Azure Free Tier: What's Free, What Expires, and How to Avoid Charges

The three layers of Azure free

The Azure free account is not a single thing — it has three distinct components that work differently:

Layer 1: The $200 credit (30 days)

When you create a new Azure account, you receive $200 in credits that expire after 30 days (or earlier if you use them all). During this period, you can use almost any Azure service, and the charges come out of the $200 credit rather than your payment method. This is the “try anything” phase.

Key constraints during the credit period: some higher-tier services (GPU VMs, certain managed services) may still be blocked. If a service would cost more than your remaining credit in a single deployment, Azure may prevent the deployment.

Layer 2: 12-month free services

Certain services are free for 12 months from the date of account creation, up to specified monthly limits. These apply even after the $200 credit is exhausted. After 12 months, usage of these services is billed at Pay-As-You-Go rates.

Layer 3: Always-free services

A set of services are always free with no expiration date, up to their monthly limits. These persist after the trial, after the 12-month period, and for as long as you have an Azure account. Usage beyond the monthly limit is billed at standard rates (on a PAYG account).

Always-free services and their limits

These services have no expiration date on their free tier. The limits reset each calendar month.

12-month free services (selected)

These are free for the first 12 months from account creation. After that, usage is billed at standard rates.

What happens when the trial ends

The “trial” in this context means the 30-day period where the $200 credit is active. When that period ends:

1. Azure sends you an email notification (and usually portal warnings in the days before).
2. Pay-as-you-go services are suspended. Resources that were running on the credit stay provisioned but stop working (no new charges are generated).
3. A grace period begins — typically 30 days. During this time, you can upgrade to Pay-As-You-Go to resume services without losing your data or resources.
4. After the grace period, if you haven’t upgraded, resources are deleted. This includes data in storage accounts and databases.

The 12-month free services and always-free services continue working throughout this process. They are not affected by the $200 credit period ending.

To upgrade to Pay-As-You-Go, go to the Azure portal → Subscriptions → select your subscription → Upgrade. Your payment method will be charged for usage going forward, and any resources that were suspended during the grace period resume automatically.

Set a billing alert before using any service

Even on a free trial, it is good practice to set a budget alert immediately after creating your account. This habit ensures that when you eventually upgrade to Pay-As-You-Go, you already have monitoring in place.

Step 1: Open the Azure portal and navigate to Cost Management

Log into portal.azure.com. In the search bar at the top, type “Budgets” and select it, or navigate through Cost Management + Billing → Budgets.

Step 2: Create a budget

Click ”+ Add” to create a new budget. Configure:

• Scope: Select your subscription
• Name: Something clear like “monthly-spend-alert”
• Budget amount: Start with a number that would actually alarm you — for a beginner $25 or $50/month is a reasonable ceiling
• Reset period: Monthly
• Expiration date: At least a year out

Step 3: Configure alert conditions

Add two alert conditions:

• 80% of budget — sends an early warning email
• 100% of budget — sends an “at limit” email

Add your email address to the alert recipients for both.

Step 4: Do the same with the Azure CLI

# Log in
az login

# Create the budget via CLI
az consumption budget create \
  --budget-name "monthly-spend-alert" \
  --amount 25 \
  --time-grain Monthly \
  --start-date "2026-04-01" \
  --end-date "2027-03-31" \
  --notifications '[
    {
      "enabled": true,
      "operator": "GreaterThan",
      "threshold": 80,
      "contactEmails": ["you@example.com"]
    },
    {
      "enabled": true,
      "operator": "GreaterThan",
      "threshold": 100,
      "contactEmails": ["you@example.com"]
    }
  ]'

Remember: this alert notifies you but does not stop charges. See how billing works in Azure for a full explanation of why and how to automate a response if needed.

Practical tips for staying within the free tier

These are the most common ways beginners accidentally incur charges while experimenting with Azure:

Choose the right service tier

Many Azure services have a free tier that is disabled by default. When creating an Azure SQL Database, the free serverless tier is not pre-selected — you might land on the General Purpose tier, which costs money. Always check the pricing tier selection when creating any resource and look for a “Free,” “F1,” or “Serverless” option.

Delete resources you’re done with

Even services with free tiers have limits. Running many test resources simultaneously will push you past the limits. When you’re done with an experiment, delete the resource group containing the resources. All resources in the group are deleted together.

# See all resource groups in your subscription
az group list --output table

# Delete a resource group and everything in it
az group delete --name rg-my-experiment --yes --no-wait

Use B-series VMs for learning

The B-series (Burstable) VM sizes are designed for workloads with variable CPU usage. They’re cheaper than D-series or E-series VMs and are the tier included in the 12-month free VM offer. For learning and experimentation, a B1s or B2s VM is usually sufficient.

Stop (deallocate) VMs when not in use

On the free trial, the 750-hour B1s VM allotment works out to just over one VM running for an entire month. If you’re running multiple VMs or let one run overnight while not working, you’ll exhaust the 750 hours quickly. Use the VM’s Auto-Shutdown feature or deallocate it manually via the portal when you stop working.

# Deallocate a VM to stop compute charges
az vm deallocate --resource-group rg-learning --name my-test-vm

# Check the power state of all VMs in a resource group
az vm list \
  --resource-group rg-learning \
  --show-details \
  --query "[].{Name:name, State:powerState}" \
  --output table

Monitor your credit usage

# Check current balance and usage on a free trial subscription
az billing account list --output table

# View current month's usage summary
az consumption usage list \
  --billing-period-name "$(date +%Y%m)" \
  --top 20 \
  --output table

Azure free tier vs AWS and GCP free tiers

All three major clouds offer free tiers, but the structure differs:

GCP’s $300 / 90-day credit is the most generous for pure exploration time. AWS’s free tier has the most mature always-free service selection. Azure’s $200 / 30-day structure gives you less time but enough to evaluate the services you’re interested in.