Azure Managed Disk Calculator
See the Azure disk size you are billed for, what empty space costs, and what Premium SSD v2 saves.
Each one fills in the fields below for a typical workload of that kind. You can change any of them.
- P30, 24 disks
- $135.17 each
- Paid for and not used
- 10,176 GiB
- Cheapest: Premium SSD v2
- $1,473.87/mo
Your options, cheapest first
| Option | Monthly | Saves |
|---|---|---|
| Premium SSD v2600 GiB set to 5,000 IOPS and 200 MB/s, at least what P30 gives. Billed per GiB, so no boundary to pay for. Data disks only: not an OS disk, no host caching, and in most regions the VM must be in an availability zone. | $1,473.87 | $1,770.21 |
| Standard SSD E30Up to 500 IOPS and 100 MB/s: fine for most application disks, usually wrong for a database. Its I/O operations are billed too (capped each hour), and not in this figure. | $1,843.20 | $1,400.88 |
| Premium SSD P30 (today)What you would buy today. | $3,244.08 | n/a |
The Azure-specific waste
This is the difference from EBS and it catches people moving between the two. On AWS you pay per GB provisioned, so waste is gradual. On Azure a disk 5% over a SKU boundary costs exactly the same as one 95% over it. Azure cannot shrink a managed disk, so deleting data alone saves nothing: to drop a SKU, create a smaller disk and copy the data across.
What this model assumes
Show
- Azure bills the provisioned size, rounded up to a SKU. A P30 costs the same holding 1 GB as holding its full 1,024 GiB, and a 600 GiB disk is billed as a P30 because P20 stops at 512. Azure cannot shrink a disk: a smaller SKU means a new disk and a copy.
- Performance comes with the SKU. Premium SSD IOPS and throughput scale with size, so a bigger disk is also a faster one. Give the IOPS each disk needs and the smallest SKU that meets both is the one priced; Standard SSD is offered only when it is fast enough.
- Premium SSD v2 is priced at the same performance. The need in whole GiB, plus any IOPS above its included 3,000 and MB/s above its included 125, set to match the SKU it would replace or the IOPS you give. Above 3,000 IOPS each GiB allows 500 more, so a small, fast disk is sized up.
- Every Premium and Standard SSD size, P1 to P80 and E1 to E80, LRS, East US. The smallest that fits is the one billed, up to 32,767 GiB per disk. ZRS costs more.
- Not included: Standard SSD transaction charges, bursting, snapshots, disk reservations (P30 and up, one year), Standard HDD (which also bills every 16 KiB I/O), and Ultra Disk.
Generated from the Azure Retail Prices API by script on 29 Oct 2026, for 13 regions and LRS redundancy. ZRS and GRS cost more. Disk sizes, IOPS and throughput are not in the price list; they come from Microsoft’s disk types page.
Prices verified 29 Oct 2026. Public list prices in USD for 13 Azure regions, before any discount you have negotiated.
Paying for empty disk space?
Cloud Cost Audit: We review your managed disks across subscriptions and find the ones sized a tier too high. From $1,500, fixed. Nothing paid upfront.
Questions
How is Azure managed disk pricing calculated?
By provisioned size, rounded up to the next SKU, whatever is on the disk. A P30 costs the same holding one gigabyte as holding its full 1,024 GiB, and a 600 GiB disk is billed as a P30 because the SKU below it, P20, stops at 512. Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disk are the exceptions: they bill per GiB.
Why is my Azure disk bill higher than the data on it?
Because you pay for the provisioned size rounded up to a SKU, not the contents. A disk sized just above a SKU boundary pays for the whole next size, and one 5% over a boundary costs exactly as much as one 95% over it. That space is already paid for, so growing the disk to the SKU's full size costs nothing. This is the main structural difference from AWS EBS, which bills per GB provisioned.
How do I reduce Azure disk costs?
Delete unattached disks first: they keep billing at full rate. For data disks, price Premium SSD v2, which bills per GiB and includes 3,000 IOPS; it usually costs less at the same performance. Move disks that are not latency-sensitive to Standard SSD. If a disk's data fits the SKU below, create a smaller disk and copy the data across: Azure cannot shrink a managed disk, so deleting data alone saves nothing. And check snapshot retention, which is charged separately.
How do I size an Azure disk for IOPS?
On Premium SSD, IOPS come with the size: a P30 (1,024 GiB) gives 5,000 IOPS and a P40 (2,048 GiB) 7,500. So a 600 GiB database disk that needs 7,500 IOPS is billed as a P40, $259.05 a month in East US. Premium SSD v2 sells IOPS apart from space: 600 GiB at 7,500 IOPS and 250 MB/s is about $76 a month. Enter the IOPS each disk needs and the calculator prices the smallest disk that is fast enough.
Does an Azure disk cost anything when the VM is stopped?
Yes, in full. Deallocating a VM stops the compute charge and leaves every attached managed disk billing at its normal SKU rate, the same trap as EBS on AWS.
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