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Does the Azure Websites "Always On" option have any implication on price?

Do I pay less if "Always On" is off and page is asleep as wrote here?

I don't think so because you always paying for resources even if you don't use them, but please clarify.

Zain Rizvi
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Anton Kalcik
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2 Answers2

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No, it has no affect on the price. For basic and standard modes you're paying for the entire VM anyways.

Keeping Always On helps conserve machine resources since sites that don't get much traffic (*1) get torn down, freeing up resources for other sites to use (*2). However, if you have a site that you want to stay up even during times of no traffic then feel free to enable Always On.

Edit: The only possible way Always On could increase your bill is if you have Auto Scale enabled based on Memory Consumption or something. Having a whole bunch of sites set to always be on might trigger the Auto Scale mechanism to add another instance (VM) to your Web Hosting Plan, resulting in a higher bill.

(*1) "Don't get much traffic" == has not had an http request for the past 20 minutes.

(*2) The first time a torn down site gets an http request it'll get started up automatically.

Zain Rizvi
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In a way, it does have a cost. Because you cannot run Always On in Free or Shared tiers. So you have to pay more, on a monthly basis, for a Basic or better tier to be able to schedule WebJobs or Functions in an App Service Plan. So that does represent a cost, for example, in development if you'd rather use a Free or Shared tier, now you have to upgrade your tier in order to schedule those.

Azure App Service Limits

Speedcat
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