Azure · Free tool
Azure VM cost calculator
Family, size, region, OS, commitment. Plug them in and see the pay-as-you-go price next to Hybrid Benefit, 1-year and 3-year Reserved, and Spot. The stacked savings line is where most teams find their first six-figure cut.
Estimated monthly Azure VM cost
$0
$0 per year
Compute
$0
730 hr × $0/hr
OS license
$0
Linux: included
Side-by-side savings
If your Azure VM bill looks high, check these first
- Windows VMs without Hybrid Benefit applied. The saving is on the table for any tenant with Software Assurance.
- Production VMs on Pay-as-you-go that have run for 6+ months. 3-year Reserved is the math, every time.
- Dev and test VMs running 24/7 instead of 168 hours. Auto-shutdown saves 75 percent immediately.
- Old generation D_v3 / E_v3 still running. D_v5 and E_v5 are 15 to 25 percent cheaper for equal performance.
- CPU-bound production workloads on B-series. Credits run out, performance throttles, support escalates.
- Batch jobs and CI runners on regular VMs. Spot is 80 percent off and the workload is already evictable.
The savings stack
On Azure VMs three discounts stack. Hybrid Benefit removes the Windows or SQL licensing component. Reserved Instances remove a chunk of the compute component (38 percent for one year, 62 percent for three). Spot replaces the compute component entirely with the spare-capacity rate, typically 80 percent off pay-as-you-go.
AHB and Reserved stack cleanly. A 3-year Reserved Instance with AHB on a Windows D8s_v5 lands at roughly 75 percent off pay-as-you-go. AHB and Spot do not stack because Spot already prices the VM at the Linux rate. The audit pattern, plus the eligibility rules and the per-tenant cap on Hybrid Benefit licenses, is in the discount most teams still miss.
Run this on your real account
Free 14-day audit, read-only Reader role, one-page CFO summary.
We pull every VM, flag missing Hybrid Benefit on Windows workloads, list candidates for 3-year Reserved coverage, and identify dev VMs missing auto-shutdown. The audit is free, the report is yours.
Frequently asked
How much does Azure Hybrid Benefit actually save?
AHB removes the Windows licensing component from VM hourly pricing, saving roughly 40 percent on a Windows VM compared to the same VM bought without it. For SQL Server VMs the saving is closer to 55 percent. The catch is that you must own active Software Assurance or qualifying subscription Windows Server licenses in your enterprise agreement, and one license covers up to two 8-vCPU VMs or one 16-vCPU VM.
Can I stack Hybrid Benefit with a Reserved Instance?
Yes. AHB applies to the Windows licensing component, the Reservation applies to the compute component. They stack cleanly. A 3-year Reserved Instance with AHB on a Windows VM lands at roughly 70 to 80 percent off pay-as-you-go, depending on SKU and payment option. Spot does not stack with Reservations, but Spot already includes Linux pricing, so AHB is irrelevant there.
When should I choose Spot VMs?
Spot VMs run on Azure spare capacity at 60 to 90 percent off on-demand. Eligible workloads: stateless batch processing, dev and test environments, CI runners, big data analytics, render farms. Not eligible: anything that cannot be evicted with 30 seconds notice. Use AKS Spot node pools for batch workloads on Kubernetes, set max-surge to absorb evictions cleanly.
B-series vs D-series, which should I pick?
B-series gives a baseline performance with credits that bank during low usage and burn during high usage. Right pick for workloads that are mostly idle with occasional spikes, such as small dev VMs, jump boxes, and small web apps. D-series gives sustained 100 percent performance at higher cost. Right pick for steady production workloads, databases, and anything CPU-bound. The trap is putting a production CPU-bound workload on B-series, exhausting credits, and silently throttling.
How much do regional differences cost?
East US is the cheapest published Azure region for most VM SKUs. West Europe runs 5 to 10 percent more. Southeast Asia and Australia East run 10 to 15 percent more. Brazil South and South Africa North can run 25 percent more. The audit pattern: list every VM, count by region, and identify whether expensive-region workloads have a regulatory or latency reason or were just stamped there by default.
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