Azure for startup: how to analyze costs

Question

the customer where I'm working at the moment (and hopefully in the future...), posses an Azure Subscription for Startup. This is the tipical plan which gives you two years of free Azure credit.

I would like to analyze the cost of the Azure Infrastructure (for example: how much credit I consumed last day using the "storage account", or how much for ADB2C). Microsoft gave us a link where we can download an "excel" file which contains a "cost summary". But I didn't have access to such file. It's for "admin" only and is not "user/architect-friendly".

What are the best practice and tools to analyze the Azure Cost? I tried to use the "Cost Management" but, as you can see from the following screenshot, many "buttons" are "greyed out" and there is the following warning:

Cost Management requires access to a supported billing account or subscription. Please select a supported scope or create a new subscription to use Cost Management

Do you know if is possible to let this service "works" with a "free" subscription of azure for startup? Thanks for reading

Hi, the offer id is: MS-AZR-0036P the offer is: Azure Sponsorship. Are them the info you were looking for? — brian enno, Jun 14 '21 at 12:13
Unfortunately this is off-topic here, as it's really about specific pricing and offers. — David Makogon, Jun 14 '21 at 12:59

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 14 '21 at 12:19

Looks like Cost Management is not supported for the Azure Credit based Subscription.

Please understand your Offer Type

From portal.azure.com, Select Subscriptions from All Services pan. Click on the Overview. You'll see the Offer and Offer ID

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Based on the Offer ID, please refer that against the supported Offers from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/costs/understand-cost-mgt-data#supported-microsoft-azure-offers

This will help you to validate whether cost management is supportability for your Subscription

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 14 '21 at 12:29

As stated in the answer by @MadhurajVadde-MT, a sponsorship is not valid for Cost Management at this time. You can use the Azure Calculator to get a good rough estimate of monthly costs by plugging in what you are currently using. I say rough estimate because the prices can change if you use an Enterprise Agreement in Azure or if you go through a reseller but the calculator will get you in the ballpark.

There is also an Azure Retail Prices API you can call to get an estimate programmatically. Depending on the size of the current subscription, it might be easier to just plug in the calculator manually.

Azure for startup: how to analyze costs

2 Answers2