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Azure

Azure reservations

Save costs on cloud usage by committing to a resource in a specific region for a fixed period.
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Overview

Achieve savings on cloud usage and accurately forecast cost

  • Optimize your cloud investments by running your stable and predictable workloads at a lower cost. Reduce costs up to 72% compared to pay-as-you-go pricing for Windows and Linux virtual machines.1 Save up to 70% with Azure AI Foundry Provisioned Throughput reservations compared to hourly pricing.2
    A person uses a laptop outdoors, surrounded by plants. Overlaid text highlights cost savings: "72% reduced costs" and "70% savings on Azure OpenAI Service."
  • Accurately forecast and budget your Azure expenses with fixed cost and set-term commitments. The total cost of upfront and monthly reservations is the same and you don't pay any extra fees when you choose to pay monthly.
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  • Purchase and manage reservations in a few simple steps to maintain consistent expense and increase your awareness of how much you’re saving. Automatically renew your reservations to realize cost savings and avoid unexpected cost. Match your reservation pricing to the scope that meets your business needs.
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Eligibility

Explore how Azure reservations can help you save on your services

A woman holding a laptop with text about saving up to 80%.

Save with Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances

Save up to 80% over the standard pay-as-you-go rate for Windows Server using Azure Hybrid Benefit and Azure Reserved Virtual Machine (VM) Instances.3
Purchase a reserved instance

Azure Virtual Machines

Provision Windows and Linux VMs in seconds.
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Azure Dedicated Host

A dedicated physical server to host your Azure VMs for Windows and Linux.
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Azure App Service

Quickly create powerful cloud apps for web and mobile.
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Azure VMware Solution

Run your VMware workloads natively on Azure.
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Pricing calculator

Discover your savings with Azure reservations

Use the pricing calculator to estimate your savings for specific resources when you use Azure reservations.
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Customer stories

Discover how customers save costs with Azure pricing offers

  1. Carlsberg Group Logo
  2. ABN AMRO Logo
  3. Asos Logo
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Carlsberg Group Logo
“The solution supports financial awareness; everyone feels accountable for their cloud spend and avoids additional costs. We can budget and forecast, investing in just what we need, without cost spikes.”
Sonal Gupta, Senior of Manager FinOps and Hosting Service Delivery, Carlsberg Group
45-65%
Savings

Products

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ABN AMRO Logo
“Through Azure reservations, we’ve optimized our Azure spend over €1 million a month.”
Hans De Kruif, Platform Engineer and Azure Cost Manager, ABN AMRO.

Product

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Asos Logo
“Working with Microsoft has been really powerful. Getting access to features that provide cost management and being able to interact directly with the Microsoft team has made a big difference to our ability to get to the right cost place.”
Ian Margetts, Infrastructure Services Lead, ASOS

Product

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Resources

Explore additional resources

  1.
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Azure reservations

Gain a fundamental understanding and develop practical skills for adopting Azure reservations.
Get started
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Azure AI Foundry Provisioned Throughput reservations

Learn the benefits, use cases, and implementation steps to purchase Provisioned Throughput reservations.
Get started
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Deploy Azure OpenAI at scale using provisioned throughput units

Discover how to deploy provisioned throughput units and save with reservations in this video.
Watch now
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Learn Live: Reserved Instances and Savings Plan for Compute

Find out how to optimize and save by taking advantage of Azure VM Reserved Instances and a savings plan for compute.
Watch now
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FAQ

Reservations FAQ

  • Purchase one- or three-year reservations directly in the Azure portal with a single, upfront payment or monthly billing. The monthly payment option is available at no extra cost. However, if you’re in a non-US-dollar market, your monthly payment amount may vary depending on the current month’s market exchange rate for your local currency. Learn more.
  • With reserved instances, you select instance family, size, and region, and the savings will only apply if all these requirements are met. With the Azure savings plan for compute, you’re only committing to an hourly amount.

    Reserved instances are still available to purchase. You can have both reserved instances and a savings plan at the same time. Learn more.

    You can trade in recently purchased reserved instances for a savings plan. See instructions.
  • The Azure reservation term starts immediately after purchase. Currently, it's not possible to purchase Azure reservations for a future date. The Azure reservation pricing benefit will apply immediately to any existing resources that match the attributes selected, depending on how you scope your reserved instances to a specific subscription, resource group, or management group or at the enrollment/account level.
  • You can assign Azure reservations benefits at the enrollment or subscription levels, and easily change assignments later as needed. Learn more.
  • For enterprise agreement customers, Azure prepayment will be used first to purchase Azure reservations. In scenarios where enterprise agreement customers have used all their Azure prepayment amount, they’ll be invoiced for a single, upfront payment on their next overage bill.

    For customers purchasing via the Azure Portal, the credit card on file will be charged for the full upfront payment for Azure reservations at the time of purchase.
  • Select the Reservations menu on the left side of the Azure Portal to view reservations associated with your account. All the details associated with your Azure reservation purchase will be displayed on the right.
  • Please refer to your usage file to get details regarding your reserved instance discount. The resource that gets the reservation benefit will have the Azure reservation details in the "Additional information" section of the usage file. You can also get the same information from the usage APIs.

