Storage and Compute Cost Ranges for Azure SQL PaaS

The Azure SQL PaaS services, Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance, incur separate charges for storage-related components, including primary storage, backup, and long-term retentions, and for compute, which is based on the number of vCores. 

Customers select the amount of storage, which is capacity, rather than consumption based, since the services charge for the chosen amount of storage whether or not it is used. Backups and long-term retention are consumption based; customers are charged by the amount of backup and retention required for the data stored.

Customers select backup and long-term retention redundancy levels, and the chosen level can affect the costs by a factor of more than three.

(The maximum amounts shown for backup and long-term retention reflect a purchase of storage for those items equivalent to the maximum storage capacity that can be purchased. The amount charged could be higher than these maximums for customers that choose frequent backups and long-term retention snapshots.)