Request for Unified Hardware + Software VM Pricing via API

Question

Hi Azure Team,

We’ve been working through a support case (Tracking ID #2503120040017367) about how tough it is to get both hardware and software pricing tied together for VM RIs through the Pricing API. Right now, we have to collect pricing for the compute portion in one query and then manually find the separate meter IDs for software/licensing. We then add them together by hand—often factoring in extra calculations (like vCPU-based software costs). Doing all of this across hundreds of VM/OS combinations gets messy really fast.

In other words, the Azure Pricing Calculator handles these combinations behind the scenes, but there’s no straightforward API that returns the same combined cost in a single call. We have to do it ourselves, and it’s complicated, error-prone, and a blocker to truly automating cost analysis/forecasting.

We’d love a unified API or comprehensive dataset that automatically includes both compute and software costs for all VM scenarios (on-demand, reserved instances, etc.). This would make it way easier for FinOps teams (and others) to quickly compare and optimize Azure pricing.

Major public cloud providers typically publish a full price book or offer a unified API that includes both compute and software costs tied together in a single data feed. Azure’s requirement for manual toggling or cross-referencing IDs in the Pricing Calculator leaves a significant feature gap. Thanks for reading—I’d appreciate any timeline or ideas on whether this can be considered in future updates!

Rohit Manimaran
Data Engineer
Vega Cloud, Inc.