SOLVED: How Much Does It Cost For An Azure VM?

Now that most companies have moved most of their servers to cloud, many are considering running user computers in the cloud. One of the many issues that come up with this migration is the cost.

QUICK MATH:

As you can see in the information below, a normal user desktop will cost about USD $80 per month on the Microsoft Azure cloud.

This is not a high end computer by any stretch.

Lets look at how we arrived at the $80 cost and what that gets you:

• We choose a D2as_v5 which costs $62.78 but that does not include hard disk storage, so we added what we feel is a minimum disk of a 128GB for $17.90. That totals to $80.60 per month.
• This includes only the core hardware and Windows 11 license. It does not include any other software (i.e. Microsoft Office 365 is not included).

Why Choose a D2 instead of the “recommended” (and slightly cheaper) B2 series VM hardware. After all they both have the same spec:

• vCPUs: 2
• Memory: 8 GiB
• Processor: AMD EPYC 7763v

The big reason for the D2 over the B2 is the networking speed. It is not shown in the chart above but the D2 offers networking speed at 12,500 Mbps which is twice as fast as the B2 (at 6,500 Mbps).

Azure VM Hardware Series Explained in Simple Terms

Periodically, Microsoft adds new series and removes old ones as they change hardware over the years. Here are the ones that are in use in 2025.

1. General Purpose: Balanced CPU-to-memory ratio, suitable for most workloads
   • B-series: Economical VMs for workloads that don’t need continuous full CPU performance
   • D-series: Higher performance VMs for enterprise applications, web servers, and development environments
2. Compute Optimized: High CPU-to-memory ratio, ideal for compute-intensive tasks
   • F-series: VMs with more CPU cores per memory unit, suitable for batch processing and analytics
3. Memory Optimized: High memory-to-CPU ratio, perfect for memory-intensive applications
   • E-series: VMs with large memory capacities for databases and in-memory analytics
4. Storage Optimized: High disk throughput and IO, designed for big data and SQL databases
   • L-series: VMs with high storage performance for data-intensive applications
5. GPU Accelerated: VMs with GPU capabilities for machine learning and graphic rendering
   • N-series: VMs equipped with NVIDIA GPUs for AI and visualization workloads

However, as explained in our example in the screenshot above, the details really matter. Different data centers use different server brands with different CPU’s (i.e. Intel vs AMD). If two specifications and prices are very similar, it is wise to investigate the nitty-gritty details like the NIC speed.