the respective SKU.

  • The virtualisation benefit is applicable to virtualised workloads on vCore-based Azure SQL Database. You can use it to convert 1 licence core of SQL Enterprise Edition with active Software Assurance to get up to 4 vCores of General Purpose or Hyperscale tier at the base rate. This makes moving virtualised applications to vCore-based SQL Database options highly cost-effective. For example, if you have 4 core licences of SQL Enterprise Edition, you can receive up to 16 vCores of General Purpose at the base rate.

  • You are billed for each hour that a managed instance exists and for storage applied during that hour, regardless of whether the server was active for less than an hour. If you’ve scaled your database, you’ll be billed using the highest provisioned vCore during the hour.

    For example:

    • If you create a Managed Instance server and delete it five minutes later, you’ll be charged for one database hour.
    • If you create a Managed Instance in the General Purpose tier with 8 vCores, and then immediately upgrade it to 16 vCores, you’ll be charged at the 16 vCore rate for the first hour.

  • Back up storage is associated with automated backups of your instance. Increasing your backup retention period increases the backup storage that’s consumed by your instance. There’s no additional charge for backup storage for up to 100 percent of your total provisioned server storage. Additional consumption of backup storage will be charged in GB per month. For example, if you have the database storage size of 100 GBs, you’ll get 100 GBs of backup at no additional cost. But if the backup is 110 GBs, you’ll pay for the additional 10 GBs.

    Note: For a limited period, until June 30, 2018, the backup charges will be free.

  • Azure SQL Database reserved capacity enables you to save up to 33%1 compared to licence-included pricing by pre-paying for your SQL Database compute capacity on a one or three-year term. It is an expansion of Azure reservation pricing, which also includes Azure reserved VM instances.

    Today, customers with active Software Assurance can save up to 55% using Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server with the new vCore-based purchasing model in SQL Database. Now, with support for reserved capacity on single databases, elastic pools and managed instances, you can unlock even more savings when you combine your Azure Hybrid Benefit with reserved vCore pricing to achieve savings of up to 80%2. You can lower your total cost of ownership by combining reservation pricing with licence-included prices to improve your budgeting and forecasting with a single upfront payment, making it easy to calculate your investments.

    Reserved capacity is not available in the serverless compute tier of SQL Database.

    1Savings based on eight vCore SQL Database Managed Instance General Purpose in West US 2 Region, running 730 hours per month. Savings are calculated from on demand full price (licence included) against three-year reserved capacity Licence Included. Actual savings may vary based on region, instance size and performance tier. Prices as of May 2018, subject to change.

    2Savings based on eight vCore SQL Database Managed Instance Business Critical in West US 2 Region, running 730 hours per month. Savings are calculated from on demand full price (licence included) against base rate with Azure Hybrid Benefit plus three-year reserved capacity. Savings excludes Software Assurance cost for SQL Server Enterprise edition, which may vary based on EA agreement. Actual savings may vary based on region, instance size and performance tier. Prices as of May 2018, subject to change.

  • Azure SQL Database reserved capacity is available in all public Azure regions except UK North. If you already have vCore-based SQL deployments in UK North and would like to purchase reserved capacity for them you can open a Help+Support request and we will unblock your subscription in that region. Reserved capacity is currently not available in sovereign clouds, which includes Azure Germany, Azure US Government, and China.
  • You can purchase one-year or three-year term SQL Database reserved capacity with a single, upfront payment. Reservations are available for purchase through https://portal.azure.com. The reservations menu will appear on the left pane in the Azure portal.

  • SQL Database reserved capacity has a scope of either a Single subscription or Shared. This scope controls how many subscriptions can leverage the billing benefit associated with the reservation, and it controls how the reservation is applied to specific subscriptions. 

    A reservation scoped to a single subscription means that the reserved capacity discount will apply only to SQL Database resources within the selected subscription.  

    A reservation with the scope of Shared means that the billing benefit for it can be shared across any subscription in the enrolment (Enterprise Agreement customers) or account (Pay-as-you-go customers) except for MSDN subscriptions in the enrolment or non-Pay-as-you-go subscriptions in the account.

  • The reservation start and end dates are based on the purchase date and duration of the reservation. The benefit will apply immediately to any existing running deployments that match the terms of the reservation based on where the reservation is made available, i.e. scoped to a single subscription or shared across the entire Azure account/enrolment. Otherwise, the reservation benefit will apply when you have new deployments that match the terms of the reservation.

  • For EA customers, reserved capacity purchases will always be deducted from any available Azure Prepayment first; this deduction will happen in the month the reserved capacity was purchased. In the event you do not have enough Azure Prepayment, or do not have any Azure Prepayment, all reserved capacity purchases will show on your next overage invoice.

    For web direct customers, all reserved capacity charges will appear on the credit card on file, or on the next invoice if you have invoice terms established on your account.

  • You can view reserved capacity usage on the “Usage Summary” page under the “Reports” menu on the EA Portal (https://ea.azure.com). There, you will see a “Reservation” section that will show reserved capacity usage. In addition to this, you can find reserved capacity usage details in the detailed usage file (CSV) that you can download from the EA Portal (https://ea.azure.com). The “Additional Info” field will help you to identify the usage against reserved capacity.
  • Your deployments will continue running and will be billed at an on-demand rate once the reserved capacity benefit expires. You will no longer receive the price benefit for reserved capacity.
  • Yes, you will receive email notifications at least 30 days prior to expiration. Additionally, you can view reservation details in the Azure portal.

See the SQL Database FAQ in documentation.

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