Azure Cosmos DB Pricing 2026
Plans, hidden costs, and cheaper alternatives compared
Is Azure Cosmos DB worth the price?
Azure Cosmos DB offers a generous Free Tier, making it accessible for initial development.
The Serverless option at $0.25 per 1M RUs is competitive for intermittent workloads, while the Provisioned tier at $0.008 per 100 RU/s/hour provides cost-effective reserved capacity. This pricing model is fair and flexible, catering to a wide range of use cases from small projects to large-scale production.
Pricing Plans
Free TrialFree Tier
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Usage-based pricing
- 1000 RU/s provisioned
- 25 GB storage
- First account free
- All features
Serverless
$0.25/per 1M RUs
Intermittent traffic
- Pay per request
- Auto-scaling
- No minimum
- Dev/test workloads
Provisioned
$0.008/per 100 RU/s/hour
Predictable workloads
- Reserved capacity
- Up to 65% savings
- Autoscale option
- Production ready
Hidden Costs & Gotchas
Data transfer out of Azure
Backup storage costs can add up
Higher RU/s for complex queries
Geographic replication adds cost
Which Plan Do You Need?
Startups and small projects
High-traffic global applications
Developers needing multi-model DB
How Azure Cosmos DB Compares to Competitors
Compared to AWS DynamoDB, Cosmos DB's Serverless model at $0.25 per 1M RUs is competitive, with DynamoDB's on-demand pricing around $1.25 per million write request units and $0.25 per million read request units. For provisioned throughput, both offer similar cost structures, but Cosmos DB's multi-model support can offer better value than managing separate databases like MongoDB Atlas which has its own pricing per cluster size.
Azure Cosmos DB Pricing FAQ
How much does Azure Cosmos DB cost?
Azure Cosmos DB uses custom pricing. Contact Azure Cosmos DB directly for a quote based on your team size and requirements.
Does Azure Cosmos DB have a free plan?
Yes. Azure Cosmos DB offers a free plan called "Serverless". It includes: Pay per request, Auto-scaling, No minimum.
Does Azure Cosmos DB offer a free trial?
Yes, Azure Cosmos DB offers a free trial. No credit card is typically required to start the trial, though this may vary.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Azure Cosmos DB?
Yes. Popular alternatives to Azure Cosmos DB include Amazon DynamoDB, Mongodb Atlas, Cassandra, Couchbase. Free alternatives include Cassandra. Compare them side-by-side on Toolradar.
Cheaper alternatives to Azure Cosmos DB
1 of 6 direct competitors below offer a free plan. Per-seat pricing varies up to 60% across this set.
