Trace Id is missing
Skip to main content

Monthly Azure credits for Visual Studio subscribers

Learn how to use the Azure credits that are included in your Visual Studio subscription.

Why should I activate my credits?

How do my Azure credits work?

If you’re a Visual Studio subscriber, you get Azure credits every month that you can use to explore and try Azure services. When you activate your credits, you’ll create a new Azure subscription, where you can start using them right away. No credit card is required.

The amount of Azure credits that you receive depends on the type of Visual Studio subscription you have. When you reach the monthly cap for your credits, your Azure services will stop until your next monthly credits are added unless you choose to remove the spending cap by upgrading to pay-as-you-go pricing.

What can I do with my Azure credits?

Here are some examples of how you can use your credits in Azure. Check out the videos, tutorials, and online courses to learn how to create the scenarios, then see product and pricing details to calculate the credits you need to implement each scenario.

Host a static website

Use Azure storage to host your static website in a cost-effective and scalable way.

Publish an ASP.NET site to Azure

Deploy your first ASP.NET web app to Azure App Service, a scalable and self-patching web hosting platform.

Deploy a containerized website

Use images from Docker Hub or a private registry to take advantage of autoscaling, load balancing, and modern DevOps practices.

Deploy a website to a virtual machine

Customize and control every aspect of your web server with a secure, compliant, and reliable Linux or Windows VM.

Integrate your data and services using serverless

Use Azure Functions, a highly reliable compute platform, to process application data through a serverless backend using bindings.

Deploy a Python web app

Take advantage of Azure to execute your heaviest Python queries in seconds using PostgreSQL.

How much credit do I get per month?

Your Visual Studio subscription type determines the monthly Azure credits you receive.

$150

Visual Studio Enterprise
(STANDARD)

$100

MSDN Platforms

Not a subscriber yet?

$50

Visual Studio Professional
(STANDARD)

Visual Studio Test Professional
(STANDARD)

What else do I need to know?

  • Monthly Azure credits for Visual Studio subscribers are specifically for individual dev/test usage only. To run production workloads, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid Azure subscription, such as pay-as-you-go pricing.

  • You can use your current work account to sign in if your organization uses Azure Active Directory, such as if you’re using Office 365. For more details, see the Using Work Accounts FAQ.

  • There is no cost to use these credits. They are included in your Visual Studio subscription. When you run out of the credit that’s allotted for the month, you won’t be able to continue using it until it resets the next month.

  • Azure subscriptions created via the Visual Studio Subscriptions benefit may be impacted by restrictions that aren’t imposed on paid subscriptions. Certain geographies may not be available for creating VMs and Azure services, and certain service types may not be available. There may be a lower default quota than on paid subscriptions.

  • Credit pooling is not available. This benefit is intended for personal use by the Visual Studio subscriber.

  • The monthly Azure credit for Visual Studio subscribers is for development and testing only and does not carry a financially backed SLA. We reserve the right to suspend any instance (VM or cloud service) that runs continuously for more than 120 hours or if we determine that the instance is being used for production. We are making this capacity available to Visual Studio subscribers on a best-effort basis; there is no guarantee of capacity availability.

    The monthly credit does not apply toward purchase of the following services:

    • Support plans
    • Application Insights
    • Visual Studio subscriptions
    • Azure DevOps
    • Visual Studio App Center
    • Third-party branded products
    • Products sold through the Visual Studio Marketplace
    • Products otherwise sold separately from Azure (for example, Azure Active Directory Premium)


    To purchase these services, you’ll need to remove your spending limit and provide a credit card for billing.

Get started with Azure risk-free

Explore what you can do with your monthly Azure credits for Visual Studio subscribers.