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Azure Monitor pricing

Full observability into your applications, infrastructure, and network

Azure Monitor maximizes the availability and performance of your applications and services by delivering a comprehensive solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your cloud and on-premises environments. It helps you understand how your applications are performing and proactively identifies issues affecting them and the resources they depend on.

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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 Thomson Reuters benchmark rates refreshed on the first day of each calendar month. Sign in to the Azure pricing calculator to see pricing based on your current program/offer with Microsoft. Contact an Azure sales specialist for more information on pricing or to request a price quote. For more information on Azure pricing see frequently asked questions.

Azure Monitor includes functionality for the collection and analysis of log data (billed by data ingestion, retention, and export), monitoring of availability via web tests, export of platform logs data from Azure resources, collection of metrics, alerts, and notifications. Features of Azure Monitor that are automatically enabled such as collection of standard metrics and activity logs are provided at no cost. Also available at no additional cost are the advanced monitoring capabilities that use your ingested data (see Insights and core solutions).

Log Data Ingestion

Azure Monitor log analytics and application insights charge for data ingested. We currently offer 2 log ingestion plans – Basic Logs and Analytic Logs – detailed below. A typical customer would use a combination of both plans – the basic log plan for high-volume verbose logs used for troubleshooting and analytics log plan for logs requiring deep dives and detailed analysis. The 2 plans are:

  1. Basic logs:

    This is our lower cost plan with only search capabilities for debugging and troubleshooting.

    Note that billing for basic log search is not yet enabled. Advance notice will be provided before search billing starts.
  2. Analytic logs:

    This is our premium plan that enables state-of-the-art analytics and powerful insights.

    There are two ways to pay for ingesting data as Analytics Logs - Pay-As-You-Go and Commitment Tiers:
    • Pay-As-You-Go offers flexible pay-for-what-you-use pricing by charging for the volume of data ingested. 
    • Commitment Tiers offer a discounted fixed predictable fee, starting from 100 GB/day to 5,000GB/day. Data ingested beyond your selected Commitment Tier is billed at the same per-GB price as the current tier. Commitment tiers have a 31-day commitment period (learn more). For Application Insights users, your resource must be workspace-based to use Commitment Tiers.

Some data types, including Azure Activity Logs, are free from data ingestion charges.

Our billable data volume is defined only as the size of the data that will be stored and excludes a set of standard columns and any JSON wrapper that was part of the data received for ingestion. Thus, the billable data volume is substantially smaller than the size of the entire JSON-packaged event, often less than 50%. It is essential to understand this calculation of billed data size when estimating costs. Learn more.

Not available Plan Capabilities Pricing Tier Price Effective Per GB Price1 Savings Over Pay-As-You-Go
Basic Logs
  • 8 days included interactive retention
  • Log search2 queries
  • Up to 7 years data archive2
 Pay-As-You-Go $- per GB $- per GB N/A
Analytics Logs
  • 30/90* days included interactive retention
  • All queries supported enabling powerful analytics
  • Out-of-the-box monitoring insights built on analytic logs
  • Supports workbooks and dashboards
  • Up to 2 years interactive retention2
  • Up to 7 years archive2
  • Alerting2
 Pay-As-You-Go $- per GB $- per GB N/A
100 GB per day $- per day $- per GB $-
200 GB per day $- per day $- per GB $-
300 GB per day $- per day $- per GB $-
400 GB per day $- per day $- per GB $-
500 GB per day $- per day $- per GB $-
1,000 GB per day $- per day $- per GB $-
2,000 GB per day $- per day $- per GB $-
5,000 GB per day $- per day $- per GB $-

1Data size is measured in GB (10^9 bytes). Details of its calculation are available for Log Analytics and Application Insights.
2Details on additional cost available in upcoming sections on this pricing page

Log Data Retention

Data ingested into your Log Analytics workspace can be retained at no charge for up to first 31 days (or 90 days if Microsoft Sentinel is enabled on the workspace). Data ingested into either classic or workspace-based Application Insights is retained for 90 days without any charge.

