think differently big

Microsoft Azure Pricing: More Expensive Than Alternatives

I assume BusinessInsider editors were a bit confused when they wrote that the Azure prices are on par with those of Amazon and Google.

As you can see in the attached graph both CPU and outgoing bandwidth are more expensive (with 25% and 20% respectively). As you can imagine these, along with storage, are the resources that you’ll use most and so it makes Microsoft Azure expensive compared to the alternatives.

I haven’t seen all the pricing plans — and I’d be interested to hear more about Azure SQL offering —, but I think it is safe to assume that there will be smaller fees for ‘fidelity’ plans.

Update: I have found more details about pricing here. There is a .NET services price measured at 100k ops (you can think of it as API price) and there are also more details about SQL Azure pricing (done in terms of storage space)