Azure Sql Server Costing much more than expected

Question

I have configured a SQL Server on Microsoft Azure. According to first Image I am expected to be cost 0.15$ per month. But in reality I am being charged almost 2$ per day.

Answer 1

Hi,

It depends what you have used for the setup and the storage is also charged, Network data ingest and outgoing is applied, if you have Zone redundancy and SQL Licenses charges are applied - I will suggest you to review the same setup using the Azure Pricing using this link and this should give you a estimate - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/details/azure-sql-database/single/?cdn=disable

Hope this helps.

JS

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Answer 2

Hi @Usman Khalid

Azure SQL Database incurs hourly charges regardless of your usage, unless you switch to the Serverless service tier.

You can configure Serverless to automatically pause after one hour of inactivity. Please note that this pausing feature is exclusive to the Serverless service tier, and other Azure SQL variants cannot be paused. If you infrequently use the database or primarily use it for occasional QA purposes, Serverless is the most cost-effective option to optimize your expenses.

You can find more details in below thread- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1373894/database-paused-cost

Also, this free course can help you manage Azure costs.

Thank you!

Answer 3

Hi Usman,

From your screenshot, you have Auto-pause delay disabled. This means your database will incur compute charges all the time since it will not pause due to inactivity. Recommend you enable auto-pause delay immediately.

Typically with Serverless tier you would always have auto-pause delay enabled with an amount of time (e.g. 1 hour) configured based on your expected usage patterns.

As to your expectation that it will only cost $0.15/month, that is incorrect because you aren't factoring in any Compute costs. Even with auto-pause it would be rare for compute cost to be zero, because if the database is resumed for any reason during the month there would be a minimum of slightly over 1 hour of compute charge.

Please refer to article below which covers how cost and billing for serverless tier works:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/database/serverless-tier-overview

Have you considered using Azure SQL Database Free offer? It gives you 100,000 vCore seconds and up to 32GB storage per month. Please see article below for more details:

Try Azure SQL Database for free (preview)

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/database/free-offer

Please click Accept Answer and upvote if the above was useful.

Thanks.

-TP