Question

What is the pricing of Windows Azure? is it based on CPU time?

Answer 1

Windows Azure pricing is based on 4 measurable factors

• Compute = $0.12 / hour
• Storage = $0.15 / GB stored / month
• Storage Transactions = $0.01 / 10K
• Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB

You are charged based on your usage of each of these components.

The official Windows Azure pricing page can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing/

Answer 2

The Compute cost cited by David above is correct but for a single small instance only. To achieve the SLA level of 99.95% uptime you need two of these (www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/sla).

Additional info is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/faq/#pricing

See

• What are the different compute instance sizes and what are the characteristics of each? and
• What is the pricing model for the Windows Azure platform?

Windows Azure

Compute

• $0.12 / hour for the SMALL instance
• $0.24 / hour for the MEDIUM instance
• $0.48 / hour for the LARGE instance
• $0.96 / hour for the EXTRA LARGE instance

Storage

• $0.15 / GB stored/month
• $0.01 / 10K storage transactions

Content Deliver Network

• Service currently available as a Community Technology Preview (CTP) at no charge

SQL Azure

• Web Edition – Up to 1 GB relational database = $9.99
• Business Edition – Up to 10 GB relational database = $99.99

AppFabric

• Access Control: $0.15 per 100k message operations
• Service Bus: $0.15 per 100k message operations

Data Transfers

• $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB for North America and Europe
• $0.30 in / $0.45 out / GB for Asia Pacific
• Inbound data transfers during off-peak times through June 30, 2010 are at no charge. -Prices revert to our normal inbound data transfer rates after June 30, 2010