Billing FAQs

A: With user assignment-based billing, you only pay for the users you assign an access level. When you remove the users, charges stop. There's no longer an extra step of increase/decreasing the paid count.

In assignment-based billing, all organizations begin with new users added from projects with Stakeholder access. We don't charge for new users who only need free Stakeholder access. If you want all new users to get Basic, change the default access level for your organization to Basic.

Group rules are a great way to automate access level assignment for your organization and under assignment-based billing, assignment errors are no longer common.

For more information about user assignment-based billing, see our blog post.

A: When a user is new to the organization and is added to a project, previously they would get Basic access level. If you purchased Basic, but it wasn't yet assigned to a user. With assignment-based billing, you pay only for the users you assign, so there aren't any "unassigned" users.

If you want all new users added to a project to get Basic, change the default access level (Organization Settings > Billing) to Basic.

For more granular control over the access level that's assigned to new users, consider setting up group rules. Group rules take precedence over default access level. The default access level only applies when a user has zero group rules applied. Group rules assign access to users who aren't directly assigned an access level. To have these group rules apply to your existing users, you need to remove direct assignments.

A: If you add a user with Basic or Basic + Test Plans access level, you pay at the time of assignment. When you create a group rule, applied to users without direct assignments, you don't start paying until they sign in and receive an access level.

A: When a user is permanently deleted in Azure AD, within a few hours, they're removed from Azure DevOps and you're no longer be billed for their license. Guest users may need to be removed manually from Azure DevOps. For more information, see Delete a user in Azure AD

A: If you have inactive users, stop paying for them by removing them or assigning them a free Stakeholder access level. Sort by Last Access to find users who haven't accessed the organization recently. Find out how recently they got added by exporting the list of users and checking the Date Added column.

A: Multi-organization billing/licensing is available. For more information, see multi-organization billing.

A: As part of the change to user assignment-based billing, we've also switched from monthly to daily billing. When you give a user paid access for a few weeks, or even a few days, you pay only for the time they got assigned to the paid access, rather than for a full month. As we switch your organization from monthly to daily billing, your next Azure bill is likely lower than it was previously. The next month is back to normal once a full month of daily charges has accumulated.

A: Pro-rated charges apply to all purchases including pipelines (self-hosted and MS hosted) and artifacts storage. For example, if you purchased five MS hosted pipelines on the 20th of the month, then the charges for that month for pipelines are pro-rated. In this case, you're charged one-third of the monthly cost of five hosted pipelines.

A: If you set up billing before your trial expires, you don't get charged until the trial ends.

A: Those users assigned Basic + Test Plans lose access until you do set up billing.

A: Microsoft ended support for purchasing third party paid Azure DevOps extensions through your Azure bill on July 1, 2019. We're encouraging our publishers to offer paid access to their services directly.

A: Since June 1, 2019, on-premises Azure Artifacts, for example, Package Management, is included with the Basic license. For Azure DevOps Server 2019, purchase a Basic license and assign it to the user. For TFS 2017 and 2018, no other purchase is required, but you still need to assign users the Package Management extension license to use the feature.

A: If you're already using Azure, chances are you already have an Azure support plan. Also, you don't need to pay for billing support. Report a service outage from our service status page.

If you need technical support with Azure DevOps and don't have an Azure support plan already, complete the following steps:

1. Create an Azure subscription.

• Consider your purchase options and decide whether to set up payment direct with Azure, through a partner, or through a Microsoft representative.
• The simplest option is to pay for Azure directly. It's free to create an Azure subscription - you only pay for what you use.

2. Choose a support plan.

• As part of signing up for an Azure subscription, you can choose a support plan.
• All support plans let you create unlimited support requests for a fixed monthly price.
• All paid plans, including the Developer plan, offer technical support for Azure DevOps.

3. Submit a support ticket.

• Now, you can open a request via the Azure portal or learn how to create a support request.

A: No. Azure DevOps must be purchased through an Azure subscription. (Think of it as your Azure billing account.)

A: Yes. Use Azure DevOps up to the free tier limits for your organization, listed as follows:

• First five users free (Basic license)
• Azure Pipelines:
  • One Microsoft-hosted CI/CD (one concurrent job, up to 30 hours per month)
  • One self-hosted CI/CD concurrent job
• Azure Boards: Work item tracking and Kanban boards
• Azure Repos: Unlimited private Git repos
• Azure Artifacts: Two GiB free per organization

A: You can buy Azure DevOps with most Azure subscriptions. We support Azure subscriptions connected to your Enterprise Agreement (EA), Azure subscriptions set up by Cloud Solution Providers (CSPs), through Microsoft Open License resellers, and Pay-As-You-Go. You can also buy using Azure subscriptions that Visual Studio subscribers set up as a subscriber benefit. (But no, your monthly credit can't be used pay for more Visual Studio subscriptions.)

