Azure Virtual Machines (Linux)
- Free allowance
- No free allowance for a Linux VM; the USD 200 credit is a 30-day new-account trial.
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tierpaid plans from USD 11.28/month
- Identity
- email?placeholder, not evidence; card unknown, phone unknown
- Binding limit
- retention-clampeda Stopped VM still bills its allocated cores; only a Deallocated VM stops the compute charge, and the local temporary disk is lost
- Evidence
- documented2 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-23checked 2026-10-23 (live); stale on 2026-11-23
| Free tier | no free allowance for a Linux VM; the USD 200 credit is a 30-day new-account trial. The 750-hour B-series allowance on the Windows page is a separate row unit mixed; metered on wall-clock |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
not stated |
| Identity | email (placeholder) not published |
| Egress | not stated |
| Per-object cap | not stated |
| Retention | not stated |
| Interface | unknown |
| Reliability | no reliability event recorded |
| Evidence note | documented the Linux virtual machines pricing page was read on 2026-10-22. It establishes the per-minute billing and the difference between Stopped and Deallocated, which is the state axis. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 2
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-02 | azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/l | not published |
| 2026-10-22 | azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/l | 'Stopped: you are billed for allocated cores, but not software license' and 'Deleted (Deallocated): cores are no longer allocated to the virtual machine, and are no longer billed' and 'We charge for the number of full minutes your virtual machine is running', quoted |
More fields 16
{
"keep_rate": 1.0,
"keep_rate_basis": null,
"billing_model": "flat-pool",
"shape": null,
"session_cap": {
"wall_clock_min": null,
"idle_reap_s": null,
"restart_required": false,
"note": "no reap; a Stopped VM keeps billing its cores, so the cost lever is Deallocate, which discards the temporary disk"
},
"persistent_storage": null,
"network_out": null,
"price_note": "a VPS bills by the month with an hourly rate capped at the monthly figure, so the two columns answer two questions: destroying the box between runs versus keeping it up.",
"free_tier_kind": "one-time-credit",
"m10h_usd": 11.28,
"m24h_usd": 28.55,
"price_basis": "10 h/day column = 300 h at the hourly rate, which is what a server destroyed between runs costs; 24/7 column = the monthly cap, because a VPS kept up all month stops at the cap.",
"granularity": {
"min_billed_s": 60,
"rounding_s": null
},
"burst_x": 1.025,
"ps": {
"gib": null,
"price": "managed disks are billed separately from the instance",
"durability": "managed disk",
"on_stop": true,
"on_destroy": false,
"retention": "while the disk exists; the temporary disk does not survive a deallocation"
},
"net": {
"out": true,
"in": true,
"ports": "any",
"static_ip": false,
"ipv6": false,
"allowance": "a dynamic VIP is included; a reserved IP is charged"
}
}Unknown values 10
$.chaininga source was read and is silent on this field$.egress.meteredegress metering was not published$.egress.termsa source was read and is silent on this field$.interfacethe access interface was not established$.limits_notea source was read and is silent on this field$.per_object_cap.stateda source was read and is silent on this field$.reliability_notenothing of this kind was observed$.retention.notesthe field may be stated in a source that was not read$.retention.stateda source was read and is silent on this field$.toolinga source was read and is silent on this field