Transparent pricing. Billed by the hour.
No contracts. No hidden fees. Every resource is metered per hour in South African Rand using a fixed USD → ZAR conversion of R18.00. Invoiced monthly via BlueGrid Core Portal.
Azure USD Rate × R18.00 = ZAR / hr· Fixed quarterly · No forex exposureVM SKU Rate Card
Compute is billed per hour while the VM is in Running or Stopped state. Disk charges apply separately regardless of state.
| SKU Name | Tier | vCPU | RAM | ZAR / hr | Est. / mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard_B1s | Burstable | 1 | 1 GiB | R1.62 | R1 166 |
| Standard_B2s | Burstable | 2 | 4 GiB | R3.24 | R2 333 |
| Standard_B4ms | Burstable | 4 | 16 GiB | R6.48 | R4 666 |
| Standard_D2s_v5 | General Purpose | 2 | 8 GiB | R6.12 | R4 406 |
| Standard_D4s_v5POPULAR | General Purpose | 4 | 16 GiB | R12.06 | R8 683 |
| Standard_D8s_v5 | General Purpose | 8 | 32 GiB | R24.12 | R17 366 |
| Standard_D16s_v5 | General Purpose | 16 | 64 GiB | R48.24 | R34 733 |
| Standard_E4s_v5 | Memory Optimised | 4 | 32 GiB | R16.56 | R11 923 |
| Standard_E8s_v5 | Memory Optimised | 8 | 64 GiB | R32.94 | R23 717 |
| Standard_E16s_v5 | Memory Optimised | 16 | 128 GiB | R65.88 | R47 434 |
| Standard_F4s_v2 | Compute Optimised | 4 | 8 GiB | R10.80 | R7 776 |
| Standard_F16s_v2 | Compute Optimised | 16 | 32 GiB | R43.20 | R31 104 |
| Standard_NC6s_v3 | GPU | 6 | 112 GiB | R72.00 | R51 840 |
Managed Disk Add-Ons
| Disk Type | Size Range | Price | Max IOPS | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard HDD | 32–32 768 GiB | R0.90/GiB | 500 | Dev / backup |
| Standard SSD | 32–32 768 GiB | R1.44/GiB | 3 000 | Light workloads |
| Premium SSDPOPULAR | 32–32 768 GiB | R2.52/GiB | 5 000+ | Production |
| Ultra Disk | 4–65 536 GiB | R5.40/GiB | 160 000 | Latency-critical |
What you pay in each state
Understanding compute states prevents unexpected charges. Always Deallocate rather than just stop your VM to halt compute billing.
| State | Compute charge | Disk charge | Public IP charge | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Running | Normal operation | |||
Stopped | OS shut down, hardware reserved | |||
Deallocated | Hardware freed — R0.00/hr | |||
Deleted | All data destroyed |
Managed Database Rate Card
Database compute + included storage billed per hour. Read replicas billed at the same rate as primary. Additional storage above the included amount billed at R2.16/GiB-month.
| SKU Name | Engine | vCores | RAM | Incl. Storage | ZAR / hr | Est. / mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burstable B1ms | PG / MySQL | 1 | 2 GiB | 32 GiB | R2.16 | R1 555 |
| Burstable B2ms | PG / MySQL | 2 | 4 GiB | 64 GiB | R4.32 | R3 110 |
| Gen Purpose D2s | PG / MySQL | 2 | 8 GiB | 64 GiB | R7.20 | R5 184 |
| Gen Purpose D4sPOPULAR | PG / MySQL | 4 | 16 GiB | 128 GiB | R14.40 | R10 368 |
| Gen Purpose D8s | PG / MySQL | 8 | 32 GiB | 256 GiB | R28.80 | R20 736 |
| Gen Purpose D16s | PG / MySQL | 16 | 64 GiB | 512 GiB | R57.60 | R41 472 |
| Mem Optimised E8ds | PG / MySQL | 8 | 64 GiB | 512 GiB | R43.20 | R31 104 |
| Mem Optimised E16ds | PG only | 16 | 128 GiB | 1 TiB | R86.40 | R62 208 |
Storage Tier Rate Card
Charged per GiB stored per month, plus operation and egress fees. All tiers support versioning, lifecycle policies, and AES-256 encryption at rest.
Frequent access
Infrequent (≥30 days)
Rare access (≥90 days)
Long-term retention
Networking Rate Card
VNets, subnets, and NSGs are free. Charges apply for public IPs, egress bandwidth, gateways, and advanced services.
* Inbound data transfer is always free. First 5 GiB of outbound per month is free.
AKS Node Pool Pricing
The managed control plane is free. You pay only for the underlying VM nodes in your node pools. Persistent volume storage is billed at Premium SSD managed disk rates.
| Node Pool Type | Node VM SKU | Min Nodes | ZAR / hr / node | Est. / mo / node |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| System pool (required) | Standard_D2s_v5 | 1+ | R6.12/node | R4 406/node |
| General workloadPOPULAR | Standard_D4s_v5 | 1+ | R12.06/node | R8 683/node |
| Memory workload | Standard_E8s_v5 | 1+ | R32.94/node | R23 717/node |
| GPU workload | Standard_NC6s_v3 | 1+ | R72.00/node | R51 840/node |
Common billing questions
How exactly is the ZAR rate calculated?
We apply a fixed conversion: Azure USD list price × R18.00. This rate is locked quarterly and published in advance so you always know what to expect — no live forex exposure.
What is the difference between Stopped and Deallocated?
A Stopped VM has its OS shut down but the physical hardware is still reserved for you — you continue being billed at the full compute rate. A Deallocated VM frees the hardware back to the pool so compute charges drop to R0.00/hr. You still pay for attached disks and any static public IPs.
When am I invoiced?
BlueGrid Digitals meters usage every hour and syncs the aggregated total to the BlueGrid Core Portal. Your unified tax invoice (with VAT) is issued on the 1st of each month covering the previous calendar month.
Is there a minimum commitment or contract?
No. Every resource is strictly pay-as-you-go billed per hour. You can delete a resource at any minute and stop accruing charges immediately (final partial hour is billed).
Do storage and networking charges apply when the VM is Deallocated?
Yes. Attached managed disks and static public IPs continue to accrue monthly charges regardless of compute state, because the capacity is still reserved for you.
Are there volume discounts?
Enterprise accounts with consistent high-usage commitments can negotiate custom volume pricing. Contact our sales team — we offer discounts starting at 10× concurrent resource-hours.
Start with zero commitment
Spin up your first resource in the console and pay only for what you use. Need a volume quote or enterprise SLA? Talk to our team.