Azure Container Apps Cost Calculator

Estimate your monthly Azure Container Apps bill on the Consumption plan. Enter request volume, duration, vCPU, memory, and concurrency to get an instant cost breakdown. Pricing is for East US — adjust your expectations if deploying to other regions. All calculations run in your browser — nothing is sent to any server.

Privacy: This calculator runs entirely in your browser. CloudWebSchool does not store personal data or your cost inputs.
Workload
0 to 100 billion
1 ms to 3,600,000 ms (1 hour max)
Resources per replica
Consumption plan supports 0.25 – 4 vCPU
Consumption plan supports 0.5 – 8 GiB
Scaling
Concurrent requests per replica before scale-out. Default scale rule is 10.
0 = scale to zero (no idle cost). ≥1 = always-on replicas billed at idle rate.
Networking
Data sent from your app to the internet. Standard Azure Zone 1 rate applies.
Options
Subtracts 180,000 free active vCPU-seconds, 360,000 free active GiB-seconds, and 2M free requests per subscription per month. Free tier does not apply to idle compute.

Estimated monthly cost

Total $0.00

Cost breakdown

Active compute (handling requests) $0.00
Idle compute (min replicas warm) $0.00
Requests $0.00
Egress $0.00

Per-request cost

Cost per request $0.000000
Cost per 1M requests $0.00

Replica usage

Active replica-seconds 0
Idle replica-seconds 0

Billable usage

Billable active vCPU-seconds 0
Billable active GiB-seconds 0
Billable idle vCPU-seconds 0
Billable idle GiB-seconds 0
Billable requests 0
Billable egress (GB) 0
Estimate only. This tool is for educational planning and does not guarantee actual Azure charges. Costs are modelled for the Consumption plan in East US only. Actual charges vary by region, workload behaviour, and billing configuration. CloudWebSchool is not liable for billing overruns or losses. Always verify with the official Azure Container Apps pricing page and your Azure Cost Analysis reports before spending. See also: Terms of Use.

Calculation assumptions

  • Pricing sourced from azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/container-apps/. Last reviewed: 2026-03-20.
  • Plan: Consumption (serverless). Region: East US. Dedicated plan is not modelled.
  • A 30-day month (2,592,000 seconds) is used throughout.
  • Active replica-seconds = monthly requests × (duration ms ÷ 1000) ÷ concurrency per replica
  • Idle replica-seconds = max(0, min replicas × 2,592,000 − active replica-seconds)
  • Active vCPU-seconds = active replica-seconds × vCPU per replica; active GiB-seconds = active replica-seconds × memory GiB.
  • Free tier (per subscription per month) subtracts from active vCPU-seconds and active GiB-seconds only. Idle compute is not in the free tier.
  • Egress uses the standard Azure outbound data transfer rate for Zone 1 (East US): $0.087/GB. No confirmed per-service egress free tier is applied.
  • Results are estimates only. Actual charges may vary by region, burst traffic patterns, and pricing changes.

Understanding Azure Container Apps Consumption pricing

Azure Container Apps on the Consumption plan bills for the resources your replicas consume, not for idle infrastructure. Unlike virtual machines or AKS nodes which run continuously, Container Apps can scale to zero replicas when traffic drops — meaning no compute charge when your app is idle (provided minimum replicas is 0). The pricing model has four billable dimensions:

  • Active vCPU-seconds: Billed at $0.000024/vCPU-second while replicas are actively handling requests. The clock runs from when the request arrives to when the response is sent. The free tier covers 180,000 vCPU-seconds per subscription per month.
  • Active GiB-seconds: Billed at $0.000003/GiB-second alongside active CPU. Memory is measured in GiB (not MB); 1,024 MB = 1 GiB. The free tier covers 360,000 GiB-seconds per subscription per month.
  • Idle vCPU-seconds and GiB-seconds: When minimum replicas > 0, those warm replicas are billed at reduced idle rates: $0.000008/vCPU-second and $0.000001/GiB-second (roughly one-third of the active rate). Idle compute is not covered by the free tier. For a single replica running all month at 0.5 vCPU / 1 GiB, idle cost is approximately $10–12/month.
  • Requests: Billed at $0.40 per million HTTP requests above 2 million free per subscription per month. For most microservices, request cost is a minor fraction of total compute cost.
  • Egress: Outbound data to the internet is billed using standard Azure data transfer pricing — $0.087/GB for Zone 1 (East US). Data between apps within the same Container Apps Environment is not charged separately.

This calculator models the Consumption plan only. The Dedicated plan uses a different billing model (per-node billing based on VM size) and is not included in v1 of this tool.

Example cost scenarios

These worked examples show how Container Apps Consumption pricing adds up at different traffic levels. All assume the free tier is applied and East US pricing.

