Enable your agents to unlock knowledge from anywhere
Foundry IQ (Azure AI Search) provides a context engineering platform for Microsoft's intelligence layer, unlocking knowledge for your agents, wherever it lives. Foundry IQ automatically handles how agents connect to, process and action enterprise information. With built-in enterprise security and agentic retrieval, agents deliver better results from the right context. Foundry IQ knowledge bases require a subscription and a standard agentic retrieval plan. Foundry IQ agentic retrieval activity is billed under "Azure AI Search".
Explore pricing options
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Dedicated
Dedicated plans are for enterprise workloads with consistent traffic and high-utilisation with an hourly pricing mode.
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Serverless (preview)
Serverless pricing is for workloads with infrequent or variable traffic. You are billed for compute resources and storage used, and the service scales to zero when idle. No upfront capacity planning is required.
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Features
Pricing for add-on capabilities:- Agentic retrieval
- Semantic ranker
- Custom entity lookup skill
- Document cracking: image extraction
Apply filters to customise pricing options for your needs. “N/A” indicates pricing is not supported in the selected region.
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.
US government entities are eligible to purchase Azure Government services from a licensing solution provider with no upfront financial commitment, or directly through a pay-as-you-go online subscription.
Important—The price in R$ is merely a reference; this is an international transaction and the final price is subject to exchange rates and the inclusion of IOF taxes. An eNF will not be issued.
US government entities are eligible to purchase Azure Government services from a licensing solution provider with no upfront financial commitment, or directly through a pay-as-you-go online subscription.
Important—The price in R$ is merely a reference; this is an international transaction and the final price is subject to exchange rates and the inclusion of IOF taxes. An eNF will not be issued.
Dedicated pricing
Dedicated plans are for enterprise workloads with consistent traffic and high-utilisation with an hourly pricing mode.
| Free | Basic | Standard S1 | Standard S2 | Standard S3 | Storage Optimised L1 | Storage Optimised L2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Storage1 | 50 MB |
15 GB
(max 45 GB per service) |
160 GB
(max 1.9 TB per service) |
512 GB
(max 6 TB per service) |
1 TB
(max 12 TB per service) |
2 TB
(max 24 TB per service) |
4 TB
(max 48 TB per service) |
| Max indexes per service | 3 | 15 | 50 | 200 | 200 or 1,000/partition in high density mode | 10 | 10 |
| Scale out limits | N/A |
Up to 9 units per service (max 3 partition; max 3 replicas) |
Up to 36 units per service (max 12 partition; max 12 replicas) |
Up to 36 units per service (max 12 partition; max 12 replicas) |
Up to 36 units per service (max 12 partition; max 12 replicas) up to 3 partitions in high density2 mode |
Up to 36 units per service (max 12 partition; max 12 replicas) |
Up to 36 units per service (max 12 partition; max 12 replicas) |
| Compute Type is Default Price per SU (Search unit) |
$- | $- | $- | $- | $- | $- | $- |
| Compute Type is Confidential3 Price per SU (Search unit) |
$- | $- | $- | $- | $- | $- | $- |
1If you see lower storage in your service, you can upgrade.
2High density (HD) mode is an option available within the standard S3 service that allows a larger number of indexes to be created in a single service. For information on supported limits, refer here.
3Resources backed by confidential compute are available at additional cost. Some features are limited or unavailable, including semantic ranker, agentic retrieval, skillset execution, and vectorisation. Learn more about confidential computing here.
Serverless (preview)
Serverless pricing is for workloads with infrequent or variable traffic. You are billed for compute resources and storage used, and the service scales to zero when idle. No upfront capacity planning is required.
| Tier | Developer |
|---|---|
|
Compute usage Compute units (CU) |
$- CU / hour |
|
Indexed storage GB cost is region dependent |
$- GB / month |
| Indexed storage per index | 1 GB / index |
| Indexes per service* | 30 indexes / service |
| Services per subscription per region* | 5 services / sub / region |
Billing begins on September 13, 2026. All Serverless compute and storage usage is charged to the subscription that owns the service.
*For large scale Serverless deployments, contact Microsoft. Pricing varies per region.
What is a Compute Unit (CU)?
A Compute Unit (CU) is the unit of measure for resource consumption in a serverless tier. Usage is billed in Compute Unit-Hour.
What 1 CU Represents
~1 vCPU core
+ 8 GB RAM
+ associated storage I/O
What Gets Billed
Compute consumed by your operations over the course of an hour.
Operations Included
Searches, indexing, indexer execution, agentic retrieval & other service ops
Indexed storage
Storage costs are billed hourly based on a fractional number of GBs of data stored per index. Total storage consumed includes all data stored in your indexes, such as indexed documents, searchable fields, vector data, and associated metadata within your search service.
To learn more about Serverless and Compute Units, visit our docs.
Features
Agentic retrieval uses a multi-turn, self-reflective agentic framework to run and manage RAG query pipelines. This feature incurs an additional charge to Dedicated and Serverless billing. Separate charges are incurred for remote knowledge sources Microsoft SharePoint (remote) and Web.
Semantic ranker improves search relevance for single-turn retrieval query pipelines and keyword search. It is not available in the Dedicated Free tier.
Custom entity lookup skill detects and labels documents containing user-defined words and phrases. It is ideal for defining and detecting specific entities in your data. It is not available in dedicated free plan.
Document cracking and image extraction retrieves content from a file during an indexer's document cracking phase and within the enrichment pipeline. Image extraction is billed during the initial document cracking step and when invoking the document extraction skill.
| Feature | Pricing Details |
|---|---|
| Agentic retrieval 1M tokens |
First 50M tokens free per month Min = $- per 1M tokens Low = $- per 1M tokens Medium = $- per 1M tokens |
| Semantic ranker 1k requests |
First 1k requests free per month $- per 1k requests |
| Custom entity lookup skill 1k text records (tr) |
$- per 1k TR | 0-1M tr $- per 1k TR | 1M-3M tr $- per 1k TR | 3M-10M tr $- per 1k TR | 10M+ tr |
| Document cracking: image extraction 1k transactions (t) |
$- per 1k t | 0-1M images $- per 1k t | 1M-5M images $- per 1k t | 5M+ images |
Guidance for how to select the right SKU for your business
Every business has unique needs as it grows and evolves. Explore the guidance below to learn how to start with the right business model for your organisation.
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Refer to our documentation for guidance on choosing a pricing tier
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Customers can optimise their search experiences using capabilities mentioned in the "Features" section above. For further guidance on managing costs, refer to the following documentation:
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For additional help, please see our options for one-on-one guidance.
Azure pricing and purchasing options
Connect with us directly
Get a walkthrough of Azure pricing. Understand pricing for your cloud solution, learn about cost optimisation and request a customised proposal.
Talk to a sales specialistSee ways to purchase
Purchase Azure services through the Azure website, a Microsoft representative or an Azure partner.
Explore your optionsAdditional resources
Azure AI Search
Learn more about Azure AI Search 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 AI Search.
Documentation
Review technical tutorials, videos, and more Azure AI Search resources.
Frequently asked questions
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Foundry IQ (Azure AI Search) offers capacity-based tiers with predictable pricing and usage-based tiers with scale to zero pricing. Refer to our documentation for more details on the different tiers and guidance for selecting which plan is right for you.
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Foundry IQ (Azure AI Search) is available in the Microsoft Azure portal and Microsoft Foundry portal. Get more information.
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Agentic retrieval autonomously decides the best sources and methods for retrieving information, enhancing response quality through reasoning and planning. Semantic ranker improves search relevance by understanding and leveraging the semantics of user queries. Learn more here.
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