Azure Savings Plan for Databases Now Available

Azure Savings Plan for Databases, introduced in Mar. 2026, may offer significant savings for organizations with predictable long-term consumption of many popular Azure database services. Unlike Azure Savings Plan for Compute, An Azure Savings Plan for Databases can only be purchased for a one-year term. The services covered by the Azure Savings Plan for Databases include the following: 

• Azure SQL Database
• Azure SQL Managed Instance
• Azure Database for PostgreSQL
• Azure Database for MySQL. 

The savings returned depends on the service that the savings plan applies to but ranges from as low as 12% off for Azure SQL Database up to 35% off for the serverless tier of Azure SQL Database. Although Azure Savings Plans for Databases can apply to paying for hourly licenses of SQL Server running within Azure VMs and SQL Server running on-premises via Azure Arc, there is no savings benefit for doing so. 

Azure savings plans, first introduced in 2022 with compute, allowed organizations to specify the amount of resources that will be consumed every hour over a one- or three-year period in a specified currency. (The amount per hour is based on the customer’s local currency for Enterprise Agreement [EA] customers, and U.S. dollars [USD] for Microsoft Customer Agreement [MCA] customers.) An Azure savings plan will always offer a lower percentage of savings than a reservation of the same term length. However, savings plans are more flexible and have less administrative overhead than other Azure reservations.

For practical recommendations on maximizing savings with reservations and savings plans, see the Directions report “How to Apply Azure Reservations and Savings Plans Effectively.”

More details about Savings Plans for Databases can be found on Microsoft’s Web site at “Announcing savings plan for databases” and “Savings plans.”