Billing on Azure SQL Database gone wrong

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Billing on Azure SQL Database gone wrong

Tarik Berkovac 20

Hello, I have been creating and trying serverless databases... but I just found out that I somehow spend $0.38. I know it's not a lot (currently for me it is, because I don't have a job) but I think that I did something wrong, otherwise it wouldn't be billed.

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I know each db gets 100,000 vCore seconds for free, but this cost I did not see last night. I saw it at the time of writing this question. Any help is appreciated :)

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Answer 1

Monalla-MSFT 13,166 Moderator

@Tarik Berkovac - Welcome to Microsoft Q&A and thanks for reaching out to us.

While the free tier provides 100,000 vCore seconds, it’s essential to keep track of your usage. Each query consumes vCore seconds, and exceeding the limit can result in charges, so please check if your usage exceeded the free tier allocation.

Check your serverless database usage logs or billing details to understand what actions or queries might have triggered the cost in Azure Portal. The billing information will provide you with a breakdown of the charges for each service and resource in your account.

Also note that serverless databases are billed based on the total number of Request Units (RUs) consumed by your database operations. The cost of each RU depends on the region where your database is deployed. Please find more details here : Pricing Doc

Hope this helps. and please feel free to reach out if you have any further questions.

Please don't forget to "Accept as Answer" and click "Yes" if the above response is helpful, so it can be beneficial to the community.

Tarik Berkovac 20 Reputation points

2024-04-09T20:26:18.74+00:00

Hello, Thank you for answering.

TL;DR; I thought that each new serverless db gets 100,000 vCore seconds for free but it's not true. The offer of 100,000 free vCore seconds can be applied only to one database.

Here is a debugging process of the problem:

I am still unsure about some details.

The first created database was on for about 4 minutes, and the second one was up for about 2 minutes (can be seen on the screenshot provided in question). That totals to 5-6 minutes up time which is far less than the free vCore seconds provided for a database. So I went back to the terminal to see the command that I used for creation of db.

The database was created by command:

az sql db create -g db-rg -s medium-demo -n db-dev-1 -e GeneralPurpose --compute-model Serverless -f Gen5 --min-capacity 0.5 -c2 --auto-pause-delay 60

When I went again to restore the deleted database and put configuration GeneralPurpose and Serverless, I got that compute cost is 0.000159 USD which multiplied by 300 (approximate number of seconds for the uptime) gives $0.38 which is correct amount that I see on my billing chart.

Now the question is why this database did not have 100,000 vCore seconds for free. (I answered it previously at the top of the comment)

Also when I try to add a new database to the same SQL Server:

I don't get part for free vCore seconds (answered on top as well).
Monalla-MSFT 13,166 Reputation points Moderator

2024-04-10T15:34:15.4033333+00:00

Tarik Berkovac - If you need to know more details, we would like to put you in touch with a support engineer so you can receive 1:1 support for a deeper investigation on this.

Thanks in advance. Looking forward for your email.
Tarik Berkovac 20 Reputation points

2024-04-10T17:07:06.8633333+00:00

Thank you, I understood the billing system, and no further investigation is needed. Thanks again :)
Monalla-MSFT 13,166 Reputation points Moderator

2024-04-10T17:16:44.8133333+00:00

Tarik Berkovac- Great, thank you for confirming that.

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Billing on Azure SQL Database gone wrong

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