SQL Azure Pricing
I believe the licensing is more on a global scale.
View full review »The price of the solution is reasonable.
View full review »SC
Srinivas Rao Chappala
Development manager at Amdocs
Compared to other providers, it's definitely on the affordable side.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
SQL Azure
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SQL Azure. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
768,740 professionals have used our research since 2012.
The price of the product depends on what you need in the tool. You can use it for smaller instances and pay less. You can also go for the premium product with all the security, scalability, and business continuity features, but you have to pay a premium amount. The tool offers different versions on the cloud. Similarly, SQL Azure also has offerings in the form of a web-based version of SQL database for very small customers who want to do PoC involving the solution in their environment, but it is available only in an on-premises version. The tool offers different pricing structures depending on the requirements of users. SQL Azure also has a freeware software version available for very small-sized customers.
SB
ShaileshBhor
Founder at Druansh
There is no licensing cost for the solution.
View full review »AM
Ariful Mondal
Global Data Architecture and Data Science Director at FH
In terms of the cost, SQL Azure is a pay-per-use solution, particularly because it's a cloud subscription, so you pay as much as you use it, but I cannot give a number because I don't manage the cost or the price for this solution.
View full review »When you go with SQL Azure Database, you can create a small database, which is around $4 to $5 per month for development purposes. It's very cheap in that respect. I think it's a little bit expensive compared to other services that Microsoft offers on Azure. PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB are a bit cheaper than SQL Server.
If the price were lower, I think it would become more attractive for developers to use.
CS
Czesław Szypuła
Architect of Business Intelligence Solutions at Nestle
The cost is around $2,000 per month.
View full review »The pricing is prevalent for everything Microsoft. The thing is, they don't allow different pricing for different regions. Some countries are price sensitive.
View full review »There is a license required to use the solution and it cost $30 to do the installation.
View full review »The price could be slightly cheaper. Our customers pay for licenses annually.
View full review »We have an enterprise license.
HM
Haytham Mohamed
Enterprise End User Operations at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
We have a three-year contract. The cost was somewhere around $70-80,000 for the original deployment, which was about two years ago. In the future, we may need to expand our license to include more company employees.
View full review »I rate SQL Azure eight out of 10 for affordability. I live in a developing country where cost is always an issue. The price should be negotiable, and there should be more discounts.
We have the licensing fee, and we are also paying a third party to maintain it with an SLA.
There is no infrastructure cost, but its running costs are higher than expected. There is the cost of the Azure cloud, which is pricier than expected, but it is not specific to SQL Azure. It is specific to the cloud. You expect it to be cheaper, but it is more expensive to run it.
PC
Prajith Chowthee
Independent Consultant at Unaikui
I recommend considering a pay-as-you-go pricing model initially.
View full review »I find that they are relatively expensive, especially when compared to AWS, where the prices are notably lower.
View full review »I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten.
View full review »We find the solution to be less expensive than other options.
View full review »Azure SQL has licenses which you can pay yearly or monthly. You have the option to pay yearly or monthly for the license.
View full review »RV
Rathin Vaidya
Vice President (Technology) at Shaligram Infotech LLP
The license is based on the number of users.
View full review »AB
Alexis Bustamante
STI Data Leader at grupo gtd
The price in general of Azure SQL could improve.
View full review »The solution is expensive.
View full review »SR
Sérgio Rita
IT Manager at European University
We have a yearly licensing fee we need to pay. It's not a cheap solution.
View full review »We pay around $1,200 per year for one customer based on what they currently use. It's mainly processing and storage. SQL Azure is a bit more expensive than other solutions. There are free databases, but they don't have the scalability of the Azure cloud. It might not be affordable for some companies, but it's highly scalable.
View full review »It only has a subscription-based license.
View full review »AF
reviewer2149464
Lead Technical Consultant and PM Manager with 11-50 employees
The solution is moderately expensive. I rate the pricing a six out of ten.
View full review »MJ
seniorda483732
Senior Database Administrator at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
I have an annual spend number, and it is in the hundred thousand dollar range. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees.
Even though you have to look at the cost numbers of what you're going to be charged on a monthly basis, what you have to also remember is that your application may need a lot of rewriting and things like that. You get charged not just for the monthly costs but also for the transactions that occur. If your access to the data layer is not so efficient, your costs will go up because you're pulling far more data than you potentially need. These are hidden costs that nobody ever considers. If your application is not written very efficiently, you may actually increase your costs over on-prem versus cloud.
View full review »The pricing is good, but there is still a gap if you are going to manage a large setup and a big growth of an organization. If that's the case, then pricing will be big challenge especially the pricing forecast and your analysis of growth and IT budget.
