How does the costing of ADF on the free account work?

Question

I have signed up for a free account which grants $200 credits. Before signing up I checked the free services available and saw that Azure Data Factory is an always-free service allowing 5 low-frequency activities to run per month (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/).

The documentation (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/data-factory/data-pipeline/) says "A low frequency activity does not execute more than once in a day" and that the "first 5 low frequency activities in a month are free". Does this mean that on the free account I only get 5 executions per month (the first 5, common to all accounts), or that I can have 5 different pipelines that execute once per day all month? I am also really hoping that this is an average of once per day, otherwise doing any training is going to exceed that definition.

Finally, the documentation (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/data-factory/data-pipeline/) only defines low frequency activities on the v1 tab which implies that low frequency activities only apply to v1 but, when creating an Azure Data Factory, the only option is v2. Does the same definition of low frequency ("once per day") apply to v2? If not, how do I create a v1 Data Flow?

Answer 1

Hello @DavidOrme-9727

On the free account, you can use Azure Data Factory with 5 low-frequency activities per month.

A low-frequency activity is defined as an activity that does not execute more than once in a day. This means that you can have up to 5 different pipelines that execute once per day all month. Regarding your concern about training, the low-frequency activity limit is an average of once per day, so you should be able to use it for training purposes without exceeding the limit.

As for your question about v1 and v2, the low-frequency activity definition applies to both versions of Azure Data Factory. However, v1 and v2 have different features and capabilities.

To create a v1 Data Flow, you can follow the instructions in this documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-factory/create-data-factory-using-azure-portal#create-a-data-factory.

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Answer 2

@DavidOrme-9727 - Thanks for the question and using MS Q&A platform.

The Azure Data Factory (ADF) is an always-free service that allows 5 low-frequency activities to run per month. A low-frequency activity is defined as an activity that does not execute more than once in a day. This means that on the free account, you get 5 executions per month, and these executions can be spread across different pipelines.

Regarding your concern about training, the definition of low-frequency activities is an average of once per day. So, you can have a pipeline that runs once a day for the entire month, and it will only count as one low-frequency activity.

As for your question about v1 and v2, the definition of low-frequency activities applies to both versions of ADF. However, v1 is being retired, and Microsoft allows to create ADF using v2 for new projects.

Hope this helps. Do let us know if you any further queries.

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