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Buy an Azure savings plan

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Azure savings plans help you save money by committing to an hourly spend for one-year or three-year plans for Azure compute resources.

You can pay for savings plans with monthly payments. Unlike an up front purchase, where you pay the full amount, the monthly payment option divides the total cost of the savings plan into 12 or 36 equal payments. The total cost of upfront and monthly savings plans is the same.

If a savings plan is purchased by using a Microsoft Customer Agreement, your monthly payment amount might vary, depending on the current month's market exchange rate for your local currency. Before you enter a commitment to buy a savings plan, review the following sections to prepare for your purchase.

Prerequisites

The person who buys a savings plan must have the necessary permissions. For more information, see Permissions to buy an Azure savings plan.

Purchase a savings plan

You can purchase a savings plan by using the Azure portal. You can also use the Savings Plan Order Alias - Create REST API.

After you buy a savings plan, you can change the savings plan scope to a different subscription.

Buy a savings plan in the Azure portal

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal.
  2. In the Search area, enter Savings plans. Then select Savings plans.
  3. Select Add to purchase a new savings plan.
  4. Complete all the required fields:
    • Name: Friendly name for the new savings plan.
    • Billing subscription: Subscription used to pay for the savings plan. For more information about permissions and roles required to purchase a savings plan, see Permissions to buy an Azure savings plan.
    • Apply to any eligible resource: Scope of resources that are eligible for savings plan benefits. For more information, see Savings plan scopes.
    • Term length: One year or three years.
    • Hourly commitment: Amount available through the plan each hour. In the Azure portal, up to 10 recommendations might appear. Recommendations are scope-specific. Azure doesn't currently provide recommendations for management groups. Each recommendation includes:
      • An hourly commitment.
      • The potential savings percentage compared to on-demand costs for the commitment.
      • The percentage of the selected scopes compute usage that is covered by the new savings plan. It includes the commitment amount plus any other previously purchased savings plan or reservation.
    • Billing frequency: All upfront or Monthly. The total cost of the savings plan is the same regardless of the selected frequency.

Purchase with the Savings Plan Order Alias - Create API

You can buy savings plans by using Azure role-based access control (RBAC) permissions or with permissions on your billing scope. When you use the Savings Plan Order Alias - Create REST API, the format of the billingScopeId property in the request body is used to control the permissions that are checked.

Purchase by using Azure RBAC permissions

  • You must have the savings plan purchaser role within, or be an owner of, the subscription that you plan to use, which is specified as billingScopeId.
  • The billingScopeId property in the request body must use the /subscriptions/10000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 format.

Purchase by using billing permissions

Permission needed to purchase varies by the type of account that you have:

  • Enterprise Agreement: You must be an Enterprise Agreement admin with write permissions.
  • Microsoft Customer Agreement: You must be a billing profile contributor or higher.
  • Microsoft Partner Agreement: Only Azure RBAC permissions are currently supported.

The billingScopeId property in the request body must use the /providers/Microsoft.Billing/billingAccounts/{accountId}/billingSubscriptions/10000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 format.

View savings plan purchases and payments

To learn more about viewing savings plan purchases and payments, visit view savings plan purchases and view savings plan purchases, respectively.

Cancellations, exchanges and trade-ins

Unlike reservations, you can't cancel or exchange savings plans. You can trade-in select compute reservations for a savings plan. To learn more, visit reservation trade-in.

Need help?

If you have Azure savings plan for compute questions, contact your account team or create a support request. Temporarily, Microsoft only provides answers to expert support requests in English for questions about Azure savings plan for compute.

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