View full review »GB
Gerald Balangile
IT Support Engineer - AZURE Administrator at Mindspring Computing
When looking at the long-term expenses associated with running software on an on-premises server, the costs are almost equivalent but when we include insurance for devices, onsite fees for servers, and other related costs, we may find that this is a cost-effective solution.
AM
Ariful Mondal
Global Data Architecture and Data Science Director at FH
It is expensive. Snowflake and PostgreSQL are cheaper than this. Google is also cheaper than Azure.
Its licensing is on a pay-as-you-go basis. It is based on usage and storage.
View full review »SJ
reviewer1407519
Chief Technology Officer & Vice President, Delivery at a recruiting/HR firm with 1-10 employees
I am not aware of the exact pricing, but our monthly bill for Azure is around 80,000. It is less expensive than using SQL Server. It has the pay-as-you-go model, and the charges are based on the usage.
View full review »CE
reviewer1615530
Project Manager at a educational organization with 11-50 employees
The pricing is actually complicated, and that is probably one downside of it. In some respects, although we can plan for the costs on a month-by-month basis, we are finding it hard to project our costings for it.
Fundamentally, Microsoft is offering two pricing models, and it is challenging to understand the differences between the two. We're basically on the DTU model at the moment. That may change in the future as the size grows, but it is one of those things that we'll end up monitoring as we progress.
At the moment, to get a reasonable response, generally, the price is a little high for us, but it is one of those things for which we know that we can do improvements on our code. So, it is not just the service that's the problem; it is some of the things that we need to do as well.
SE
reviewer1589394
Cloud Solution Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
It is beneficial in terms of cost because you are charged per data unit instead of licensing.
View full review »PW
Pradip K. Wani
Manager of Architecture/Design with 51-200 employees
Every region of a country has cheaper locations that can provide cost advantages, and data center growth must be equally distributed on earth with electricity and resource rich, low cost, areas to keep the cost of the cloud minimal. This will also avert natural and man-made calamities.
The United States and other countries can take this cloud option to the next level of off-shoring without any immigration and terrorism issues, enabling development in impoverished areas of the world.
This can further cut down the cost of software development, other "down-the-line" products, services and goods, and will empower the poor and neglected of the world.
This will also improve trade between the countries. There are always imbalances amongst populations in any country in skills and monetary status. An equalizer could be achieved by allowing more trade, more freedom, and more pollination.
In India, we had to start development using the 3-month free subscription Azure platform .net and SQL . Now as far as I know, vs 2015 community edition is a free download. One can develop software application in it and deploy it with an Azure subscription which is pay as you use. All nitty-gritty development can be done by a development team. That's why Microsoft has delivered their dream cloud promise with the zero cost alternative of community edition.
View full review »KS
reviewer2125767
Data Engineer at a consultancy with self employed
The pricing is flexible and can be adapted based on our requirements but the pricing options are complex especially if we are using a VM.
View full review »SQL Azure's licensing cost is expensive.
View full review »ST
reviewer964137
software engineer at a university with 11-50 employees
Our license is pay-as-you-go and we pay around €200 per month. You need to keep an eye on this because with scaling the cost can increase quite quickly.
MA
Mohamed Alnuaimi
Director of IT at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
The licensing for this solution is based on subscription. We have an enterprise license, so the price of this solution is high.
JS
reviewer1294518
Solution Principal at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
You do have to pay for technical support. If you have it in your licensing agreement, you will gain access to a team you can call if you run into issues.
I'm not sure of the exact licensing costs. From a cloud perspective, a client would be charged based on consumption, so the pricing would depend on elements such as how many users or how many queries (and how complex), et cetera.
I do know that it's competitive pricing, however. Most solutions of this caliber are around the same price. They compete with each other.
View full review »RS
RakshathShetty
Team Lead, Enterprise Computing Platforms at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Its price can definitely be lower. It is pretty pricey.
View full review »KG
reviewer1488372
Associate Manager at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees
They have standard subscriptions that are not the entire version. If you have a full version of your subscription then you have the entire version that you can download.
When you no longer need it, you can just stop the services. You can reduce the amount you pay, which is an advantage. Essentially, it's a pay and use mechanism.
It's reasonably priced and when you compare it with other products in the cloud environment, it's cheaper.
View full review »KV
Karel Van Der Walt
Data Architect at ACPAS Loan Management Software
It requires a license. As compared to its competitors, such as Oracle, it is affordable and reasonable.
View full review »IM
IbrahimMuhanna
IT Manager at a pharma/biotech company with 201-500 employees
We pay less than $1000 monthly in licensing fees. There are no additional costs. When you start to use the cloud, you can move other services to the cloud as well. So I think we will pay more in the future when we move other services over. But right now we only use the ERP system with SQL Cloud.
