Azure Cost Management and Azure Cost Optimization, in Dollars You Can Act On
Connect your Azure billing read-only and Costanalyst finds the idle VMs, the oversized SKUs, the unattached disks, and the reservation coverage you are leaving on the table, each with a real monthly dollar figure.
projected this month if unattended
Spend by team
Budget forecast
In short
Azure cost management is the practice of tracking, allocating, and reducing what you spend on Microsoft Azure. Microsoft ships a free native tool, Microsoft Cost Management, that covers analysis, budgets, and Azure Advisor recommendations inside the portal. Costanalyst adds what the native tool does not: your Azure spend and your SaaS subscriptions in one view, savings quantified in dollars with the line items behind them, and anomaly alerts that fire before the invoice arrives. It connects read-only and never changes a resource.
What you get
Azure cost management, built for finance and platform teams
Idle and orphaned Azure resources
Stopped-but-not-deallocated VMs, unattached managed disks, unused public IPs, and idle SQL databases surface with the exact monthly dollars each one costs.
Rightsizing across VM SKUs
Oversized virtual machines and App Service plans are flagged with a target SKU and the savings, computed from real utilization rather than a rule of thumb.
Reservation and savings plan coverage
See where Azure Reserved Instances or an Azure savings plan would cut pay-as-you-go spend, and where reservations you already bought are going unused.
Azure plus SaaS in one number
Your Azure bill and your software subscriptions land in the same view, so finance sees one total technology spend instead of reconciling two dashboards.
How it works
From connected to saving in four steps
Connect Azure read-only
Grant read-only access to your Azure billing and usage data. We never get permission to change or delete a resource.
Map the spend
Costanalyst breaks spend down by subscription, resource group, service, and tag, and learns your normal usage pattern.
Get dollar recommendations
Savings opportunities surface as prioritized cards with real monthly figures and the underlying billing line items.
You decide and act
Your team makes the change in Azure. Costanalyst recommends, you act, and the savings show up on the next invoice.
Questions people ask
Azure cost management, answered
What is Azure Cost Management?
Azure Cost Management, officially Microsoft Cost Management, is the free native Azure service for analyzing, monitoring, and controlling what you spend on Microsoft Cloud. It provides cost analysis views, budgets with alerts, and cost optimization recommendations through Azure Advisor. It is included with your Azure subscription at no extra charge.
Is Azure Cost Management free?
Yes. Microsoft Cost Management is included free with every Azure subscription and covers cost analysis, budgets, alerts, and Advisor recommendations for your Azure spend. Third-party platforms like Costanalyst are paid, and what you pay for is multi-cloud coverage, SaaS spend in the same view, savings quantified in dollars, and anomaly alerts before the invoice lands.
How do I reduce my Azure bill?
The biggest levers, in order of typical payback: deallocate idle VMs (a stopped VM still bills unless it is deallocated), rightsize oversized VM SKUs, delete unattached managed disks and old snapshots, buy Reserved Instances or an Azure savings plan for steady workloads, and apply Azure Hybrid Benefit if you own Windows Server or SQL Server licenses.
What is Azure Hybrid Benefit?
Azure Hybrid Benefit lets you apply on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server licenses with active Software Assurance, or eligible Linux subscriptions, to Azure workloads instead of paying the full pay-as-you-go rate. If your company already owns those licenses and is not applying the benefit, it is usually the single largest and fastest Azure saving available.
What is the difference between an Azure savings plan and Reserved Instances?
Reserved Instances commit you to a specific VM type in a specific region for one or three years, and give the deepest discount when your workload is stable and predictable. An Azure savings plan commits you to an hourly dollar amount of compute spend instead, and applies flexibly across VM types and regions. Reservations save more, savings plans are more forgiving if your workload changes.
How much can Azure cost optimization save?
It depends on how neglected the account is, but rightsizing initiatives alone commonly recover 20 to 60 percent on the affected virtual machines, and Azure savings plans can reduce compute costs meaningfully versus pay-as-you-go rates. A first pass on an account nobody has cleaned up usually finds idle resources, unattached disks, and uncovered steady workloads.
See your savings in dollars
Connect your spend read-only and get a prioritized savings plan. Money never moves. No card to start.