Azure VM cost calculator

AHB removes the Windows licensing component from VM hourly pricing, saving roughly 40 percent on a Windows VM compared to the same VM bought without it. For SQL Server VMs the saving is closer to 55 percent. You need active Software Assurance or qualifying subscription licenses.

Yes. AHB applies to the Windows licensing component, and the Reservation applies to the compute component. They stack cleanly. A three-year Reserved Instance with AHB on a Windows VM can land around 70 to 80 percent off pay-as-you-go depending on SKU and payment option.

Spot VMs use Azure spare capacity at 60 to 90 percent off on-demand. They fit stateless batch processing, dev and test environments, CI runners, big data analytics, and render farms. Avoid Spot for workloads that cannot be evicted with 30 seconds notice.

B-series is right for mostly idle workloads with occasional spikes, such as small dev VMs, jump boxes, and small web apps. D-series is for sustained production performance, databases, and anything CPU-bound. The trap is running CPU-bound production on B-series and silently throttling.

East US is among the cheapest published Azure regions for most VM SKUs. West Europe often runs 5 to 10 percent more. Southeast Asia and Australia East can run 10 to 15 percent more. Expensive-region workloads should have a latency, regulatory, or customer reason.