About AzureCalc.uk

I built AzureCalc.uk because I kept hitting the same wall: the official Azure Pricing Calculator is fine for simple scenarios, but the moment you're trying to model something like a Log Analytics workspace with Sentinel enabled and mixed retention policies, it becomes genuinely painful. You can't see the actual GBP rates without navigating across multiple pages, and the commitment tier maths is left as an exercise for the reader. I wanted a tool that did that work upfront, showed the formula, and used real prices.

Where the prices come from

Every price on this site is fetched nightly from the Microsoft Azure Retail Prices API — the same public API that powers the official Azure pricing pages. I filter touksouth andGBP so you see native pound prices, not converted USD. The cache refreshes at 02:00 UTC; a timestamp is shown on every calculator. Full methodology →

Who built it

I'm a solo developer who works with Azure regularly on UK production workloads. The calculation formulas are derived from official Microsoft documentation and verified against real invoice line items. I also built an AI cost assistant that understands natural-language cost questions and can query the calculators directly. AzureCalc.uk is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Microsoft Corporation.

— gravitycontextdev@gmail.com

Expertise & Real-World Experience

AzureCalc.uk is built on practical experience with Azure production systems, not theory. The formulas and edge cases documented here come from:

5+ years of Azure production workload management across compute, storage, networking, and monitoring services
Invoice reconciliation work at scale — matching Microsoft Retail Prices API data against actual billing for enterprise and SMB customers
Cost surprises turned into documentation — every guide here emerged from a real cost discovery or optimization project
Official documentation cross-referencing — every calculation is traced back to Microsoft documentation, not guesswork
Community feedback — calculator improvements are driven by engineer questions and cost reconciliation edge cases

How Accuracy Is Verified

Prices are not guessed. Every number on AzureCalc.uk is sourced from the Microsoft Azure Retail Prices API and regularly verified against:

Quarterly invoice reconciliation: Real customer bills are matched against estimates. Variance gaps are documented and investigated.
Spot checks against official pages: I regularly verify prices against Microsoft's official pricing pages for the top 5 services.
Peer review: Formulas are cross-checked against published Azure architecture guidance and community cost models.
Edge case tracking: User reports of unexpected costs are investigated and added to the billing traps guide if confirmed.

Transparency & No Hidden Agendas

AzureCalc.uk has no hidden affiliations or conflicts of interest:

No vendor relationship with Microsoft: This site does not receive funding, data, or support from Microsoft. All data comes from the publicly available Azure Retail Prices API.
No affiliate-driven business model: While affiliate links to certification courses appear on guides, the recommendations are based on content relevance, not commission rates.
Open feedback loop: Errors are corrected within 24 hours. Every email gets a response.
Pricing accuracy is the core metric: If a price is wrong, the site loses utility. Accuracy is the only metric that matters.

Community Engagement

AzureCalc.uk is shaped by real engineer questions and feedback. If multiple people report the same issue or ask for the same feature, the site evolves. Recent updates driven by community requests:

Added a dedicated guide on Log Analytics Search Job vs Restore costs after multiple engineers asked about the 2TB minimum
Expanded Networking section after discovering NAT Gateway always-on charges were consistently underestimated
Added Invoice Reconciliation guide as a response to "why doesn't my estimate match my bill?"

Accuracy and limitations

Estimates are for guidance only. Actual costs depend on your Microsoft agreement, reserved instance pricing, enterprise discounts, and any commitment plans you hold. Always verify through the official Azure Pricing Calculator before making purchasing decisions. See the full disclaimer for details.

Why this site exists

Azure pricing is powerful but fractured. Microsoft publishes meters at scale, but helping engineers make sense of _combinations_ of meters in realistic scenarios is left to the user. Most cost estimation happens either through the official calculator (which is designed for simplicity, not depth) or through internal spreadsheets (which are version-fragmented and error-prone). When procurement teams ask "what will this architecture cost?", engineers either guess, call sales (getting opaque pricing), or spend hours cross-referencing docs.

AzureCalc.uk exists to bridge that gap. It takes the Azure Retail Prices API (which is reliable but raw) and wraps it with service-specific expertise so that answers come with caveats, examples, and next steps rather than just a number. The theory is: a calculator that explains itself is more useful than a calculator that just outputs a total.

Design philosophy

AzureCalc.uk prioritizes transparency over polish. Every estimate includes:

A formula or breakdown so you understand what's being calculated
Caveats and limitations so you know when the estimate might be wrong
Related guides so you can drill deeper into the pricing logic without having to search elsewhere
Links to provenance so you know where the number came from
Timestamp so you know the estimate is current (prices change monthly)

It's not designed to be a pretty marketing site or a one-click quote tool. It's designed to be the reference you keep open at 4 PM on Friday when you're trying to figure out whether a customer's cost estimate is plausible before you present it Monday morning.

Data freshness and updates

Prices refresh nightly at 02:00 UTC. Every calculator displays a timestamp showing when the cached prices were last updated. If prices haven't refreshed within 24 hours, a warning appears so you know to defer cost-sensitive decisions or use the official calculator to double-check. You can also check the price history page to see recent price movements across services.

Get in touch

Found an error? Have a feature request? Spotted a price that looks wrong? Reach out at gravitycontextdev@gmail.com. I read every email and iterate based on feedback. The site is independent, which means there's no roadmap except the one users tell me about.

Calculators available

Pricing data sourced from the Microsoft Azure Retail Prices API. Not affiliated with Microsoft. All estimates are approximations — see the disclaimer.