10 free SQL databases per Azure subscription

Microsoft recently announced an exciting new offer: for each Azure subscription, you get 10 serverless databases, with with a free allocation of 100 000 vCore seconds of computing power, 32 GB of data storage and 32 GB of backup storage each month, for the entire duration of your subscription. We'll help you explore the potential for your business and how to use it for cost optimization.

By Wouter Delvaux & Wouter Vanloocke

What are the key features?

1. 10 free databases per subscription
2. Up to 32 GB storage per database
3. Up to 4 vCores per database (100 000 vCore seconds or 24 hours of serverless database computing power)
4. Automatic pauses to avoid generating costs

What are the main limitations?

1. It's impossible to restore or convert an existing Azure SQL Database to access this offer
2. All free databases in the same subscription are assigned to the same Azure region
3. Elastic Jobs & DNS Alias are not available
4. The SQL database cannot be part of an elastic pool or failover group.
5. Long-term backup retention is not available and point-in-time restore (PITR) retention is limited to seven days.

How to implement them?

We suggest using the documentation below, as provided by Microsoft, to claim and implement you free databases.

When claiming your offer, you'll see the following banner to indicate a successful activation:

On the configuration page, you can select the desired behavior of the database when it reaches the resource limitation. You can only adjust the amount of vCores you assign to your free database (up to 4 per database). All other fields have fixed values and are grayed out.

You can always check in the mini-view on the right to make sure your total cost remain 0:

Options when free limit is reached

There are two optional behaviors you can choose when your database reach the free limit:

1. Once monthly limits for vCore activity or storage are reached, each database can be automatically paused until the beginning of the next calendar month. This option is called auto-pause the database until next month.
2. Keep the database online, charging for vCores usage and storage amount above the free limits according to your subscription billing method, at the standard rates for serverless databases in the General Purpose tier. This option is called continue using database for additional charges.

Regardless of which option you prefer, the free amount for each offered database will be renewed at the beginning of the next calendar month.

How to monitor the usage?

On the database overview page, you can check how long you can use the free database and whether the database is allowed to generate charges after the resource limit is reached:

Calculating the costs

According to our calculations, you'd get € 24.42 of free consumption. When you have 10 databases in your subscription, it would amount to a maximum of € 244.20 of benefit for your organization. Want to know how we calculated it? Here's an overview.

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