How to try and play with Azure services for free?
One can use an Azure free account which is a free trial account to try Azure services for free. This account provides you with a number of services and a $200 free credit for a validity of 12 months.
Sign up Azure Free Account
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/
- Some of the services that are included with the free account include:
- 750 hours of Azure B1S Virtual Machines
- 5 GB of Azure Storage
- 1 GB of Azure Cosmos DB
- 50,000 API calls and 1,000 emails with Azure Logic Apps
- Unlimited inbound and outbound inter-regional data transfer
In addition, you get free monthly amounts of two groups of services: popular services, which are free for 12 months, and more than 55 other services that are free always.
Which services are free in an Azure free account?
Certain types and amounts of these services are available for free each month. The list of azure services with description, type, free monthly amount, and free period are as below.
| sr no. | Azure service | Description | Type | Free monthly amount | Free period |
| 1 | Advisor | Get personalized recommendations and best practices for Azure. | Management and governance | Unlimited | Always |
| 2 | Anomaly Detector | Detect anomalies in data to quickly identify and troubleshoot issues. | AI + machine learning | 20,000 transactions S0 tier | 12 months |
| 3 | API Management | Manage APIs across all platforms with a hybrid, multi cloud platform. | Integration | 1 million monthly calls free with Consumption tier | Always |
| 4 | App Configuration | Store and manage configurations for all your Azure apps. | Developer tools | 1,000 requests per day with 10 MB storage | Always |
| 5 | App Service | Quickly create powerful apps for any platform or device using your choice of tools including Node.js and PHP. | Compute | 10 web, mobile, or API apps with 1 GB storage 1 hour per day | Always |
| 6 | Archive Storage | Store and manage rarely accessed data with locally redundant storage (LRS) or geo-redundant storage (GRS). | Storage | 10 GB LRS storage, 10 GB LRS or GRS write and retrieval, and 100 reads | 12 months |
| 7 | Automation | Simplify cloud management with process automation. | Management and governance | 500 minutes of job runtime | Always |
| 8 | Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) | Enable identity and access management in the cloud. | Identity | 50,000 stored objects with single sign-on (SSO) to all cloud apps | Always |
| 9 | Azure Arc | Extend Azure management and services. | Hybrid + multi cloud | Free Azure control plane functionality for resources outside Azure, search and indexing for Azure Arc-enabled resources | Always |
| 10 | Azure Attestation | Verify the identity and security posture of trusted platform modules and trusted execution environments. | Security | Free | Always |
| 11 | Azure Cosmos DB | Build modern apps at any scale using a fast NoSQL database with open APIs. | Databases | 400 request units per-second provisioned throughput with 25 GB storage | 12 months |
| 12 | Azure Cosmos DB | Build modern apps at any scale using a fast NoSQL database with open APIs. | Databases | 1,000 request units per-second provisioned throughput with 25 GB storage | Always |
| 13 | Azure Database for MySQL | Host a fully managed, scalable MySQL database in Azure. | Databases | 750 hours of Flexible Server—Burstable B1MS Instance, 32 GB storage, and 32 GB backup storage | 12 months |
| 14 | Azure Database for PostgreSQL | Build intelligent, scalable apps with a fully managed database for PostgreSQL | Databases | 750 hours of Flexible Server—Burstable B1MS Instance, 32 GB storage, and 32 GB backup storage | 12 months |
| 15 | Azure DevOps | Build apps in any language using Git repos, CI/CD and build and release automation. | Developer tools | 5 users with unlimited private Git repos | Always |
| 16 | Azure Files | Migrate to simple, distributed, cross-platform file storage without changing code. | Storage | 100 GB of LRS transaction optimised, hot and cool files. 2 million reads, list, and other file operations | 12 months |
| 17 | Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) | Deploy and manage containers using the tools you choose. | Compute | Free | Always |
| 18 | Azure Lighthouse | Manage service providers with Zero Trust access controls. | Management and governance | Free | Always |
| 19 | Azure Managed Applications, Service catalogue | Make it easier to acquire services with a catalogue of approved cloud offerings. | Management and governance | Free publishing | Always |
| 20 | Azure Maps | Create location-aware web and mobile applications using geospatial services, APIs, and SDKs. | Internet of Things | 1,000 to 5,000 transactions for specific mapping and location insights features | Always |
| 21 | Azure Migrate | Discover, assess, right-size, and migrate your on-premises virtual machines to Azure. | Migration | Free | Always |
| 22 | Azure Policy | Achieve real-time cloud compliance at scale with consistent resource governance. | Management and governance | Free access to configuration and change tracking features | Always |
| 23 | Azure Resource Mover | Simplify how you move multiple resources between Azure regions. | Management and governance | Free (ingress and egress charges may apply) | Always |
