Azure cost guides
Practical models to estimate common Azure line items and avoid frequent surprises.
A simple Azure estimate
- Start with requests/month and GB/month.
- Add storage (GB-month) and retention policies.
- Add egress boundaries (internet vs region vs zone).
- Validate units (GB vs GiB) and request pricing units.
Common traps
- Underestimating egress by mixing destinations and tiers.
- Ignoring retries/timeouts and fan-out patterns (requests explode during incidents).
- Letting logs and metrics grow without retention and query guardrails.
Start with effective rates and validate against billing exports before optimizing tiers.
20 Azure guides
Azure API Management pricing: model requests, transfer, and log volume
A practical API Management estimate: request volume, response transfer, and logs/observability. Includes a checklist to validate retries, payload size, and usage tiers.
Azure Application Gateway pricing: how to model L7 load balancer costs
Model Application Gateway costs using measurable drivers: hours, request volume, traffic processed, WAF, and logs - plus a validation checklist.
Azure Application Insights pricing: ingestion volume, sampling, and retention
A practical Application Insights estimate: telemetry volume (GB), sampling, retention, and query scans. Includes validation steps to prevent ingest spikes during incidents.
Azure bandwidth and egress costs: how to estimate outbound data transfer
A practical method to estimate outbound bandwidth costs: split by destination (internet, cross-region, CDN origin), validate units, and avoid double-counting.
Azure Blob Storage pricing: a practical cost model
Model Blob Storage cost without copying price tables: GB-month, operations, redundancy/replication, retrieval, and egress.
Azure CDN pricing: estimate bandwidth, requests, and cache fill
A practical Azure CDN estimate: edge bandwidth, request volume, and origin egress (cache fill). Includes validation steps for hit rate, purge behavior, and big endpoints.
Azure Container Registry Pricing & Cost (Basic, Standard, Premium)
ACR cost model for storage GB-month, pulls, and transfer. Understand how pricing tiers affect limits and spend.
Azure Cosmos DB pricing: a practical estimate (RU/s, storage, and egress)
A driver-based Cosmos DB estimate: RU/s capacity, stored GB, and data transfer. Includes a workflow to validate RU drivers and avoid underestimating burst, hot partitions, and retries.
Azure Event Hubs Pricing & Cost Guide (throughput, retention, egress)
Estimate Event Hubs cost from throughput units, ingress, capture/storage, and egress. Includes a planning checklist.
Azure Front Door pricing: model requests, bandwidth, and origin traffic
A practical Azure Front Door cost model: edge bandwidth, request volume, logging, and origin traffic (cache fill). Includes a checklist to validate hit rate and avoid double-counting egress.
Azure Functions pricing: what to include in a realistic estimate
A practical Azure Functions cost model: invocations, duration/memory, networking, and log volume - plus a validation checklist to catch retries, cold starts, and chatty dependencies.
Azure Key Vault pricing: estimate operations, keys/secrets, and request spikes
A practical Key Vault cost model: baseline objects (keys/secrets/certs) plus operation volume. Includes a workflow to map traffic to Key Vault calls and validate caching, retries, and hot-path mistakes.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) pricing: what to include
AKS cost is more than node VMs: include node pools, networking/egress, storage, and observability. Use this checklist-style model to estimate safely.
Azure Load Balancer pricing: L4 traffic and data processing model
A practical cost model for Azure Load Balancer: hours, data processed, and egress boundaries. Includes a workflow to estimate GB processed from RPS and payload size, plus a validation checklist for peaks and retries.
Azure Log Analytics pricing: ingestion, retention, and query costs
A practical model for Log Analytics-style costs: GB ingested, retention storage, and query/scan behavior. Includes a method to estimate log GB from event rate and payload size, plus a validation checklist for high-volume sources.
Azure Monitor metrics pricing: estimate custom metrics, retention, and API calls
A practical metrics cost model: time series count, sample rate, retention, and dashboard/alert query behavior. Includes validation steps to avoid high-cardinality mistakes.
Azure NAT Gateway cost: model hours, GB processed, and the real spike drivers
A practical Azure NAT Gateway estimate: hourly baseline, GB processed, and the common multipliers (retries, image pulls, dependency storms). Includes a validation checklist and cost-reduction levers.
Azure Private Link costs: model endpoint-hours, data processed, and trade-offs vs NAT
A practical Private Link estimate: endpoint-hours baseline plus data processed (GB). Includes a workflow to count endpoints, model traffic through them, and validate DNS/routing so you don't pay for both private and NAT paths.
Azure Service Bus pricing: estimate messaging cost from operations, retries, and payload
A practical Service Bus estimate: message volume, deliveries/retries, fan-out, and payload transfer. Includes a workflow to model baseline vs peak and validate the real multipliers (timeouts, DLQ replays, and subscription expansion).
Azure SQL Database pricing: a practical estimate (compute, storage, backups, transfer)
Model Azure SQL Database cost without memorizing price tables: compute baseline (vCore/DTU), storage GB-month + growth, backup retention, and network transfer. Includes a validation checklist and common sizing traps.
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