Microsoft Azure is a great place to build web applications. We often get asked how much does Azure with SQL cost? The easy answer Azure is free to get started. SQL with Azure has a very nominal development cost. But what about Azure with SQL for a production level app? Azure requires at least one Office 365 ID. The most basic Office 365 ID costs $5 per user per month on an annual contract. The base Azure cost is $4.90 per month for what we would consider a small Azure instance. Azure can always be scaled up as well.
Go to the Azure cost calculator here.
- See visualization below for recommended Azure configuration for a basic Azure instance.
- Backup storage tiers explained
- Service tiers explained
Best Practices:
Unless you are a seasoned database and hardware expert, we always recommend “start small”. Scaling up is very easy in Azure so it is easy to figure out what “good performance” means for your application.
At some point Azure is not the bottleneck for performance and it may be your network or devices that might be causing performance issues. We recommend using some development tools to test speeds before and after changing Azure sizes to determine the performance benefits of scaling up.
Recommended Basic SQL with Azure Model
Related Links
What is Azure?
What is Office 365?
How much does Office 365 cost? Answer: $5 per user ID per month on annual contract.