Azure Retail Prices REST API, difference prices between API and when seen in the 'create Azure VM' web gui

Question

So I'm trying to get some prices using the Azure Retail Prices API and I'm a little confused on the results so I'm hoping someone can help clear up what I'm seeing.

If I take a single VM type as a reference point (In this example, E4ds v5) and I use the API to get a hourly price rate (0.2988), the same VM if selected within Azure Virtual Machines and using Create Azure VM and select 'See all Sizes' the pricing seems to differ at a monthly cost of £169.99. With what is being returned, I just can't seem to get the maths to work out to make the hourly price rate match what I'm seeing when using the web GUI.

I'm using the following command to get the pricing info:

(Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices?currencyCode='GBP'&`$filter=productName eq 'Virtual Machines Edsv5 Series' and skuName eq 'E4ds v5' and armRegionName eq 'westeurope' and priceType eq 'Consumption'" -Usebasicparsing -Method GET -ContentType "application/json").Items  

Answer 1

Hello, @DaveK !

How do I compare the retail prices REST API and the portal prices?
Usually confusion regarding difference in prices when comparing one place with another is a variable that affects the price such as the OS license or forgetting to update the location. This is easy to overlook, especially when default values might not be what you were expecting.

Below I've used your request in Postman which returned the same 0.2988 GBP that you are seeing. I then compared this to the Azure Pricing Calculator which quoted £0.299 as long as I selected an operating system with no additional cost. Looking at the Azure Portal, we see the same price after a bit of math ($252.58/month or $0.346/hour which converts to £0.2988/hour at the conversion rate listed of 0.8636).

Let me know if you are seeing something different and I'd be happy to investigate this further. I hope this helps!

Total for an E4ds v5 VM using the Azure Portal: $252.58/month ($0.346/hour or £0.2988/hour with 730 hours at the conversion rate listed of 0.8636)

Total for an E4ds v5 VM using the REST API: £0.2988

https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices?currencyCode='GBP'&$filter=productName eq 'Virtual Machines Edsv5 Series' and skuName eq 'E4ds v5' and armRegionName eq 'westeurope' and priceType eq 'Consumption'

Total for an E4ds v5 VM using the Azure Pricing Calculator: £0.299