Is there an Azure VM free tier?
Yes and no — and the "no" is the part that shows up on a bill. New accounts get a real free allowance for virtual machines, but nothing about it runs free forever. Here is exactly where the line sits.
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Yes and no. A new Azure free account gives you a $200 credit to spend in the first 30 days, plus a 12-month allowance of roughly 750 hours per month each on two specific small VM sizes — typically a B1s Linux and a B1s Windows machine — enough to keep one tiny VM running around the clock. There is no permanent, always-free VM the way some services are always-free. After 12 months, or the moment you exceed the hours or pick a bigger size, the meter runs at normal rates.
That is the whole answer, and most pages selling you a signup will not say the second half out loud. So let me pull the three different "free" things apart, because they get blended together constantly and the blending is exactly what produces a surprise charge.
Three different kinds of free
When someone says "Azure is free to start," they could mean any of three things, and they behave nothing alike.
- The $200 credit. A new account comes with credit — commonly quoted at $200 — that you can spend on almost anything, including any VM size, for the first 30 days. This is the closest you get to "run whatever you want free," but it is a short clock and it is a fixed pot of money, not unlimited usage.
- The 12-month limited allowance. Separate from the credit, certain products are free for the first 12 months up to a monthly cap. For virtual machines that cap is the ~750 hours per month on the two eligible B-series burstable sizes. This is the thing people mean when they say "the free VM."
- Always-free services. A long list of services stays free within limits for as long as your account exists — things like a slice of serverless function calls, a small managed database allotment, and similar. A running VM is not on that list. There is no VM you can leave on indefinitely at no cost.
The credit is a clock. The 12-month VM is a cap. The always-free list has no VM on it.
What you actually get, and the catch on each
Here is the same thing as a table. Treat the numbers as the well-known framing, not a quote — Microsoft moves them, so confirm against the official Azure free account page before you rely on any figure.
| What | How long | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| $200 credit | First 30 days | Fixed pot, not unlimited. Spend it on a big VM and it drains in days. Expires whether you used it or not. |
| Linux VM (eligible B1s size) | ~750 hrs/month for 12 months | Only the eligible size counts. 750 hours is one VM running full-time — run two and you blow past it. |
| Windows VM (eligible B1s size) | ~750 hrs/month for 12 months | Separate allowance from the Linux one. Same size restriction; the Windows license itself is included at this size only. |
| Managed disk / storage | Limited free amount, 12 months | The allowance covers standard disks up to a cap. Premium SSD and extra disks bill from hour one. |
| Outbound data (egress) | Small always-free monthly slice | Moving data out of Azure past the slice is billed. Inbound is free; outbound is the one that stings. |
| Always-free services | Life of the account | No running VM here. Great for functions and small databases; will not host a server you leave on. |
The single most common way people lose the free VM is picking the wrong size. The allowance applies to one specific size on each OS — a B1s burstable. Spin up a B2s, a D-series, or anything with more memory because a tutorial told you to, and none of it is covered. It bills at pay-as-you-go from the first hour, quietly, while you think you are inside the free tier.
The bill-shock story, told once so you don't live it
The pattern is boringly consistent. Someone signs up, follows a tutorial, deploys a VM that is one size up from the eligible one, does the exercise, closes the laptop, and forgets it. The VM does not care that you logged off. It runs. It bills. A month later there is a charge for a machine nobody used, on a size that was never free, and the reaction is "but I was on the free tier."
You were on the free tier. The free tier just did not cover that size, and the VM was on the whole time. Compute bills by the hour of being allocated, not by how hard you work it. An idle VM costs the same as a busy one.
Two habits kill this dead. First, when you build a lab VM, pick the eligible size on purpose and check it — do not accept a tutorial's default. Second, and more reliable: when you finish, tear the whole thing down.
Stopping a VM from inside the OS does nothing to the bill. Even "deallocating" it in the portal only stops the compute charge — the disk, the public IP, and anything else attached keep billing. The clean move for a finished lab is to delete the entire resource group. One action, everything in it gone, meter at zero. Put every lab in its own resource group so deleting it is one click and carries no risk to anything else. This is the habit we drill in every CAMPUX lab.
Certified knows the tier exists. Job-ready never gets surprised by it.
A cert question might ask you to recite that a B1s is free for 12 months. Fine. That is not the skill. The skill is the reflex that a hiring manager is really paying for: you never leave a resource running that you are not using, you can read a cost breakdown and spot the line that should not be there, and you build labs so they are trivial to delete. The difference between a $0 learning month and a $60 one is not knowledge of the tier. It is the discipline around it.
That discipline is the same one that keeps a real company's cloud bill from tripling. Nobody gets fired for not memorizing the free allowance. People get noticed for owning the spend. If you want the mechanics — how compute is priced, how to size a VM, how to read a bill — that is the virtual machines class and the cost management class, and the labs make you do the teardown until it is muscle memory.
Common questions
Is there a permanently free Azure virtual machine?
No. Some Azure services are always-free within limits, but a running virtual machine is not one of them. The closest thing is the 12-month allowance on a free account: a set number of hours per month on two specific small VM sizes. After the 12 months, or after you exceed the hours, the VM bills at normal pay-as-you-go rates.
How many hours of free Azure VM do you get?
On a new free account, the 12-month allowance is framed as roughly 750 hours per month each on one eligible Linux VM size and one eligible Windows VM size — enough to run a single small VM continuously for the month. Run two at once, or a bigger size, and you spend the allowance twice as fast or lose it entirely. Confirm the current numbers on the official Azure free account page, because they change.
Why did I get charged when I was using the Azure free tier?
Almost always one of four things: you picked a VM size that is not eligible for the free allowance, you left the VM running past the monthly hours, you attached premium disks or moved data out (egress) that the allowance does not cover, or your 30-day credit expired and you did not switch off pay-as-you-go. The VM keeps billing while it is running, even when you are not logged in.
Does deallocating an Azure VM stop charges?
Stopping the compute (deallocating) stops the per-hour compute charge, but the disk, public IP, and any other attached resources keep billing. To stop paying entirely for a lab you are done with, delete the whole resource group, not just the VM. Tearing down is the habit that keeps the bill at zero.