    See more information for enterprise agreement customers.

    See more information for web direct customers.

    To view all purchases, go to the reservation blade in the Azure Portal.

    You may also use Microsoft Cost Management to view reservation use. Learn more. 
  • You will receive email notifications 30 days prior to expiration and again on the expiration date. Once the reservation expires, deployed resources will continue to run and will be billed at the pay-as-you-go rate.
  • Azure reservations for pay-as-you-go subscriptions are not available in Argentina, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Brazil, Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Malaysia, Mexico, North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, and Ukraine.
  • Go to the VM section in the Azure Portal, click on a VM and get the VM size info. Provide this size in the reserved instance purchase. The reserved instance discount is automatically applied to VMs matching the attributes and quantity of the Azure Reserved VM Instance. Alternately, if you are an enterprise agreement or web direct customer, you can get VM size information by downloading your usage file and referring to the service type value in the Additional info section.
  • Azure Reserved VM Instances provides a single price for each VM size in a region. There's no requirement to choose an operating system when purchasing Azure Reserved VM Instances. If it’s Windows Server that’s deployed on the virtual machine, you can either use Azure Hybrid Benefit or pay the Windows Server licensing rate. Get more information on the Azure pricing page.
  • Instance size flexibility is a feature associated with Azure Reserved VM Instances. Instance size flexibility automatically applies the Azure Reserved VM Instance savings to any VM you use within the same region and within the same reserved instance VM group. Instance size flexibility can apply to your Azure Reserved VM Instances purchases for the VMs not currently being used. Learn more.
  • While Azure reservations offer prioritized capacity, there’s no guarantee that capacity will be available for your resources.
  • An exchange allows you to receive a prorated refund based on the unused amount, which applies fully to the purchase price of a new Azure reservation.

    A cancellation allows you to return the remaining months of an Azure reservation to Microsoft. Currently, there's no charge for cancellation, but in the future, there will be a 12% early termination fee.

    Learn more about exchange and cancellations in regard to restrictions and differences.
  • Initially planned to end on January 1, 2024, the availability of Azure compute reservation exchanges for Azure Virtual Machine, Azure Dedicated Host, and Azure App Service has been extended until further notice. Review the our documentation for more information on this change. Follow these steps to exchange or cancel Azure reservations.
  1. [1]
    The 72% savings is based on one M32ts Azure Virtual Machine for the Windows OS in the US Gov Virginia region running for 36 months at a pay-as-you-go rate of ~$3,660.81 per month; there is also a reduced rate for a three-year Reserved VM Instance of ~$663.45 per month. Azure pricing as of October 30, 2018. Prices are subject to change. Actual savings may vary depending on region, instance type, and/or usage.
  2. [2]
    The 70% savings is based on the GPT-4o global provisioned throughput Azure hourly rate of approximately $1/hour, compared to the reduced rate of a 1-year Azure reservation at approximately $0.3027/hour. Azure pricing as of May 1, 2025. Prices are subject to change. Actual savings may vary depending on the specific large language model and regional availability.
  3. [3]
    The 80% savings is based on the combined cost of Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server and a three-year Azure Reserved VM Instance. The estimate does not include Software Assurance costs. Sample annual cost comparison of savings are calculated based on two D2V3 VMs in the US West 2 region running 744 hours per month for 12 months, using the SUSE Linux Enterprise rate for US West 2 as the base rate. Azure pricing as of April 24, 2018. Prices are subject to change. Actual savings may vary depending on location, instance type, and/or usage.
  4. [4]
    The 80% savings is based on eight vCore SQL Database Business Critical VMs in West 2 US Region, running 730 hours per month. Savings exclude Software Assurance costs for SQL Server Enterprise edition, which may vary based on your enterprise agreement. Savings are calculated based on the on-demand full price (license included) compared to a base rate with Azure Hybrid Benefit plus a three-year reserved capacity commitment. Prices are as of November 2018, subject to change. Actual savings may vary depending on region, instance size, and performance tier.
  5. [5]
    The 38% savings is based on a three-year Azure Storage Reserved Capacity term for 1 PB of data storage on locally redundant storage (LRS) for a hot access tier on block blobs compared to pay-as-you-go prices. Savings may vary depending on region, redundancy option, storage access tier, and Azure Storage Reserved Capacity terms.
  6. [6]
    Fabric Capacity Units are in one-year increments, helping you save 40.5% over the pay-as-you-go prices (excluding Power BI capacity products).
  7. [7]
    The Red Hat Linux Enterprise software reservation plans and renewals are temporarily unavailable due to pending updates to reservation products and pricing. You can disregard any renewal emails you may receive until the new plan is available. In the meantime, you can contact your Microsoft or Red Hat sales representative to ask about other plan options.
  8. [8]
    Customers may see savings estimated to be between 11% to 65%. The 65% savings is based on one M64dsv2 Azure VM for CentOS or Ubuntu Linux server in the East US region running for 36 months at a pay-as-you-go rate of ~$4,868.37 per month as compared to a reduced rate for a three-year savings plan of ~$1,703.44 per month. Based on Azure pricing as of October 2022. Prices are subject to change. Actual savings may vary depending on location, instance type, or usage.