Decide between a savings plan and a reservation

Azure provides you with two ways to save on your usage by committing for one or three years. You have the freedom to choose the savings options that best align with your workload patterns.

Compare reservations with savings plans

With reservations, you commit to a specific virtual machine type in a particular Azure region. For example, a D2v4 VM in Japan East for one year. With an Azure savings plan, you commit to spend a fixed hourly amount collectively on compute services. For example, $5.00/hour on compute services for one year. Reservations only apply to the identified compute service and region combination. Savings plan benefits are applicable to all usage from participating compute services across the globe, up to the hourly commitment.

Choose a reservation

For highly stable workloads that run continuously and where you have no expected changes to the machine series or region, consider a reservation. Reservations provide the greatest savings.

Choose a savings plan

For dynamic workloads where you need to run different sized virtual machines or that frequently change datacenter regions, consider a compute savings plan. Savings plans provide flexible benefit application and automatic optimization.

Next steps

For general information about savings plans, see What is Azure savings plans for compute?.