Azure · Free tool
Azure SQL Database cost calculator
DTU, vCore General Purpose, Business Critical, and Hyperscale on one page. AHB and Reserved Capacity stacked. The line where most teams discover their DTU databases should have moved to vCore eighteen months ago.
Estimated monthly Azure SQL cost
$0
$0 per year
Compute
$0
tier × hours
Storage
$0
100 GB
Backup PITR
$0
7 days retention
Side-by-side savings (vCore tiers only)
DTU tiers do not support AHB or Reserved Capacity. Migrating S6 to GP Gen5 4-vCore with the stack is roughly 60 percent off.
If your Azure SQL bill looks high, check these first
- vCore databases without Hybrid Benefit. The licensing component is roughly 50 percent of the bill on GP and BC. Free if you have SA.
- Production vCore databases on Pay-as-you-go that have run for 6+ months. 3-year Reserved Capacity stacks with AHB.
- Standard S6/S7 or Premium databases that should be on vCore. The DTU model has no commitment discount, so the savings on migration are immediate.
- Many small SaaS-tenant databases on Single DB pricing. Elastic Pool consolidates and saves around 60 percent.
- Business Critical on a workload that is not IO-bound. 2.7x the GP rate for replicas you are not using.
- Hyperscale at less than 1 TB. Below the break-even, GP plus AHB is cheaper.
- Backup retention set to 35 days by default on small databases. Above 100 percent of size, it is paid storage.
DTU vs vCore, plainly
DTU is the legacy bundled metric. One number that bundles CPU, memory, IO, and storage. It is the default in old Azure portal templates and most teams who started before 2018 are still on it. The DTU model does not support Hybrid Benefit and does not support Reserved Capacity. Both discounts are on the table but unreachable until you migrate.
vCore is the unbundled metric. Compute, storage, and IO are priced separately. AHB and Reserved Capacity apply. The migration shape is straightforward: a Standard S6 (400 DTU) maps roughly to a GP Gen5 4-vCore. A Premium P2 (250 DTU) maps to a BC Gen5 2-vCore. The DTU vs vCore decision tree covers the migration shape, the AHB stack, and the Hyperscale break-even on real workload sizes.
Run this on your real account
Free 14-day audit, read-only Reader role, one-page CFO summary.
We pull every Azure SQL resource, flag DTU databases that should be on vCore, missing Hybrid Benefit on vCore workloads, Reserved Capacity candidates, and Elastic Pool consolidation opportunities across SaaS-tenant databases.
Frequently asked
DTU or vCore, which should I pick?
Pick vCore for any workload that will live longer than a year. vCore is the only tier that supports Hybrid Benefit and Reserved Capacity, the two stacking discounts that take 60 to 80 percent off published rates. DTU is fine for small workloads under $200 per month where the discount math does not move the needle. Above that, DTU is leaving money on the table every month.
When does Hyperscale make sense?
Hyperscale separates compute from storage and prices each independently. Storage starts at $0.10 per GB per month, no upper bound, scales to 100 TB. Compute is per primary replica, plus optional read replicas. The break-even versus General Purpose is around 1 TB. Above 4 TB, Hyperscale is the only sensible answer. Below 200 GB, General Purpose with AHB and 3-year Reserved is cheaper.
How does Reserved Capacity stack with Hybrid Benefit?
Cleanly. AHB removes the SQL Server license component. Reserved Capacity discounts the compute component (23 percent for one year, 41 percent for three). Both apply at once. On a typical 8-vCore General Purpose database, AHB saves roughly $1,500 per month, and a 3-year Reserved on top of that saves another $1,000 per month. Together, around 70 percent off pay-as-you-go, with no architecture change.
Should I use Elastic Pool?
Yes if you have ten or more databases with non-overlapping peak loads. The pool sizes for the aggregate worst case rather than the sum of every database peak. Twenty SaaS tenant databases averaging 5 DTU each, peaking at 50, should be in a 200 eDTU pool, not twenty S2 single databases. Saves around 60 percent on a typical SaaS shape. The trap is putting databases with synchronized peak loads in the same pool, where the math breaks even or worse.
Do I need Business Critical?
Rarely. Business Critical adds local SSD, three replicas, in-memory OLTP, and Always On read replicas at roughly 2.7x the General Purpose rate. The realistic question is whether your workload is IO-bound on remote storage. If query latency on General Purpose is under 50 ms p99 and CPU is the bottleneck, Business Critical does nothing for you. If you are seeing log throughput throttling on a write-heavy workload, it is the right answer. The audit query is in the companion blog.
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