Optimize your Azure costs
Manage your cloud spending and focus on what matters most to your business
Explore tools and resources to help you save
Find out about the tools, offers, and guidance designed to help you manage and optimize your Azure costs. Learn how to understand and forecast your bill, optimize workload costs, and control your spending.
Understand and forecast your costs
- Monitor and analyze your Azure bill with Microsoft Cost Management. Set budgets and allocate spending to your teams and projects.
- Estimate the costs for your next Azure projects using the Azure pricing calculator and the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculator.
- Successfully build your cloud business case with key financial and technical guidance from Azure.
Cost optimize your workloads
- Follow your Azure Advisor best practice recommendations for cost savings.
- Review your workload architecture for cost optimization using the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Review assessment and the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework design documentation.
- Save with Azure offers and licensing terms such as the Azure Hybrid Benefit, paying in advance for predictable workloads with reservations, Azure Spot Virtual Machines, Azure savings plan for compute, and Azure dev/test pricing.
Control your costs
- Mitigate cloud spending risks by implementing cost management governance best practices at your company using the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure.
- Implement cost controls and guardrails for your environment with Azure Policy.
8 ways to optimize costs today
1
Shut down unused resources
Identify idle virtual machines (VMs), ExpressRoute circuits, and other resources with Azure Advisor. Get recommendations on which resources to shut down, and see how much you would save.
2
Right-size underused resources
Find underutilized resources with Azure Advisor—and get recommendations on how to reduce your spend by reconfiguring or consolidating them.
3
Add an Azure savings plan for compute for dynamic workloads
Save up to 65 percent off pay-as-you-go pricing when you commit to spend a fixed hourly amount on compute services for one or three years.
4
Reserve instances for consistent workloads
Get a discount of up to 72 percent over pay-as-you-go pricing on Azure services when you prepay for a one- or three-year term with reservation pricing.
5
Take advantage of the Azure Hybrid Benefit
AWS is up to five times more expensive than Azure for Windows Server and SQL Server. Save when you migrate your on-premises workloads to Azure.
6
Configure autoscaling
Save by dynamically allocating and de-allocating resources to match your performance needs.
7
Choose the right Azure compute service
Azure offers many ways to host your code. Operate more cost efficiently by selecting the right compute service for your application.
8
Set up budgets and allocate costs to teams and projects
Create and manage budgets for the Azure services you use or subscribe to—and monitor your organization’s cloud spending—with Microsoft Cost Management.
See how customers are optimizing their Azure costs
Maersk delivers cost optimization across its organization
Global logistics leader Maersk gained significant benefits, like enterprise-wide awareness and better cost management processes, through its ongoing digital transformation by making cloud cost optimization a core practice.
ASOS weaves cost optimization into fashion innovation
Kristina Moln-Page, Head of Finance, ASOS"We spend a lot of money in the cloud, so it's one of those things that has a huge impact. Our cloud cost optimization has already saved us 25 to 40 percent."
H&R Block optimizes cloud costs with Azure
H&R Block partnered with Microsoft to increase the cost efficiency of its cloud deployments. Using Azure cost-optimization services and best practices, the tax preparation giant continuously optimizes its cloud spend and keeps monthly costs under control year-over-year.
Cost optimization training
Learn how to save money on Azure in this free, 51-minute Microsoft Learn module, Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework—Cost Optimization. You’ll learn how to:
- Gain visibility and draw cost insights using monitoring and analytics.
- Maximize the efficiency of your cloud environment.
- Provision resources that are optimized for cost.
Additional cost optimization resources
- Video: Evaluate and optimize your costs using the Azure Well-Architected Framework
- Ignite session: Get the most out of Azure with Azure Advisor
- Blog: How to optimize your Azure workload costs
- Blog: How to stay on top of Azure best practices
- Microsoft Learn module: Save money with Azure Reserved Instances
- Microsoft Learn module: Get started with Azure Advisor
Get help managing your costs from expert partners
Find help with cost management from an Azure partner with verified capabilities—and move forward confidently, knowing your partner is committed to your success. Depending on your needs, there are two expert partner options to choose from:
Azure advanced specialization partners provide deep expertise in specific scenarios—such as infrastructure migration, app modernization, cloud-native app development, or managing specialized workloads on Azure.
Azure expert managed service providers are generalists, offering validated expertise in managing and optimizing Azure environments, following industry and Microsoft best practices.