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Azure
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Azure SQL Database

Build limitless, trusted, AI-ready apps on a fully managed SQL database
Try SQL Database free Create a pay-as-you-go account
Overview

Build on fast, flexible, and elastic SQL

  • Build new apps with flexible Hyperscale cloud databases that automatically scale with the pace of your business.
  • Accelerate time to market on a managed service that supports multiple data formats, platforms, and popular languages.
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  • Power your resource-intensive apps and keep mission-critical workloads running at peak performance.
  • Protect your data and maintain business continuity with built-in controls and machine learning–based security capabilities.
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FEATURES

Build scalable and secure apps

Hyperscale

Rapidly scale up to meet demand and offload read workloads with scale-out support for up to 30 named replicas.
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Copilot in Azure

Experience AI-assistance in the design, operation, and optimization of your SQL applications.
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AI-ready

Build intelligent applications using your SQL data with Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Search.
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Mirroring

Query and analyze your data like its local with near real-time SQL data replication into Microsoft Fabric.
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Azure data platform connection

Easily connect to other Azure services such as Azure Functions without writing your own code.
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Data API builder

Turn database objects into REST and GraphQL APIs and access data on any platform, language, or device.
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Serverless compute

Optimize price-performance with flexible serverless compute that automatically scales to meet demand.
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Intelligent query processing

Improve the query performance of existing workloads with minimal effort.
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Security and governance

Protect your data with a multilayered approach to security that includes Microsoft Defender for SQL.
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Built-in security and compliance 

Microsoft has committed to investing USD 20 billion in cybersecurity over five years.
We employ more than 8,500 security and threat intelligence experts across 77 countries.
Azure has one of the largest compliance certification portfolios in the industry.
Learn more about security on Azure
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PRICING

Pricing for the intelligent, relational cloud database service

Explore pricing options and find the performance tier that best fits your workload.
See Azure SQL Database pricing

Compare Azure SQL Database price performance

Azure SQL Database Hyperscale outpaces Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL by up to 68% in performance and value.1
Read the report
CUSTOMER STORIES

See how customers are innovating with Azure SQL Database

  1. E.ON
  2. Deutsche Post DHL Group
  3. Schneider Electric
  4. Loyal
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Effortless scale

“The wonderful thing about scaling on Hyperscale is that it’s easy. I don’t have to care about scaling up, it just handles it, and so I can focus on important data.”

Enrico Lapel: Data & Analytics manager, E.ON Italy
Read the story
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Flexible, scalable engineering

“The primary motivation was the price tag for Azure. We found that it would save us a lot of money. The secondary motivation was that with Azure Hyperscale, it was easier to scale the solution.”

Jochen Fischer, Senior Software and Security Architect, Deutsche Post DHL Group
Read the story
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Powering a sustainable future

“We can do more now because our small team offloads all the heavy lifting to Azure. We can ship more features and ultimately give customers a faster, more secure, more feature-rich product.”

Paul Hill, Principal Cloud Architect, Schneider Electric
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Improved data protection

“There are services we wouldn’t be able to offer our customers if we didn’t have confidence in Always Encrypted and the capabilities it provides.”

Shane Gallagher, Software Engineer, Loyal
Read the story
Back to customer stories

 Try Azure SQL Database free of charge

Get 100,000 vCore seconds of serverless compute and 32 GB of storage every month for the life of your subscription.
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RESOURCES

Get started with Azure SQL Database

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Quickstart

Create an Azure SQL Database

Create a SQL database through the Azure portal, a PowerShell script, or an Azure CLI script.
Learn more
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Offer

Try SQL Database for free

Try Azure SQL Database free of charge and get 100,000 vCore seconds of serverless compute and 32 GB of storage every month.
Learn more
Back to Get started with Azure SQL Database: Start now
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FAQ

  •  Azure SQL Database is available as a single database with its own set of resources managed via a logical server, and as a pooled database in an elastic pool, with a shared set of resources managed through a logical server. In general, elastic pools are designed for a typical software-as-a-service (SaaS) application pattern, with one database per customer or tenant. With pools, you manage the collective performance, and the databases scale up or down automatically.


    Learn more about elastic pools. Learn more about software as a service (SaaS) application pattern

  • Azure Hybrid Benefit helps you maximize the value of 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 licenses with active Microsoft Software Assurance to pay a reduced rate ("base rate") on vCore-based Azure SQL services. Further optimize your costs with centralized management of your Azure Hybrid Benefit across your entire subscription or billing account.

    Learn more about Azure Hybrid Benefit. Learn more about centralized management.

  • No. Azure SQL Database is a fully managed database service—Microsoft operates SQL Server for you and ensures its availability and performance. SQL Database also includes features to enhance your business continuity and security, such as built-in high availability and threat detection, so that you don't have to worry about administering or maintaining your SQL Server databases.

    Learn more about built-in high availability. Learn more about threat detection.

  • The vCore-based service tiers are primarily differentiated by availability, storage type, and input/output (I/O) per second. General purpose is a budget-oriented option that's best when input/output performance or failover time is not the priority. Hyperscale is optimized for online transaction processing (OLTP) and hybrid transactional analytical workloads. The business critical tier is best for OLTP applications with high transaction rates and low I/O latency requirements.

    Learn more about vCore-based service tiers.

  • Connectivity between Azure SQL Database and the Azure internet gateway is guaranteed at least 99.995 percent of the time for zone-redundant deployments, regardless of your service tier. For more information, read the SLA and learn about the high-availability architecture.

    Learn more about the SLA. Learn more about the high-availability architecture.

  • SQL databases, also known as relational databases, are systems that store collections of tables and organize structured sets of data in a tabular columns-and-rows format, similar to that of a spreadsheet.

    Learn more about SQL databases.

Next steps

Account signup

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Get started with a free account

Start with USD 200 Azure credit.
Try Azure for free
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Get started with pay-as-you-go pricing

There’s no upfront commitment—cancel anytime.
Create a pay-as-you-go account
  • [1] Price-performance claims based on data from a study commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by Principled Technologies in December 2023. The study compared performance and price performance between a 16 vCore and 32 vCore Azure SQL Database using premium-series hardware on the Hyperscale service tier and the db.r6i.4xlarge and db.r6i.8xlarge offerings for Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL I/O-Optimized (“Amazon Aurora”). Benchmark data is taken from a Principled Technologies report which used the HammerDB TPROC-C benchmark. The TPROC-C workload is derived from the TPC-C Benchmark and results were obtained with the HammerDB TPROC-C workload . The HammerDB TPROC-C workload is derived from the TPC-C benchmark and is not comparable to published TPC-C Benchmark results, as this implementation does not comply with all requirements of the TPC Benchmark. Price-performance is calculated by Principled Technologies as the cost of running the cloud platform continuously divided by new orders per minute throughput, based upon the standard. Prices are based on publicly available US pricing in East US 1 for Azure SQL Database and US East for Amazon Aurora as of December 2023. Performance and price-performance results are based upon the configurations detailed in the Principled Technologies report. Actual results and prices may vary based on configuration and region.