What is the Azure pricing model?

Azure uses a consumption-based pricing model — you pay for what you use, when you use it, with no upfront commitment (pay-as-you-go). Key savings options: Reserved Instances: commit to 1 or 3 years upfront for 40–72% savings on VMs and databases. Azure Hybrid Benefit: use existing on-premises Windows Server or SQL Server licenses to significantly reduce Azure costs. Spot VMs: use unused Azure capacity at 60–90% discount, but can be evicted with 30 seconds notice — suitable for fault-tolerant workloads. Dev/Test pricing: reduced rates for non-production environments. The Azure Pricing Calculator estimates costs. Azure Cost Management + Billing provides usage analysis, budgets, and cost allocation.