Compare the Pricing and Total Cost of Ownership calculators
The pricing calculator and the total cost of ownership (TCO) calculator are two calculators that help you understand potential Azure expenses. Both calculators are accessible from the internet, and both calculators allow you to build out a configuration. However, the two calculators have very different purposes.
Pricing calculator
The pricing calculator is designed to give you an estimated cost for provisioning resources in Azure. You can get an estimate for individual resources, build out a solution, or use an example scenario to see an estimate of the Azure spend. The pricing calculator’s focus is on the cost of provisioned resources in Azure.
Note
The Pricing calculator is for information purposes only. The prices are only an estimate. Nothing is provisioned when you add resources to the pricing calculator, and you won't be charged for any services you select.
With the pricing calculator, you can estimate the cost of any provisioned resources, including compute, storage, and associated network costs. You can even account for different storage options like storage type, access tier, and redundancy.
TCO calculator
The TCO calculator is designed to help you compare the costs for running an on-premises infrastructure compared to an Azure Cloud infrastructure. With the TCO calculator, you enter your current infrastructure configuration, including servers, databases, storage, and outbound network traffic. The TCO calculator then compares the anticipated costs for your current environment with an Azure environment supporting the same infrastructure requirements.
With the TCO calculator, you enter your configuration, add in assumptions like power and IT labor costs, and are presented with an estimation of the cost difference to run the same environment in your current datacenter or in Azure.