Data retained beyond these no-charge periods will be charged for each GB of data retained for a month (pro-rated daily).

Feature Days of Included Retention Price
Data Retention 31 days (or 90 days if Sentinel is enabled), and 90 days for Application Insights data $- per GB per month

Log Data Archive and Restore

Data ingested into Log Analytics can also be archived and thus stored at costs lower than normal analytics retention. Searching archived logs is done using asynchronous search jobs which incur a cost for the data scanned executing the search plus the cost of ingesting the search results (per the normal Log Data Ingestion prices). Archived logs can also be restored to enable full interactive analytics query capabilities. Maintaining restored logs incurs a pro-rated cost per day and per GB based on the time the data is kept restored and the amount of data restored (subject to the minimal restore duration and data volume). There is no charge for querying against restored logs. Billing for Seach Job and Data Restore will start on April 1, 2023. Learn more about data archive, restore and search jobs.

Feature Price
Data Archive $- per GB per month
Search Job $- per GB of data scanned
Data Restore $- per GB per day (2 TB, 12 hour minimum)1

1If a restore is kept for less than 12 hours, the restore will be billed for a 12-hour minimum duration. If less than 2 TB of data is restored, the billed volume of restored data will be rounded up to 2 TB for each day (or partial day) that the restore is retained.

Log Data Export

Log Analytics Data Export offers continuous streaming export of logs from your Log Analytics workspace to destinations such as Azure Storage and Event Hub. You are billed per GB of data exported from the Log Analytics Workspace. Exporting data via Diagnostic Settings is covered below in the Platform Logs section of this page. Billing for Data Export will start on April 1, 2023.

Feature Price
Log Analytics Data Export $- per GB1

1The size of data exported by Log Analytics Data Export is the number of bytes in the exported JSON formatted data. 1 GB = 10^9 bytes.

Web Tests

Application Insights has Standard web tests, URL Ping tests and Multi-step web tests which enable you to verify the availability of your application.

Feature Price
Standard web tests $- per scheduled test execution
Ping web tests Free
Multi-step web tests1 $- per test per month

1Multi-step web tests are prorated daily for each test that is active, independent of the number of locations from which the test is run or the test execution frequency. Charges for alert rules and notifications are separate and charged per pricing below.

Log data processing

Log data ingested into Azure Monitor can be processed with powerful, customer-defined Log Analytics data collection transformations. These provide the ability to modify data as it is ingested.

Advanced notice will be given before billing starts for Log data processing.

Feature Included Amounts Price
Log data ingestion and transformation There is no charge for data which is emitted to at least one Log Analytics workspace unless more than 50% of the data is removed by data collection transformations.1 There is also no charge when the data is emitted to at least one Log Analytics workspace that has Azure Sentinel. $- per GB per Data Collection Rule

1When more than 50% of the data is removed by customer-defined data collection transformations, that amount removed above the 50% threshold will be billed at the standard Log data ingestion and transformation rate. Data ingestion and emission is aggregated on a daily UTC basis, and this threshold is applied to the aggregation.

Platform Logs

Platform logs provide detailed diagnostic and auditing information for Azure resources and the Azure platform they depend on and are configured via diagnostic settings. For platform logs, you pay for the volume of data processed and sent to each destination, at the prices listed below.

Feature Destination Price
Data processed to stream platform logs Logs Analytics Included in Log Analytics data ingestion charges
Storage or Event Hub6 $- per GB7
Marketplace Partners $- per GB7

6Exporting a select set of platform logs to Storage or Event Hub is available at no charge. See the list of freely exportable platform logs.

7Billing for streaming platform logs started on February 1, 2022. The size of the streamed Platform Logs is the number of bytes in the exported JSON formatted data. 1 GB = 10^9 bytes.

Standard and Custom Metrics

Costs for custom metrics are based on the number of samples ingested and the number of API calls made for query. Standard and custom metrics are retained for 90 days. Billing is not yet enabled for custom metrics.

