Spot Virtual Machines
Spare Azure capacity at a deep, variable discount — reclaimed (evicted) with 30 seconds’ notice when Azure needs it back.
Azure Spot VMs sell unused capacity at large discounts off On-Demand. The catch is eviction: Azure can reclaim the VM when it needs the capacity or when the price rises above your maximum, giving about 30 seconds of notice.
Spot suits fault-tolerant, interruptible, or batch work that can checkpoint and resume. The Spot prices here are indicative — they move continuously and vary by region — so never treat one as a firm quote.
More Azure pricing terms
On-Demand (Pay-As-You-Go)Reserved VM Instance (RI)Savings Plan for ComputeAzure Hybrid Benefit (AHB)Spot eviction & eviction policyDev/Test pricingARM region nameMeter & SKUVM 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)