| 24 | Azure SignalR Service | Add real-time communications into your web applications. | Web | 20 concurrent connections per unit and 20,000 messages | Always |
| 25 | Bandwidth (Data Transfer) | Transfer data inbound and outbound through our robust network of global data centers. | Networking | 15 GB outbound | 12 months |
| 26 | Bandwidth (Data Transfer) | Transfer data inbound and outbound through our robust network of global data centers. | Networking | 100 GB outbound | Always |
| 27 | Batch | Scale your application in the cloud with job orchestration and scheduling for HPC applications. | Compute | Free | Always |
| 28 | Blob Storage | Use massively scalable object storage for any type of unstructured data. | Storage | 5 GB locally redundant storage (LRS) hot block with 20,000 read and 10,000 write operations | 12 months |
| 29 | Bot Service | Develop intelligent, enterprise-grade bots that scale on demand. | AI + machine learning | 10,000 premium channel messages and unlimited standard channel messages | Always |
| 30 | Cloud Shell | Manage Azure resources in a browser-based shell using popular command-line tools and programming languages. | Management and governance | 5 GB free storage in Azure Files for 12 months | Always |
| 31 | Cognitive Search | Include a cloud search service in your web and mobile application. | AI + machine learning | 50 MB storage for 10,000 hosted documents and 3 indexes per service | Always |
| 32 | Cognitive Service for Language | Extract information such as sentiment, key phrases, named entities and language from your text. | AI + machine learning | 5,000 text records | Always |
| 33 | Computer Vision | Extract rich information from images to categorise and process visual data. | AI + machine learning | 5,000 transactions for each S1, S2 and S3 tier | 12 months |
| 34 | Container Apps | Build and deploy modern apps and microservices using serverless containers. | Containers | 180,000 vCPU seconds, 360,000 GiB seconds, and 2 million requests | Always |
| 35 | Container Registry | Store and manage container images across all types of Azure deployments. | Containers | 1 Standard tier registry with 100 GB storage and 10 webhooks | 12 months |
| 36 | Content Moderator | Moderate text and images to provide a safer, more positive user experience. | AI + machine learning | 10,000 transactions S0 tier to moderate or review | 12 months |
| 37 | Cost Management | Monitor, allocate and optimise cloud costs with transparency, accuracy and efficiency. | Management and governance | Free | Always |
| 38 | Custom Vision | Easily customise computer vision models for your unique use case. | AI + machine learning | 10,000 predictions S0 tier, one training hour, two projects with 5,000 training images each | 12 months |
| 39 | Data Catalog | Get more value from your enterprise data assets. | Analytics | Unlimited users | Always |
| 40 | Data Factory | Compose and manage data services at scale. | Analytics | 5 low-frequency activities | Always |
| 41 | Database Migration Service | Simplify on-premises database migration to the cloud. | Databases | Free Standard Compute | Always |
| 42 | DevTest Labs | Enable fast, easy and lean dev-test environments. | Developer tools | Free | Always |
| 43 | Event Grid | Get reliable event delivery at massive scale. | Integration | 100,000 operations per month | Always |
| 44 | Face | Detect, identify, analyse, organise, and tag faces in images. | AI + machine learning | 30,000 transactions S0 tier | 12 months |
| 45 | Face | Detect, identify, analyse, organise, and tag faces in images. | AI + machine learning | 30,000 transactions of Free instance | Always |
| 46 | Form Recogniser | Automate the extraction of text, key/value pairs and tables from your documents. | AI + machine learning | 500 pages S0 tier | 12 months |
| 47 | Functions | Process events with a serverless code architecture. | Compute | 1 million requests | Always |
| 48 | Health Bot | Build and deploy AI-powered, compliant, conversational healthcare experiences at scale. | AI + machine learning | 3,000 messages (up to 10 messages per second) | Always |
| 49 | Health Data Services | Unify and manage health data and protected health information (PHI) in the cloud. | Integration | 1 GB structured and blob storage, 50,000 API requests, .5 GB transformation operations, 100,000 events | Always |
| 50 | Immersive Reader | Embed text reading and comprehension capabilities into applications. | AI + machine learning | 3 million characters | Always |
| 51 | IoT Edge | Extend cloud intelligence and analytics to IoT edge devices. | Internet of Things | Free, open-source edge runtime | Always |
| 52 | IoT Hub | Connect, monitor, and manage IoT assets with a scalable platform. | Internet of Things | 8,000 messages per day and .5 KB message metre size of Free edition | Always |
| 53 | Key Vault | Safeguard and maintain control of keys and other secrets. | Security | 10,000 transactions RSA 2048-bit keys or secret operations, Standard tier | 12 months |
| 54 | Language Understanding (LUIS) | Build natural language understanding into apps, bots and IoT devices. | AI + machine learning | 10,000 text request transactions S0 tier | 12 months |
| 55 | Load Balancer | Instantly add scale, availability, and network performance to your applications. | Networking | 750 hours, 15 GB of data processing, and up to five rules with Standard Load Balancer | 12 months |
