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Free trials get $200 but have a 0-quota limit on LLMs to stop abuse. Upgrading to Pay-As-You-Go unlocks the models while keeping your credits.

Kris Patel 0 Reputation points
2026-06-01T05:58:58.6733333+00:00

I recently created a new Azure account to learn and explore the Azure AI Foundry platform. My billing dashboard shows that I have the active $200 free trial credits available to spend [19].

However, when I try to deploy and test Large Language Model (LLM) APIs (such as GPT models), the deployment completely fails, throwing a "Quota Not Met" error

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  1. AI answer

    2026-06-01T05:59:16.3333333+00:00

    Free trial subscriptions with $200 credit can still have zero or highly restricted Azure OpenAI/LLM quota to prevent abuse. In those cases, LLM deployments fail with “Quota Not Met” even though the credit balance is available.

    From the quotas and limits documentation:

    • Certain offer types (including Free Trials, Lightweight trial, Azure Pass, and some student/legacy offers) have 0 quota for all Azure OpenAI models, meaning no LLM usage is allowed until the subscription type changes.
    • For Azure for Students, all models have 1K TPM quota, but o-series and GPT‑4.1 (and some previews) have 0 TPM.
    • For Lightweight trial, Free Trials, and Azure Pass, all models have 0 TPM.

    This matches the behavior described: the subscription shows $200 credit, but the OpenAI quota is 0, so deployments fail with quota errors.

    Upgrading the subscription to a standard Pay-As-You-Go offer (or another supported offer type) is what unlocks non-zero quota for LLMs while still allowing use of any remaining free credit. After upgrade, the subscription is no longer in a “Free Trial / Lightweight / Pass” offer type, so the default Azure OpenAI quotas for that offer tier apply.

    In summary:

    1. The $200 credit and the Azure OpenAI quota are separate controls.
    2. Free trial–type offers can have 0 LLM quota, regardless of remaining credit.
    3. Upgrading to Pay-As-You-Go (or another supported offer) is required to obtain usable LLM quota while continuing to spend the existing $200 credit.

    References:

    AI-generated content may be incorrect. Read our transparency notes for more information.

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