Meter & SKU
Azure bills usage against meters; an armSkuName (Standard_D4s_v6) identifies the VM size a meter prices.
A meter is the unit Azure bills against — for a VM, an hour of a specific size, OS, and purchase type (On-Demand, Spot, reservation). Each priced item in the Retail Prices API is a meter with a retail price.
The armSkuName (for example Standard_D4s_v6) is the canonical size identifier used across the API and tooling. This explorer joins meters to sizes by armSkuName and shows the friendly size label (D4s v6) alongside it.
More Azure pricing terms
On-Demand (Pay-As-You-Go)Reserved VM Instance (RI)Savings Plan for ComputeAzure Hybrid Benefit (AHB)Spot Virtual MachinesSpot eviction & eviction policyDev/Test pricingARM region nameVM series naming (D, E, F, B and s/a/p)Constrained-vCPU sizesB-series burstable & CPU creditsEphemeral OS diskCobalt & Ampere (Arm on Azure)vCPUEffective hourly rateWindows vs Linux pricingMax saving %Best price regionNormalized pricing ($/vCPU, $/GB)