The only notable exclusion is that you can't use the Azure free trial, Government, or National clouds.

A: No. You can't use the Azure free account to pay for Visual Studio Marketplace purchases. Instead, set up a separate Pay-As-You-Go Azure subscription before or during your purchase.

A: No, you can't use the monthly Azure credits from Visual Studio subscriptions to pay for Azure DevOps. Before you make purchases by using this type of Azure subscription, you must remove your spending limit.

A: Not at all. If you only want to buy Azure DevOps via Azure, that's okay.

A: Yes. Select the Azure subscription that's linked to the desired Azure DevOps organization, in Settings > Resources.

Select the desired organization from list and apply tags by selecting the action Assign tags. The tags you assign appear in your Azure bill for the charges associated with the selected Azure DevOps organization.

Multi-organization billing

Multi-organization billing allows you to pay once per user, for organizations under the same Azure billing subscription.

A: No. For example, with the default assignment-based billing, each organization gets five free Basic users. When you change to multi-organization billing the Azure subscription gets five free Basic users, to be shared amongst all the organizations that are linked to it. When most users access only one organization, then five free users are most cost effective. If many users access multiple organizations, then multi-organization billing is likely the best option.

A: No. Multi-organization billing applies to the Azure subscription. It needs to only be set once and can be set from any organization that uses that Azure subscription for billing.

A: To turn on multi-organization billing, see how to pay for a user once across multiple organizations.

A: No. Multi-organization billing groups the per user charges at an Azure subscription level, so only organizations that share a common Azure subscription get billed together.

A: Yes.

• All organizations under the same billing Azure subscription are ordered. The ordering is consistent month to month, but it isn't configurable.
• The five free Basic users apply to the first organization on the list. Any remaining value carries over to other organizations.
• Users get billed in the first organization they access and not again in any other organization.
• If there are any charges for an organization, then there's a separate line item for that organization on the detailed Azure bill.

A: No. User assignments get applied in each organization independently. Administrators can't tell whether a user they're adding already has an access level that's assigned in another organization.

A: They're billed for both Basic and Basic + Test Plans, which is a current limitation of multi-organization billing. We recommend assigning users with group rules and setting up the same group rules in each organization to ensure consistent access level assignment.

A: Export a list of users from Organization settings > Users for each organization. Then, remove duplicates based on sign-in address (for example, contoso@contoso.com). You can find the sign-in address under the Username column in the exported file.

A: The most common reason customers have received extra free user license grants in the past is because Azure DevOps didn't support multi-organization billing. For that reason, when you enable multi-organization billing, extra free grants are removed. If you have a free grant, contact our Microsoft Azure support team to request that the grant applied to your Azure subscription instead. For a free grant example, the Microsoft Enterprise DevOps Accelerator Offer.

Understand your bill

Azure DevOps charges appear with other Azure charges on your Azure bill. This section helps you with understanding how to drill into your Azure DevOps specific charges.

Complete the following step to view by cost analysis.

1. Go to Azure portal > Subscriptions, and then select Cost analysis.

   

A: Follow these steps to see only your charges for Azure DevOps.

1. In the Azure portal, select Subscriptions > Cost analysis.

2. Filter on Service name = Azure DevOps.

   

A: Azure DevOps charges daily, so the best way to see what you're currently paying for Azure DevOps is to view by daily costs.

1. In the Azure portal, select Subscriptions > Cost analysis.

2. View by Daily costs.

   

A: Azure DevOps includes Azure Repos, Azure Boards, Azure Pipelines, Azure Artifacts, and Azure Test Plans. For more information about pricing, see Azure DevOps pricing. To see these services on your bill, follow these steps.

1. In the Azure portal, select Subscriptions > Cost analysis.

2. Group by Meter subcategory.

   

A: If you work in more than one Azure DevOps organization that's billed to the same Azure subscription, you can separate the charges for each organization.

To make this split easier, we automatically add the tag "_organizationname_" and the name of your Azure DevOps organization associated with the charges. We started emitting this tag in Feb 2020, so you won't see it before that date. See the following two ways you can use this tag to drill into charges for a given organization.

1. In the Azure portal, select Subscriptions > Cost analysis.

   

• Filter based on tag, and see only charges for a given organization or

  

• Group by tag, and see charges stacked by organization

  

Azure portal integration

Your Azure DevOps organization appears as a resource in the Azure portal, but you create and manage it outside of the portal. There are some limitations to this integration and workarounds, as follows.

A: No, you can't move the organization resource that appears in the Azure portal between Azure subscriptions via the Azure portal. But you can move it between subscriptions by changing the subscription your organization uses for billing.

