Azure Blob Storage always-free tier
- Free allowance
- 5 GB LRS hot block storage, with 20,000 read and 10,000 write operations per month, free for 12 months.
- Verdict
- fails: quotathe free allowance is too small to matter
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- cardcard required, no phone
- Binding limit
- per-object-cap5 GB cap
- Evidence
- reported3 sources; a third party said so
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-05checked 2026-10-21 (inherited); stale on 2026-11-05
| Free tier | 5 GB LRS hot block storage, with 20,000 read and 10,000 write operations per month, free for 12 months. Azure Files: 100 GB LRS hot/cool/transaction-optimized, 12 months. Archive Storage: 10 GB LRS, 12 months. unit GB; metered on stored-bytes |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits | 5 GB cap; 12-month expiry on the Blob allotment (Azure's page labels Blob '12 months' despite the 'always free' framing elsewhere - treat as trial); 5 PiB max per storage account is irrelevant at 5 GB. |
| Binding | per-object-cap the per-object cap sets the shard size and therefore the object count; it bounds the total more tightly than any headline quota |
| Identity | card not published |
| Egress | Metered. 'First 100 GB/Month' egress free, then $0.087/GB from North America/Europe. 1 TiB/day of serving would be ~$80/day. free allowance: 100 GB per month |
| Per-object cap | 5 GB cap (5000000000 bytes) |
| Retention | not stated |
| Interface | s3-compatible, rest, rclone s3 |
| Tooling | rclone backend 'azureblob' (Tier 1, md5, R/W); any S3-compatible SDK is NOT usable - it's the native Blob REST API; AzCopy, Azure Storage Explorer, azure-storage-blob Python SDK |
| Composes with | Per-account 5 GB and accounts require a credit card for verification; the always-free grant is per Azure subscription. N subscriptions x 5 GB is not a serious multiplier and each needs billing verification. |
| Reliability | Card required; overage silently bills at pay-go rates once the 12-month window lapses because the account is not auto-suspended. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 3
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-21 | azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/free-services | 'Blob Storage ... 5 GB locally redundant storage (LRS) hot block with 20,000 read and 10,000 write operations' / '12 months'; 'Azure Files ... 100 GB of LRS transaction optimised, hot, and cool files' / '12 months'; 'Archive Storage ... 10 GB LRS storage' / '12 months' |
| 2026-10-21 | azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/bandwidth/ | 'First 100 GB/Month' free, then '$0.087 per GB' from North America/Europe; 'Azure already offers the first 100 GB/month of egressed data for free' |
| 2026-10-21 | rclone.org/overview/ | Azure Blob listed as a Tier 1 rclone backend, md5, R/W |
More fields 1
{
"dead_end": {
"failure_class": "quota",
"why": "5 GB LRS hot block storage, with 20,000 read and 10,000 write operations per month, free for 12 months. Azure Files: 100 GB LRS hot/cool/transaction-optimized, 12 months. Archive Storage: 10 GB LRS, 12 months.",
"retry_when": null,
"first_recorded": "2026-10-21"
}
}Unknown values 4
$.identity_cost.detailboilerplate$.per_object_cap.notesthe field may be stated in a source that was not read$.retention.notesthe field may be stated in a source that was not read$.retention.statedthe field may be stated in a source that was not read