View full review »MF
Mohamed_Farouk
Information Technology Manager at OrchidaSoft
You do need to pay a license fee in order to use the product. I can't speak to the exact price.
View full review »MT
reviewer1443378
IT Manager at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
It is quite expensive. I would definitely recommend not using the pay-as-you-go model because this will just mean all your money will go to Microsoft. So, really make sure to control resource usage as much as possible.
View full review »AK
AmitKulkarni
Consultant at kulki data management & consultants
Microsoft controls the licensing for SQL Server and even for the other vendors. They don't play fair with AWS. If anyone wants to migrate to AWS RDS, Microsoft won't let anyone reuse the on-premise SQL Server licenses on AWS. You would need to repurchase those licenses. So it's cheaper to migrate to Azure instead if you already have an on-prem SQL Server license. The Azure platform itself is also much cheaper than AWS. So when you factor in the SQL Server licenses, it's as much 10 times cheaper than AWS RDS. I'm talking about the SQL Server RDS.
View full review »PP
PauloPedro
Co-Founder & Managing Director at a marketing services firm with 1-10 employees
How much we pay is determined by how much we upgrade or downgrade our services. If you downgrade the service you pay less if you upgrade the services you pay more.
Microsoft has a cheap license for developers. Still, it was expensive for us because we are not a company, and we don't use crowdfunding, we used our own money to pay for the license.
View full review »It's an elastic service, at least in its simplest definition, and a proactive one with some reactive capability. Therefore, there is value in monitoring usage and adjusting proactively to gain optimal savings.
View full review »You need to be careful about the size of your database or pool in order to fit it exactly within your budget.
View full review »With one being expensive and five being competitive, I would give the product a four out of five as it's relatively competitive. It is also important to note that pricing is based on usage.
View full review »CO
reviewer1606569
Founder at a tech services company with self employed
I would like it to be cheaper, but comparatively, it is reasonably priced.
View full review »SP
SashisekharPanda
General Manager/MVP at Yotta Infrastructure Solutions LLP
Pricing is reasonable for a big enterprise. The price is a little higher. It should have a 20% discount.
View full review »FT
Fabio Taddia
IT Manager at SIMOPARMA PACKAGING ITALIA SRL
The price is very high, especially when you compare it to other solutions. There aren't extra costs, however. All fees are included in the licensing package.
View full review »Even if you are an experienced SQL Server DBA, there is some learning to do to be able to develop, deploy and manage SQL Azure solutions. At Microsoft Virtual Academy there is a set of free courses to learn all this.
You can use a free SQL Azure account to do some of the required practice while learning (bear in mind that the free account for all Azure tools, including SQL Azure, requires that you provide credit card information), but you will also need to license a SQL Azure plan for actual deployment and use of the solution: Basic plans, Standard Plans, Premium Plans.
You can choose a plan according to the amount of resources used by your solution (storage required, number of transactions, etc.), such that the hourly rate of the chosen plan is tied to the range of resources used.
The main setup cost that we have experienced is basically time required to do the training, and payment of a plan during the development and testing of the solution.
SE
Proserv67
Professional Service Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
I'm not sure what the exact price is, but it's a moderate amount. It's not too expensive.
View full review »KH
reviewer1517148
Program Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
All products are licensed. The cost depends on someone's usage space. The more you use it, the more you pay. Some are billed in terms of fixed cost. For example, if I provision some work with a machine that I pay for it, even if I don't use it. There are multiple ways you could potentially pay.
RJ
reviewer1427208
Technical Account Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The cost of the solution isn't too high. It's pretty reasonable.
View full review »BB
reviewer1369602
Lead Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The solution is a little expensive but not too bad in comparison to other products on the market and since I am using the cloud version it's really not too much. There are no additional costs.
AA
AhmedArafat
DevOps Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
The pricing is okay. It's not too expensive.
View full review »SC
reviewer1162305
Data Center Operations Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We have had some issues with the licensing of the solution.
We pay for the solution monthly and we are on a one-year contract. The enterprise edition is very expensive and the standard addition is lacking some functions.
View full review »RA
Business677
Business Analyst at Paunaste OÜ
We are using the free version. It's free of charge for one developer.
View full review »PL
Punam Lade
Chief Operating Officer at humancloud
It is reasonable.
View full review »CL
reviewer1410678
Data Analyst at a tech company with 51-200 employees
It is expensive for us. We are looking for something less expensive and thinking of migrating the whole system.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
SQL Azure
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SQL Azure. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
768,740 professionals have used our research since 2012.