| 56 | Logic Apps | Build automated integration solutions across clouds and on-premises systems. | Integration | 4,000 built-in actions with the Consumption plan | Always |
| 57 | Machine Learning | Develop and run R and Python models on your platform of choice. | AI + machine learning | Free | Always |
| 58 | Managed Disks | Get high performance, durable block storage for Azure Virtual Machines with simplified management. | Storage | 2 64 GB (P6) solid state drives SSD storage, plus 1 GB snapshot and 2 million I/O operations | 12 months |
| 59 | Media Services, Encoding feature | Index, package, protect and stream video and audio at scale. | Media | 20 output minutes Standard encoder video or audio source file encoding | 12 months |
| 60 | Media Services, Live and on-demand streaming | Deliver content to virtually any device at scale. | Media | 5 hours each of Standard Passthrough, Live Transcription, and Standard Streaming endpoint | 12 months |
| 61 | Metrics Advisor | Embed AI-powered monitoring features to proactively diagnose issues. | AI + machine learning | 25 time series | Always |
| 62 | Monitor | Gain full observability into your applications, infrastructure, and network. | Management and governance | See Azure Monitor pricing details for free amounts per feature | Always |
| 63 | Network Watcher | Monitor, diagnose and gain insights into your network performance and health. | Networking | 5 GB storage with 1,000 checks, 10 tests and 10 connection metrics | Always |
| 64 | Notification Hubs | Send push notifications to any platform from any back end. | Mobile | 1 million push notifications with free namespace | Always |
| 65 | Open Datasets | Accelerate machine learning with curated datasets. | AI + machine learning | Free (egress charges may apply) | Always |
| 66 | Personaliser | Deliver rich, personalised experiences for every user. | AI + machine learning | 50,000 transactions S0 tier | 12 months |
| 67 | Private Link | Privately access services on Azure, keeping your data on the Microsoft network. | Networking | Free | Always |
| 68 | Resource Manager | Simplify how you manage your app resources. | Management and governance | Free | Always |
| 69 | Security Center | Prevent, detect and respond to threats with increased visibility and control over the security of your Azure resources. | Security | Free policy assessment and recommendations | Always |
| 70 | Service Bus | Get reliable cloud messaging as a service with simple hybrid integration. | Integration | 750 hours and 13 million operations Standard tier base unit | 12 months |
| 71 | Service Fabric | Build and operate always-on, scalable, distributed apps. | Containers | Free | Always |
| 72 | Spatial Anchors | Build mixed reality apps that map, share and persist 3D content. | Mixed reality | 10,000 anchors queried | Always |
| 73 | Speaker Recognition | Accurately verify and identify speakers by their unique voice characteristics. | AI + machine learning | 10,000 transactions each of speaker verification, speaker identification, and voice storage | Always |
| 74 | Speech to Text | Transcribe spoken audio to text. | AI + machine learning | 5 audio hours each of Standard, Customised, and Conversation Transcription Multichannel Audio, 1 Customised endpoint hosting model | Always |
| 75 | Speech Translation | Integrate real-time speech translation into your app. | AI + machine learning | 5 audio hours Standard | Always |
| 76 | SQL Database | Create a SQL database that delivers intelligence built-in. | Databases | 250 GB S0 instance with 10 database transaction units | 12 months |
| 77 | SQL Server 2019 Developer Edition | Build, test and demonstrate applications in a non-production environment. | Developer tools | Free | Always |
| 78 | Static Web Apps | Streamline full-stack development from source code to global high availability. | Compute | 100 GB bandwidth per subscription, 2 customised domains and .5 GB storage per app | Always |
| 79 | Text to Speech | Build apps that convert text to lifelike speech. | AI + machine learning | 5 million characters Standard, 500,000 characters Neural, and hosting model | Always |
| 80 | Translator | Add real-time, multi-language text translation to your apps, websites and tools. | AI + machine learning | 2 million characters S0 tier | 12 months |
| 81 | Virtual Machines—Linux | Create Linux virtual machines with on-demand capacity in seconds. | Compute | 750 hours B1s burstable virtual machines | 12 months |
| 82 | Virtual Machines—Windows | Create Windows virtual machines with on-demand capacity in seconds. | Compute | 750 hours B1s burstable virtual machines | 12 months |
| 83 | Virtual Network | Provision private networks and connect to on-premises datacenters. | Networking | 50 virtual networks | Always |
| 84 | Visual Studio Code | Boost productivity with a powerful, lightweight code editor for cloud development. | Developer tools | Free | Always |
| 85 | VPN Gateway | Establish secure, cross-premises connectivity. | Networking | 750 hours VpnGw1 Gateway Type | 12 months |
| 86 | Web PubSub | Build real-time, two-way communication into your web and mobile apps. | Web | 20,000 messages per unit per day and 20 concurrent connections per unit (1 unit max) | Always |
Good man