Feature Free units included Price
Standard Metrics8 Unlimited Free
Metrics ingestion (preview)8 None $- / 10 million samples ingested
Metric queries (preview)9 1,000,000 standard API calls per month $-/1,000 standard API calls

8Standard metrics are available for free and include select metrics originating from Azure resources, services and first party solutions. See the list of standard metrics.

9Metric queries are charged based on the number of standard API calls. A standard API call is a call that analyzes 1,440 data points (1,440 is also the total number of data points that can be stored per metric per day).

Prometheus Metrics

Costs for Prometheus metrics are based on the number of samples ingested and processed for queries. The metrics ingestion cost includes 18 months of data retention. Billing is not yet enabled for Prometheus metrics.

Feature Price
Metrics ingestion (preview) $- / 10 million samples ingested
Metrics queries (preview)10 $- / 1 billion samples processed

10Samples processed is the total number of data points queried using Prometheus Query Language (PromQL) for a given time range. Prometheus metrics alert pricing is based solely on the metrics preview pricing.

Alert rules

An alert rule is charged based on the type and number of signals it monitors. A signal can be a resource metric, a log, or an activity log. The cost of an alert rule that monitors multiple signals is the sum of the cost of monitoring each signal and any enabled features. Metric alert rules are billed per each time series monitored. Log alert rules are billed by the interval at which the query is executed. If the query results in multiple dimensions (at-scale log monitoring), there is an additional charge for each dimension (time series) that is evaluated. There is no charge for or other alert rules when they are disabled. Activity Log alert rules or other alert rules when they are disabled. For more details on alert rule billing, see the Alerts section of the FAQ below.

Alert Type Free units included Alert rule price
(Monthly)		 Time Series Price
(Monthly)		 Additional cost for metric alert w/ dynamic threshold14
Activity Log Alert Limited to 100 rules per subscription N/A N/A N/A
Standard and Custom Metrics11, 12 10 monitored metric time-series per month13 N/A $- $-
Prometheus Metrics Prometheus Metrics alerts are only charged the cost for the Prometheus Metrics query (see above). N/A N/A N/A
Log Alert (15 minute frequency) First time-series is included in the log alert rule $- $- N/A
Log Alert (10 minute frequency) First time-series is included in the log alert rule $- $- N/A
Log Alert (5 minute frequency) First time-series is included in the log alert rule $- $- N/A
Log Alert (1 minute frequency) First time-series is included in the log alert rule $- $- N/A

11Price listed here represents the price of an alert rule monitoring a single metric time-series originating from a single resource.

12Pricing is applicable to the new generation metric alert rules available under Alerts, previous generation alert rules (Alerts Classic) will continue to be available at no charge

  • Activity logs are available for a 90-day period at no charge. To retain activity log data beyond the 90-day period, activity log data can be routed to a storage account or event hubs. Corresponding charges will apply for storage and event hubs, respectively. No charges are incurred for API calls to pull activity log data.
  • Alerts offered as part of Azure Security Center (ASC) are not currently charged.

13Pricing of at scale log monitoring is applicable from Scheduled Query Rules API version 2021-02-01, once that version is generally available

14A dynamic alert is billed for the dynamic threshold capability and the underlying metric alert.

Notifications

Notifications are sent based on when an Alert rule triggers. You are billed based on the type and number of notifications you choose to send.

Feature Free units included Price
ITSM connector create or update event 1,000 events per month $-/1,000 events
Emails 1,000 emails per month $-/100,000 emails
Push notification (to Azure Mobile App) 1,000 notifications per month $-/100,000 notifications
Secure web hooks 1 secure web hook $-/1,000,000 secure web hooks
Web hooks 100,000 web hooks per month $-/1,000,000 web hooks

SMS and Voice calls See next table for SMS pricing

Country Code Voice calls - free units included Price SMS - free units included Price
United States (+1) 10 voice calls per month $-/call 100 SMS per month $-/SMS
Australia (+61) Voice call not supported $-/call - $-/SMS
Austria (+43) Voice call not supported $-/call - $-/SMS
Belgium (+32) Voice call not supported $-/call - $-/SMS
Brazil (+55) Voice call not supported $-/call - $-/SMS

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Additional resources

Azure Monitor

Learn more about Azure Monitor 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 Monitor.

