Azure IoT Central pricing

The first 2 active devices within an IoT Central application are not charged, as long as their message volume does not exceed 800 (Standard Tier 0 plan), 10,000 (Standard Tier 1 plan) or 60,000 (Standard Tier 2 plan) per month. Message volumes greater than those thresholds will incur overage charges. Beyond that the device pricing is prorated on a monthly basis. For each hour during the billing period the highest number of active devices are counted and billed.

Pricing Example

If a customer uses Azure IoT Central and enrolls in the Standard Tier 1 plan, connecting 100 devices, each sending 6,000 messages, the customer will be billed as listed below.

$- for the first 2 devices

The next 98 devices are billed (100 devices - 2 free devices) * ($- per device/month) = $-

Each device also incurs monthly overage charges billed at $- per message sent in excess of the earned monthly allocation.

In this example, 1,000 messages were sent by each device beyond the allocation (100 devices * 1,000 messages) * $- per message = $-

Total cost for the month is the sum of per device and overage charges

$- + $- = $-

A device that is registered and has completed the initial connection to Azure IoT Central is an active device and is counted for the purposes of billing. If a device has been registered but has not completed an initial connection it is not counted for the purposes of billing. If a device is no longer in use, it must be explicitly removed to prevent it from being counted for billing.

It depends on whether how you have provisioned your gateway and downstream devices in Azure IoT Central.

If both gateway device and downstream device(s) are provisioned in Azure IoT Central, per device pricing, message limits and overages apply individually for the gateway device and downstream device(s).

If you choose to only provision a gateway device in IoT Central, both gateway messages and downstream device(s) messages are represented aggregated as gateway device messages. Message limits and overages apply.

Any communication back and forward between the device and the cloud counts as a message - including telemetry, cloud-to-device, and device-to-cloud (including twin read and update) communication. Exploration of historical device data will not incur additional charges.

When a customer exceeds the shared monthly message allocation, they are charged $- per message. This equates to $- per 1 million messages.

Message allocation is earned hourly based on the SKU selected and the number of devices.

Messages Allocation Example

If a customer enrolls an Azure IoT Central application in the Standard Tier 1 plan, every hour 7 messages (5,000 messages / 730 hours per month) are earned for use during the billing period. A billing period in this example is one month.

Earned messages can be used by any device in the application.

Earned messages can be used during any hour in the billing after being earned.

Earned messages must be used in the current billing period and do not carry over to subsequent billing periods.

We will prorate the cost based on when you add the device. For example, you will be billed $- for a device that exists for the entire month and $- for a device that is added halfway through the month.

When creating an Azure IoT Central Application you will be prompted to choose a SKU. To change your pricing plan, see our documentation.

Yes, you can change the pricing plan for an Azure IoT Central application at any time. For guidance on how to change plans, please see our documentation.

Message quotas are shared across the devices in your IoT Central application but are not shared across other applications or across Azure subscriptions.

Data is retained on a rolling 30-day basis and customers can continuously export their data using the export feature in IoT Central.

Customers control the user access to the application via in-product Role Based Access. Azure IoT Central users can add up to 200 users to an application.