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Azure Dev/Test pricing

Significantly reduce the costs of ongoing dev/test workloads with discounted rates on Azure services—available to active Visual Studio subscribers

Get discounts exclusively available to Visual Studio subscribers

Provision fast, lean, and highly secure dev/test workloads on Azure—and realize substantial cost savings compared to your production workloads. Your dev/test discounted rates continue as long as you maintain your Visual Studio subscription.

Save on VMs and Azure services

Get dev/test rates on Windows and Windows Server virtual machines, Azure SQL Database, Azure Logic Apps, Azure App Service, Azure Cloud Services instances, and Azure HDInsight instances. Save even more with reservations.

Take advantage of purpose-built dev/test services

Access lower rates on Azure DevTest Labs, Windows Virtual Desktop, and the Azure shared image gallery—with discounts exclusively available to Visual Studio subscribers.

Simplify billing

Manage both dev/test and production subscriptions within the Azure account portal and receive a single bill for both subscriptions. Use your Azure prepayment funds to cover both production and dev/test workloads.

Why Azure Dev/Test pricing?

Get discounted rates for nonproduction workloads

  • Save up to 57 percent for a typical web app dev/test environment running SQL Database and App Service.
  • Use the software included with your Visual Studio subscription, for dev/test on Azure Virtual Machines—at no extra charge.
  • Get free access to dev/test environments for user acceptance testers without Visual Studio subscriptions.
  • Continue saving with Azure Dev/Test pricing because it provides long-term discounts—instead of one-time credits.

Save even more with Azure reservations on VMs and SQL Database

Further reduce costs for dev/test workloads with one- or three-year plans. One-year reservations save up to:

  • 62 percent for Windows Server D2 v3 VM, 96 percent for SQL Server Enterprise D2 v3 VM, and 91 percent for BizTalk Server D2 v3 VM.
  • 65 percent on Azure SQL Managed Instance business critical tier with eight virtual core managed instances, elastic pool, and single databases.

Realize even greater savings with three-year reservations.

Learn more about Azure reservations

Select the Azure Dev/Test pricing plan that’s right for your organization

Pay-As-You-Go Dev/Test

Get your team up and running with dev/test environments in the cloud. Create multiple Azure subscriptions to maintain isolated environments and a separate bill for each project or team.

Sign up for Pay-As-You-Go Dev/Test

Enterprise Dev/Test

Make the most of your Enterprise Agreement by signing up for lower rates on dev/test workloads. Use funds already in your Enterprise Agreement—no separate payment is required.

Learn how to enable Enterprise Dev/Test

Azure Plan for Dev/Test

Stretch your Microsoft Customer Agreement even further by signing up for lower rates on dev/test workloads.

Learn how to activate Azure Plan for Dev/Test

Azure Dev/Test pricing discounts

Azure service Pricing discount
Windows VMs Billed at CentOS/Ubuntu Linux VM rates
BizTalk Enterprise VMs and BizTalk Standard VMs Billed at CentOS/Ubuntu Linux VM rates
SQL Database Savings up to 55 %
SQL Server VMs (Enterprise, Standard, and Web) Billed at CentOS/Ubuntu Linux VM rates
Logic Apps Enterprise Connector 50 percent discount
App Service (Basic, Standard, Premium v2, Premium v3) Discount varies by instance size/type
Cloud Services instances Discount varies by instance size/type
HDInsight instances Discount varies by instance size/type

Additional resources

Develop and test on Azure

Explore best practices, example solution architectures, customer success stories, and resources. Optimize your dev/test environment

Set up Windows Virtual Desktop in minutes

Quickly deploy and manage hundreds of VMs for dev/test purposes. Learn about Windows Virtual Desktop

Subscribe to Visual Studio

Get a comprehensive set of resources to create, manage, and deploy apps on your preferred platforms and devices. Explore Visual Studio subscriptions

Frequently asked questions—Azure Dev/Test pricing

  • Azure Dev/Test pricing gives customers access to select Azure services for nonproduction workloads at discounted pricing under the Microsoft Customer Agreement. This enduring plan reduces the costs of running and managing applications in development and testing environments, across a range of Microsoft products.
  • Yes, Azure Dev/Test pricing is offered exclusively to active Visual Studio subscribers. The use of resources within this subscription is restricted to developing and testing applications, with no uptime guarantee. Your Azure Dev/Test discounted rates continue as long as you maintain your Visual Studio subscription.
  • Yes, you can optimize your cost savings with both Azure Dev/Test pricing and Azure Hybrid Benefit licensing. Use Azure Dev/Test pricing for your dev/test workloads and Azure Hybrid Benefit licensing for production workloads.
    • Visual Studio subscribers sign up for Pay-As-You-Go Dev/Test.
    • Organizations with Visual Studio subscriptions and Enterprise Agreements sign up for Enterprise Dev/Test using the Azure Enterprise portal.
    • Organizations with Visual Studio subscriptions and Microsoft Customer Agreements sign up for Azure Plan for Dev/Test.
  • No, dev/test subscriptions do not have SLAs in place. The only exceptions are Azure DevOps and Azure Monitor.

Try Azure for free

Get popular services free for 12 months and 55+ other services free always—plus $200 credit to use in your first 30 days.

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