A: No, the organization resource is created in its own resource group with a predefined naming convention. If you need to know what Azure DevOps organization is in the resource group, create an organization name tag and make it a column in the Resource Groups view.

1. Create a tag called Organization name.
2. Tag each Resource group with the name of the organization that it contains.
3. Select Manager view > Edit columns.
4. Change the selection from Properties to Tags.
5. Select the Organization name column.
6. Move it to Selected columns, and then select Apply.

A: The location of your organization resource could be incorrect for various reasons, such as changing your organization region. To find the location of your organization, check the region listed in Azure DevOps, which is the source of truth for Azure DevOps locations. If the location listed there doesn't match the location listed inside the Azure portal, you can update the portal by removing billing from your organization and then setting it up again.

A: If you've renamed your organization after you set up billing, then the name of the organization resource is the original name. To change the name of the organization resource to the new name, first remove billing, and then set up billing again.

A: Deleting the organization resource from the Azure portal removes billing for your organization and your organization returns to its free limits. To delete your Azure DevOps organization and all the data it contains, you must delete it from within Azure DevOps administration.

A: You can try to add the subscription with the Azure Sponsorship Offer and see if the system accepts it. If the subscription has a limit, then you likely can't use it.

A: Charges are metered daily to the Azure subscription you selected when you set up billing. Charges accumulate and are included on the next Azure bill you receive.

A: Reductions and cancellations are effective immediately.

A: When the Azure subscription used for billing on your organization isn't in active status - for example, because you canceled the subscription, or the credit card used for billing expired - your organization reverts to the free tier of service. To resume access to paid services, reactivate your subscription or change your organization's billing subscription.

A: If you're the owner or contributor for the Azure subscription that's used for billing your organization, you can view your billing details in Azure DevOps Organization settings > Billing tab. If you're the Azure Account Administrator, go to the Azure Account portal.

A: Yes, you can. You need to be an owner or contributor for an Azure subscription that was created for your EA.

A: Yes. Buy directly from the Visual Studio Marketplace, Azure DevOps tab. Bill purchases to the Azure subscription that was created under your Enterprise Agreement (EA). Don't order Visual Studio Marketplace services through your reseller.

A: The easiest approach to determine if you have the right privileges is to select the Buy button for a service. Select an Azure subscription, which is a billing account, from a presented list of Azure subscriptions that are linked to your sign-in credentials. Since the name of your Azure subscription defaults to the type of billing account, it's often clear whether the Azure subscription is part of your Enterprise Agreement. For example, subscriptions can be named "Pay-As-You-Go" or "Enterprise Agreement".

Another approach is to try to visit the Azure Enterprise Portal. If you can reach it successfully, then you already have either the enterprise admin or the organization owner role. Only organization owners can set up new Azure billing in an Enterprise Agreement.

Ask your Enterprise Administrator to add you as an organization owner within the Azure Enterprise portal. If you can't find this person, submit a support ticket and request the contact information. You need your organization's name and your Enterprise Agreement enrollment number for the support ticket.

A: Yes, you can use these prepaid funds for all services that Azure DevOps offers. Make sure to choose an Azure subscription that was created for your EA when you set up billing for your organization.

The only exclusion is for extensions offered by partners. These charges appear on your next "overage" invoice. Typically, charges occur monthly, but because of historical rules for some EA customers, an overage invoice might not be issued for several months. Consult a licensing specialist for your EA if you need to know what number of other purchases aren't eligible for Azure Monetary Commitment funds, trigger an overage invoice.

A: Use the Azure Prepayment (previously called monetary commitment) funds from your Enterprise Agreement to pay for the following items: Azure DevOps users, and Microsoft-published extensions for Azure DevOps. You can't use these funds to pay for Visual Studio cloud subscriptions and non-Microsoft extensions for Azure DevOps.

A: You can't create Team Projects or view them in the Azure portal as of September 28, 2018. You can continue to access any Team Projects you create via the Azure portal through your organization URL (https://dev.azure.com/{your_organization}). You can always create new organizations and projects from visualstudio.com. The best way for Azure users to get started using Azure DevOps is to create a project.

A: Someone already set up billing for your organization. Each organization can use only one Azure subscription for billing. You can't split across multiple Azure subscriptions.

A: Yes, you can use the same Azure subscription for billing across multiple organizations. You can't link a single organization to multiple Azure subscriptions.

A: Yes, you can, if your reseller participates in the Cloud Solution Provider program. Just ask them.

Buy Azure DevOps now

• Azure DevOps Users/Basic
• Parallel jobs
• Azure Artifacts
• Azure Pipelines

Related articles

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• Add backup billing managers
• Change the Azure subscription for billing
• Azure DevOps pricing
• Azure DevOps billing support