10 Azure Cost Optimisation Strategies That Actually Work in 2025

1. Azure Hybrid Benefit — Up to 40% Off Windows VMs

If you have existing Windows Server or SQL Server licences with Software Assurance, Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) lets you use them in Azure. For Windows Server Standard: save up to 40% on VM compute cost. For SQL Server: save up to 55% on SQL databases. Enable it in VM settings with zero downtime.

2. Reserved Virtual Machine Instances

Commit to 1 or 3 years and save up to 63% vs pay-as-you-go:

3. Azure Savings Plans

Azure Savings Plans provide flexible discounts across compute regardless of VM size, series or region. 1-year saves up to 32%; 3-year saves up to 56%. Unlike RIs, Savings Plans apply automatically across your subscription.

4. Right-Size Underutilised VMs

Azure Advisor identifies VMs running at under 5% average CPU utilisation. Downsizing from D8s v5 to D4s v5 immediately halves compute cost. Run this analysis quarterly.

5. Azure Spot Virtual Machines

Azure Spot VMs use spare capacity at up to 90% discount. Perfect for: batch processing, CI/CD pipelines, ML training, dev/test environments.

6. Schedule Non-Production Resources

Dev and test environments typically only need to run during business hours. Stopping them for 16 hours/day and weekends saves up to 65% — one configuration change in Azure Automation.

7. Storage Tiering

Blob storage hot tier: $0.018/GB. Cool tier: $0.010/GB. Archive: $0.001/GB. Move data that hasn't been accessed in 30 days to Cool, data not accessed in 90 days to Archive — automatically with Lifecycle Management policies.

8. Delete Orphaned Resources

Unused managed disks, unattached NICs, old snapshots, idle public IPs — these accumulate silently. Azure Resource Graph can identify them in minutes. Typical saving: 10-15% of total spend.

9. Azure Dev/Test Subscription

Visual Studio subscribers can get discounted rates for dev/test workloads — up to 50% off certain VM sizes. No SLA applies but perfect for non-production environments.

10. Use ARM-Based VMs

Azure Dpsv5 (ARM Ampere Neoverse N2) offers up to 50% better price-performance than equivalent x86 VMs for cloud-native Linux workloads. Now available in Singapore and most major regions.

Combine these strategies — a typical enterprise can reduce Azure spend by 40-60% without sacrificing performance or availability.