You asked for it, you got it! To help meet the needs of existing and future
SQL Azure customers, Microsoft has announced that they are lowering the price of
SQL Azure, and as well introducing a 100MB database option! The new pricing
structure will result in cost savings from 48% to 75% of SQL Azure databases for
databases larger than 1GB. Additionally, the new 100MB database option has been
added to enable new customers to start using SQL Azure at half the cost of the
previous price, yet still provide the full range of features, including High
Availability, Fault Tolerance, and Elastic Scale-out. The following table lists
the cost savings per database size.
|
GB
|
Previous Pricing |
New Pricing |
New Price/GB |
Total %
Decrease |
| 5 |
$49.95 |
$25.99 |
$5.20 |
48% |
| 10 |
$99.99 |
$45.99 |
$4.60 |
54% |
| 25 |
$299.97 |
$75.99 |
$3.04 |
75% |
| 50 |
$499.95 |
$125.99 |
$2.52 |
75% |
| 100 |
$499.95 |
$175.99 |
$1.76 |
65% |
| 150 |
$499.95 |
$225.99 |
$1.51 |
55% |
The goal with this pricing is simply to provide better pricing options for
larger deployments and make it easier and more cost effective for customers to
get started with SQL Azure. As you can from the table, the price per GB drops
significantly as your database needs grow. Additionally, this new pricing model
provides an inexpensive option for customers who don’t require a big workload to
still use SQL Azure and take advantage of the full Service Level Agreement.
Additional details on the new pricing changes can be found here and here.