Scenario 1
Scale-to-zero hobby project
Requests / month
500,000
Avg duration
500 ms
vCPU
0.5
Memory
1 GiB
Concurrency
10
Min replicas
0
Egress
0 GB
Estimated monthly cost ~$0
Line itemCost
Active compute$0.00 12,500 vCPU-sec — inside 180,000 free tier
Idle compute$0.00 min replicas = 0
Requests$0.00 500K < 2M free tier
Egress$0.00

Scale-to-zero with low traffic stays entirely within the free tier. This app costs nothing every month.

Scenario 2
Production API with warm replica
Requests / month
10 million
Avg duration
200 ms
vCPU
1
Memory
2 GiB
Concurrency
10
Min replicas
1
Egress
5 GB
Estimated monthly cost ~$28
Line itemCost
Active compute 20K billable vCPU-sec + 40K billable GiB-sec$0.60
Idle compute 2.39M idle vCPU-sec + 4.78M idle GiB-sec$23.92
Requests 8M billable$3.20
Egress 5 GB$0.44

The warm replica dominates at ~$24 idle. If cold starts are acceptable, switching to min replicas = 0 drops this bill to roughly $4.

Scenario 3
High-traffic scale-to-zero API
Requests / month
100 million
Avg duration
150 ms
vCPU
2
Memory
4 GiB
Concurrency
50
Min replicas
0
Egress
20 GB
Estimated monthly cost ~$54
Line itemCost
Active compute 420K billable vCPU-sec + 840K billable GiB-sec$12.60
Idle compute$0.00 min replicas = 0
Requests 98M billable$39.20
Egress 20 GB$1.74

At 100M requests/month, request charges ($39) exceed active compute ($13). If utilisation stays high, comparing to AKS node pricing is worthwhile — see the AKS vs Container Apps guide.

Azure Container Apps free tier

The Consumption plan includes a free tier per Azure subscription per month. Free tier allocations are shared across all Container Apps in the subscription — they are not per app or per Environment.

  • 180,000 active vCPU-seconds per month
  • 360,000 active GiB-seconds per month
  • 2,000,000 HTTP requests per month

The free tier applies only to active compute (replicas handling requests). Idle compute from minimum replicas is billed from the first second. For side projects and low-traffic services with minimum replicas set to 0, the free tier typically covers all or most of the monthly bill.

Frequently asked questions about Container Apps billing

Does Azure Container Apps scale to zero?

Yes, on the Consumption plan with minimum replicas set to 0. When there are no incoming requests, Container Apps scales all replicas to zero and stops billing for compute. The first request after an idle period triggers a cold start, typically 2–10 seconds. If cold starts are unacceptable for your SLA, set minimum replicas to 1 — that replica stays warm but is billed at the idle rate for the time it is not handling requests.

How do minimum replicas affect my bill?

Setting minimum replicas above 0 prevents scale-to-zero. Those replicas run continuously and are billed at the idle rate — $0.000008/vCPU-second and $0.000001/GiB-second — for the time they are not handling requests. For a single 0.5 vCPU / 1 GiB replica running all month at idle: 0.5 × 2,592,000 × $0.000008 + 1 × 2,592,000 × $0.000001 ≈ $13/month before any traffic charges. Use the minimum replicas input in this calculator to model the exact impact.

How accurate is this estimate?

This calculator uses published Azure Container Apps Consumption plan pricing for East US and applies a planning approximation for active versus idle replica time. It assumes all requests arrive at uniform concurrency, which is an approximation — real traffic is bursty. Actual charges can differ due to: billing rounding; burst traffic patterns; pricing differences in regions other than East US; costs not modelled (see the next question); and Microsoft pricing changes after the last review date (2026-03-20). Always verify with the official pricing page and Azure Cost Analysis before making financial decisions.

What costs are not included?

This calculator covers: active compute (vCPU-seconds and GiB-seconds), idle compute for minimum replicas, HTTP requests, and outbound internet egress. It does not include: Azure Container Registry storage for container images; Azure Monitor Log Analytics ingestion for container logs; Application Insights ingestion; Dapr component costs (state stores, pub/sub); Virtual Network integration fees (workload profile environments); Azure Front Door or Application Gateway in front of your app; or the Dedicated plan pricing.

When should I consider AKS instead of Container Apps?

Container Apps per-second billing is economical for variable or bursty workloads. At sustained high utilisation — many replicas running continuously — the per-second rate for Container Apps can exceed the cost of equivalent AKS node VMs. Consider AKS when:

  • You need direct Kubernetes API access (kubectl, Helm, custom operators, CRDs).
  • You run stateful workloads with PersistentVolumes or StatefulSets.
  • Your workload runs at constant high concurrency where reserved node capacity is more cost-efficient than per-second billing.
  • You need Istio or advanced network policies that Container Apps does not expose.

See the AKS vs Azure Container Apps comparison guide for a detailed breakdown.