Documentation

Review technical tutorials, videos, and more Azure Monitor resources.

Frequently asked questions

Frequently asked questions about Azure pricing

General

  • There are no additional charges for Azure Monitor features that are in preview and not listed on the pricing page. Pricing for features that are in preview will be announced in the future and a notice provided prior to start of billing. Should you choose to continue using preview features after the notice period, you will be billed at the applicable rate.

Log Analytics

  • Commitment Tiers allow you to reserve a fixed amount of daily data ingestion capacity for Azure Monitor and Azure Sentinel for a fixed, predictable daily fee. You can upgrade your requested tier level at any time. However, the minimum commitment period before you can opt out or reduce your capacity reservation is 31 days.

    • Moving to a larger tier level: you can upgrade your level at any time. Your new tier will be effective at 12:01 AM UST on the following day.
    • Reducing your selected capacity reservation: you can reduce your tier level or opt out entirely from the Commitment Tier pricing after the first 31 days. This 31-day clock resets every time you make any change (increase or decrease) to your selected tier level. Your new pricing tier choice will be effective at 12:01 AM UST on the following day.

      • Learn more about Log Analytics pricing models and Commitment Tiers.

  • Yes. Using Log Analytics Dedicated Clusters, you can move multiple workspaces into a cluster, and thus potentially take advantage of a larger Commitment Tier and it’s lower cost per GB. Learn more about billing options and requirements for Log Analytics Dedicated Clusters.

  • You can select a retention period up to 730 days. The retention cost is calculated on a daily granularity based on the monthly price per GB stored beyond the free days of retention (31 days) except for Application Insights data, and workspaces that have Azure Sentinel enabled. Learn about options for managing data retention.

  • Subscriptions that contained a Log Analytics workspace or Application Insights resource on April 2, 2018, or are linked to an Enterprise Agreement that started before February 1, 2019 and is still active, will continue to have access to use the legacy pricing tiers: Standalone (Per GB), and Per Node (OMS). Creating new workspaces in (or moving existing workspaces into) the Free Trial pricing tier is possible until July 1, 2022. Workspaces in the Free Trial pricing tier have daily data ingestion limited to 500 MB (except for security data types collected by Microsoft Defender for Servers) and the data retention is limited to seven days. The Free Trial pricing tier is intended only for evaluation purposes and has no Service Level Agreement. Workspaces in the Standalone or Per Node pricing tiers have user-configurable retention from 30 to 730 days. Learn more about legacy pricing tiers.

  • The decision of whether workspaces with access to the legacy Per Node pricing tier are better off in that tier or in a current Pay-As-You-Go or Commitment Tier is often difficult for customers to assess. This involves understanding the trade-off between the fixed cost per monitored node in the Per Node pricing tier and its included data allocation of 500 MB/node/day and the cost of just paying for ingested data in the Pay-As-You-Go (Per GB) tier. To evaluate this, use the pricing tier recommendation query.

  • Yes, workspaces created before October 1, 2016 can continue use the Standard or Premium pricing tiers but can switch at any time to a newer tier above. The pricing tier below have not been available to any new workspaces since October 1, 2016.

    Not available Standard Premium
    Daily limit None None
    Retention period 1 month 12 months
    Customize longer retention periods Not available Not available
    Price $2.3 per GB $3.5 per GB

Application Insights

  • The older pricing model offered two tiers—Basic, and Enterprise.

    Enterprise tier customers can continue to stay on the older pricing model or can switch at any time to the above pricing model. All customer subscriptions with Application Insights enabled before April 2, 2018, are billed $- per GB for any data ingested by Application Insights. However, the only situation where this is advantageous if you’ve purchased the OMS Suite. In this case, each purchased unit of the Operations Management Suite E1 and E2 plans includes an entitlement to one node of the Enterprise tier of Application Insights. Each Application Insights Enterprise node includes up to 200 MB of Application Insights data ingested per day, with 90-day data retention at no additional cost.

