Azure AD B2C, phone sign-up/sign-in and SMS fees

Question

Azure AD B2C, phone sign-up/sign-in and SMS fees

Veli-Jussi Raitila 296

The pricing documentation for Azure AD B2C only refers to the additional "per authentication attempt" fees for SMS in the context of MFA. However, one can also enable phone sign-up/sign-in whereas the authentication is, or can be, essentially single factor.

I assume the SMS fees also apply in this case? If so, I think the documentation should reflect that (i.e. not only applicable when relying on multiple factors).

Akshay-MSFT 3,956 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-03-17T12:38:29.1966667+00:00

@Veli-Jussi Raitila

Hope you got a chance to review the action plan suggested below. Please do let me know if you have any queries in the comments section. If you don't have any further queries and the suggestion works as per your business need. Please "Accept the answer" and "share you feedback (Yes/No)". This will help us and others in the community as well.

Thanks,

Akshay Kaushik

Akshay-MSFT 3,956 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-03-17T12:38:29.1966667+00:00

@Veli-Jussi Raitila

Hope you got a chance to review the action plan suggested below. Please do let me know if you have any queries in the comments section. If you don't have any further queries and the suggestion works as per your business need. Please "Accept the answer" and "share you feedback (Yes/No)". This will help us and others in the community as well.

Thanks,

Akshay Kaushik

Answer 1

Akshay-MSFT 3,956 Microsoft Employee

@Veli-Jussi Raitila ,

Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Q&A. If you are opting for password less signin, then

Phone/SMS is often used as a verification step and this falls outside of the regular MFA traffic hence won't be charged by Microsoft.

However if any cost is associated by you network operator for receiving these OTP, that would be applicable by your network provider and not by Microsoft.

Microsoft only has an additional billing for MFA Phone/SMS.

Please do let me know if there are any further queries.

Thanks,

Akshay Kaushik

Please "Accept the answer" (Yes/No), and share your feedback if the suggestion does clarify your query. This will help us and others in the community as well.

Veli-Jussi Raitila 296 Reputation points

2023-03-23T08:01:39.71+00:00

I had to remove the accepted answer due to conflicting information.

The documentation here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory-b2c/sign-in-options#pricing-for-phone-sign-in refers to the "Separate Charges" section on the pricing page. And that section explicitly mentions MFA.

There is a conflict between the documentation (applies to MFA specifically) and the intuition that if there is a cost associated with sending an SMS - for Microsoft - the costs are incurred regardless of the reason an SMS was sent.

The Azure pricing calculator also uses the vague term "SMS/Phone Events" - no reference to MFA there.
Akshay-MSFT 3,956 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-03-23T11:15:37.0833333+00:00

@Veli-Jussi Raitila ,

Thanks for your response.

I did confirm this internally with stake holders that Phone/SMS is often used as a verification step and this falls outside of the regular MFA traffic

So if you are using this service separately for MFA only then billing would be associated. However if you need detailed info on pricing, I would recommend to raise a support case.

Thanks,

Akshay Kaushik

Azure AD B2C, phone sign-up/sign-in and SMS fees

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