- Free allowance
- A cloud-hosted shell with a persistent Azure Files share, free with an Azure account
- Verdict
- triala time-boxed or one-time trial, not a recurring allowance
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- cardcard required, phone required
- Binding limit
- noneno named constraint binds
- Evidence
- reported2 sources; a third party said so
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-07checked 2026-10-23 (live); stale on 2026-11-07
| Free tier | a cloud-hosted shell with a persistent Azure Files share, free with an Azure account unit GiB; metered on stored-bytes; the session times out after 20 minutes without interactive activity |
|---|
| Price | none stated |
|---|
| Limits | - retention-clamped the session times out after 20 minutes without interactive activity source
- request-rate no inbound SSH endpoint is published source
|
|---|
| Identity | card an Azure account requires a card and a phone number |
|---|
| Egress | not published |
|---|
| Retention | the session times out after 20 minutes without interactive activity; the Azure Files share persists |
|---|
| Interface | ssh the browser terminal, or the Azure CLI and the VS Code extension |
|---|
| Tooling | a shell with az, git and common runtimes; a mounted Azure Files share |
|---|
| Composes with | a persistent file share behind a 20-minute session timeout |
|---|
| Reliability | no reliability event recorded |
|---|
| Notes | It is one product and this is its record. |
|---|
| Evidence note | reported re-read live on 2026-10-22 for the free-tier and limit figures |
|---|
| Parsed numbers | - retention-clamped 20 minutes
|
|---|
More fields 8
{
"shape": null,
"billing_model": "flat-pool",
"session_cap": {
"wall_clock_min": null,
"idle_reap_s": 1200,
"restart_required": false,
"note": "20 minutes without interactive activity"
},
"keep_rate": {
"value": 0.0,
"basis": "free with the account",
"source": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-shell/overview"
},
"persistent_storage": {
"included_gib": 5,
"price_gib_month": "an Azure Files share is billed separately once past the free grant",
"durability": "Azure Files",
"survives_stop": true,
"survives_destroy": true,
"max_retention": "while the storage account exists"
},
"network_out": {
"allow_outbound": true,
"allow_inbound_listen": false,
"ports": "none",
"static_ip": false,
"ipv6": null,
"per_session_bytes": null
},
"free_tier_kind": "allowance",
"slug_merge": "microsoft-azure-cloud-shell is the same product under a renamed slug"
}