    Not available Enterprise
    Base monthly price $- per node
    Included data 200 MB per node each day
    Additional data $- per GB

  • No. Customers who started using Application Insights before April 2, 2018, will continue to be billed $- per GB for any data ingested by Application Insights.

  • You can set a daily cap on the amount of data that Application Insights will accept from your application, allowing you to control your costs. After the daily cap has been reached, excess data will be ignored for the remainder of the day (in UTC time), and then will resume normally at the start of the next day.

    Additionally, you can use sampling to reduce the amount of data you send to Application Insights from your application.

    Learn more about managing pricing and data volume in Application Insights.

Metrics

  • Metric queries are charged based on the number of standard API calls. A standard API call is a call that analyzes 1,440 data points (1,440 is also the total number of data points that can be stored per metric per day). If an API call analyzes more than 1,440 data points, then it will count as multiple standard API calls. If an API call analyzes less than 1,440 data points, it will count as less than one API call. The number of standard API calls is calculated every day as the total number of data points analyzed per day divided by 1,440.

    Examples

    1. An API call that analyzes 2,000 data points will count as 2,000/1,440 = 1.4 standard API calls.
    2. An API call that analyzes 200 data points will count as 200/1,440 = 0.1 standard API calls.
    3. A scenario tracking five metrics with one-minute granularity from 100 VMs a day will result in 720,000 data points, which translates to (720,000/1,440) 500 standard API calls per day.
  • Metrics are available for a 93-day period at no charge. To retain metrics data beyond the 93-day period, metrics data can be routed to a storage account, Azure Log Analytics workspace, or event hub. Corresponding charges apply for storage, Log Analytics, and event hub, respectively. In addition, metric queries are charged for the corresponding API calls required to route data.

Alerts

  • The price of an alert rule which monitors the CPU utilization, and RAM usage (i.e. 2 metric time-series) for 10 VMs, and has dynamic threshold enabled, can be calculated as, Price of alert rule + Price of dynamic threshold. For this example, the price would be calculated as:

    Total monthly price = (10 VMs * 2 metric time-series per VM – 10 free units) * price per metric time-series per month + [(10 VMs * 2 metric time-series per VM) *price per dynamic threshold per month]

  • The price of an alert rule which queries 1 resource event every 15-minutes can be calculated as,

    Total monthly price = 1 resource * 1 log alert rule * price per 15-minute internal log alert rule per month

  • The price of an alert rule which monitors 10 VM resources at 1-minute frequency, using resource centric log monitoring, can be calculated as Price of alert rule + Price of number of dimensions.

    Total monthly price = price per 1-minute log alert rule per month + ( 10 time series - 1 included free time series ) * price per 1-min interval monitored per month

    Pricing of at scale log monitoring is applicable from Scheduled Query Rules API version 2021-02-01

  • The migrated alert rules and corresponding migrated action groups (email, webhook, or LogicApp) will remain free of charge. The functionality you had with classic alerts including the ability to edit the threshold, aggregation type, and the aggregation granularity will continue to be available for free with your migrated alert rule. However, if you edit the migrated alert rule to use any of the new alert platform features, notifications or action types, a corresponding charge will apply. The following are examples of cases where you will incur a charge for your alert rule:

    • Any new (non-migrated) alert rule created beyond free units, on the new Azure Monitor platform
    • Any data ingested and retained beyond free units included by Azure Monitor
    • Any multi-test web tests executed by Application Insights
    • Any custom metrics stored beyond free units included in Azure Monitor
    • Any migrated alert rules that are edited to use newer metric alert features like frequency, multiple resources/dimensions, Dynamic Thresholds, changing resource/signal, and so on
    • Any migrated action groups that are edited to use newer notifications, or action types like SMS, Voice Call and/or ITSM integration

  • Activity log, service health and resource health alert rules continue to be available at no charge.

  • Alert notifications are charged separately based on the type of notification used.

  • You will not be charged for the first 250 log alert rules with frequency 5 minutes or more. Any alert rules above the 250 log alert rules limit or lower than 5 minutes frequency will be billed per the prices listed above.

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