Azure reservations

Purchase one- or three-year reservations directly in the Azure portal with a single, upfront payment or monthly billing. The monthly payment option is available at no extra cost. However, if you’re in a non-US-dollar market, your monthly payment amount may vary depending on the current month’s market exchange rate for your local currency. Learn more.

With reserved instances, you select instance family, size, and region, and the savings will only apply if all these requirements are met. With the Azure savings plan for compute, you’re only committing to an hourly amount.

Reserved instances are still available to purchase. You can have both reserved instances and a savings plan the same time. Learn more.

You can trade in a recently purchased reserved instances for a savings plan. See instructions.

The Azure reservation term starts immediately after purchase. Currently, it's not possible to purchase Azure reservations for a future date. The Azure reservation pricing benefit will apply immediately to any existing resources that match the attributes selected, depending on how you scope your reserved instances to a specific subscription, resource group, or management group or at the enrollment/account level.

You can assign Azure reservations benefits at the enrollment or subscription levels, and easily change assignments later as needed. Learn more

For enterprise agreement customers, Azure prepayment will be used first to purchase Azure reservations. In scenarios where enterprise agreement customers have used all their Azure prepayment amount, they’ll be invoiced for a single, upfront payment on their next overage bill.

For customers purchasing via the Azure Portal, the credit card on file will be charged for the full upfront payment for Azure reservations at the time of purchase. For enterprise agreement customers, Azure prepayment will be used first to purchase Azure reservations. In scenarios where enterprise agreement customers have used all their Azure prepayment amount, they’ll be invoiced for a single, upfront payment on their next overage bill.

For customers purchasing via the Azure Portal, the credit card on file will be charged for the full upfront payment for Azure reservations at the time of purchase.

Select the Reservations menu on the left side of the Azure Portal to view reservations associated with your account. All the details associated with your Azure reservation purchase will be displayed on the right.

Please refer to your usage file to get details regarding your reserved instance discount. The resource that gets the reservation benefit will have the Azure reservation details in the "Additional information" section of the usage file. You can also get the same information from the usage APIs.

See more information for enterprise agreement customers.

See more information for web direct customers.

To view all purchases, go to the reservation blade in the Azure Portal.

You may also use Microsoft Cost Management to view reservation use. Learn more.

You will receive email notifications 30 days prior to expiration and again on the expiration date. Once the reservation expires, deployed resources will continue to run and will be billed at the pay-as-you-go rate.

Azure Reserved VM Instances for pay-as-you-go subscriptions are not available in Argentina, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Brazil, Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Malaysia, Mexico, North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, and Ukraine.

Go to the VM section in the Azure Portal, click on a VM and get the VM size info. Provide this size in the reserved instance purchase. The reserved instance discount is automatically applied to VMs matching the attributes and quantity of the Azure Reserved VM Instance. Alternately, if you are an enterprise agreement or web direct customer, you can get VM size information by downloading your usage file and referring to the service type value in the Additional info section.

Azure Reserved VM Instances provides a single price for each VM size in a region. There's no requirement to choose an operating system when purchasing Azure Reserved VM Instances. If it’s Windows Server that’s deployed on the virtual machine, you can either use Azure Hybrid Benefit or pay the Windows Server licensing rate. Get more information on the Azure pricing page.

Instance size flexibility is a feature associated with Azure Reserved VM Instances. Instance size flexibility automatically applies the Azure Reserved VM Instance savings to any VM you use within the same region and within the same reserved instance VM group. Instance size flexibility can apply to your Azure Reserved VM Instances purchases for the VMs not currently being used.

While Azure reservations offer prioritized capacity, there’s no guarantee that capacity will be available for your resources.

An exchange allows you to receive a prorated refund based on the unused amount, which applies fully to the purchase price of a new Azure reservation.

A cancellation allows you to return the remaining months of an Azure reservation to Microsoft. Currently, there's no charge for cancellation, but in the future, there will be a 12% early termination fee.

Learn more about exchange and cancellations in regard to restrictions and differences.

Initially planned to end on January 1, 2024, the availability of Azure compute reservation exchanges for Azure Virtual Machine, Azure Dedicated Host, and Azure App Service has been extended until further notice. Review the Microsoft Documentation for more information on this change.

Follow these steps to exchange or cancel Azure reservations.