Does Azure charge for stopped VMs?

If we stop a VM inside OS then it goes into “stopped” state. Azure will charge for the compute (hardware), network and storage services.

We can stop maximum charges for VM by using the stopped (deallocated) state. For this we would need Azure Portal (or Azure CLI) to stop the VM. This will shutdown the Operating System and deallocate the compute resource/network resource allocated for the VM. These compute/network resource can be used for another customer.  In this case Azure will report the status of the VM as being in a “Stopped (Deallocated” state.

Stopping (deallocating) a VM also release the internal IP address. A quick tip to prevent this from happening is to make sure that you have at least one VM that you haven’t put in the Stopped (Deallocated) state. You’d still be charged for that one but not the others, whilst maintaining your virtual IP.

Azure doesn’t charge for the VM core hours in Stopped (deallocated) state. However, it continues to accrue charges for the Azure storage needed for the VM’s OS disk and any attached data disks.

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Author: Shahzad Khan

Software developer / Architect