Azure SQL Database remains inaccessible after switching Free Limit Exhaustion Behavior to BillOverUsage.

Hello MICKAEL FOLIO, it looks like your serverless free-tier database paused when it hit the monthly credit cap, and flipping the freeLimitExhaustionBehavior to BillOverUsage after the fact doesn’t automatically wake it up for that month. You’ve got two quick options to unblock it and get access to your data:

1. Manually resume the database

• Azure Portal: Go to your SQL database’s Overview blade and click Resume.
  • Azure CLI:

        az sql db resume -
    

    
    Resume-AzSqlDatabase `
    -ResourceGroupName MyResourceGroup `
    -ServerName MyServer `
    -DatabaseName MyDatabase
  

  Once resumed, you’ll be billed for any over-usage this month because FreeLimitExhaustionBehavior is now BillOverUsage.

1. Scale off the free-tier (if you prefer a provisioned tier) If you’d rather just move out of the free-tier entirely, you can bump it up to a paid service tier or provisioned serverless configuration. For example, with Azure CLI:

      az sql db update --server MyServer --name MyDatabase --edition GeneralPurpose --compute-model Provisioned --family Gen5 --capacity 2
   

   That will instantly remove the free-limit pause behavior and keep the database online.

Additional tips for the future:

• If you want the database to auto-bill and never pause on free limit exhaustion, set FreeLimitExhaustionBehavior to BillOverUsage at provisioning time (ARM template, Bicep, CLI, PowerShell). • You can verify your setting with:

az sql db show  --resource-group MyResourceGroup  --server MyServer  --name MyDatabase 

and look for "freeLimitExhaustionBehavior": "BillOverUsage".

Follow-up questions (if this doesn’t do the trick):

1. How did you enable BillOverUsage—via portal, CLI, PowerShell or ARM/Bicep?
2. Have you tried the manual Resume step? Any errors?
3. What does az sql db show report for status and freeLimitExhaustionBehavior?
4. Are you seeing any Resource Health alerts or maintenance windows flagged?

Hope this helps you wake your database up! Let me know if you get stuck.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/database/serverless-tier-overview?view=azuresql&tabs=general-purpose#auto-pause
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/sql/db?view=azure-cli-latest#az-sql-db-resume
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/az.sql/set-azsqldatabase?view=azps-15.5.0
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/azure.provisioning.sql.freelimitexhaustionbehavior?view=azure-dotnet
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/azure.provisioning.sql.sqldatabase.freelimitexhaustionbehavior?view=azure-dotnet

Hello Mickael !

Thank you for posting on MS Learn Q&A.

If you check the doc link below you will find that the free Azure SQL Database offer has monthly limits of 100k vCore seconds, 32 GB data storage,and 32 GB backup storage.

If you select auto-pause until next month the database becomes inaccessible until the next calendar month and if you select continue using database for additional charges / BillOverUsage the database should stay online and bill overage usage. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/database/free-offer?view=azuresql

Try to verify the actual resource state from CLI, not only the portal:

az sql db show \
  -g <resource-group> \
  -s <server-name> \
  -n <database-name> \
  --query "{status:status,useFreeLimit:useFreeLimit,freeLimitExhaustionBehavior:freeLimitExhaustionBehavior,sku:sku}"

then force the setting again from cloud shell:

az sql db update \
  -g <resource-group> \
  -s <server-name> \
  -n <database-name> \
  --free-limit-exhaustion-behavior BillOverUsage

also check that the subscription can actually accept overage charges because if it has a spending limit, Azure can disable resources for the rest of the billing period once the spending limit is reached and in that case you need to remove the spending limit or upgrading the billing restriction may be required.