Pay as you go vs azure plan

Zegan, Michał 21 Reputation points
2021-10-09T15:47:56.56+00:00

Hello, I am confused between azure plan and pay as you go subscriptions.
For example this page https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/manage/cancel-azure-subscription suggests azure plan is something different than free and pay as you go subscription. This page https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/offer-details/ shows azure plan as something separate from both, yet when you go to azure plan page from there, it looks almost as if it also talks about free and pay as you go accounts.
Here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/understand/mca-overview#azure-plans-determine-pricing-and-service-level-agreement-for-subscriptions it seems like only azure plan and azure plan for dev/test are using microsoft customer agreement, so noting the above links I would think that free account and pay as you go subscriptions individually created through azure signup process are not covered by microsoft customer agreement.
I am also pretty sure that previously when I was creating my subscriptions on a previous ms account I had, they really weren't covered.
However now, when creating pay as you go subscriptions even on new AAD accounts that haven't yet signed up, what I get is a customer agreement billing account and subscription under it, stating that it is "azure plan". It seems to work normally. When offer id is ever displayed, for example during the signup process, it states to sign me up for 003P that is pay as you go, not azure plan which is probably 001G. Also I have an azure free account/subscription upgraded to PAYG and both before and after upgrade it states to be azure plan... well I am not sure what it stated when I created it first because I think the subscription details page showed a bit different info until I moved subscription to another tenant, namely it showed that the subscription offer is "free", now it also shows itself as "azure plan".
What is actually going on here? did all individual PAYG and free subscriptions switch to azure plan? I am confused pretty much.

Azure Cost Management
Azure Cost Management
A Microsoft offering that enables tracking of cloud usage and expenditures for Azure and other cloud providers.
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  1. SadiqhAhmed-MSFT 49,331 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator
    2021-10-12T12:25:15.417+00:00

    Hello anonymous user - Thank you for your post and I apologize for the delayed response!

    Microsoft Azure has two platforms - Legacy and Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA).

    If you are using an old subscription it falls under Legacy and doesn't show up as Azure plans. However, if its a new subscription it shows as Azure plan.

    The behavior you observed could be because of the region you are in. For your reference - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/microsoft-customer-agreement/microsoft-customer-agreement-faq

    If you've more questions and needs clarity, I suggest you reach out to us by raising a support request to Azure subscription management team using this link - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-portal/supportability/how-to-create-azure-support-request

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