Azure Web Hosting Pricing (2026): App Service, Static Web Apps and Real Bills

Hosting a website on Microsoft Azure costs $0 for a small static site on Static Web Apps' free plan, and about $30 a month for a small WordPress or PHP site on App Service with a managed MySQL database, at Azure's Central US list prices (read 18 and 26 Oct 2026). The web server itself starts at $13.14 a month on the Basic B1 plan; the database, storage and outbound traffic are separate meters that you add on top.

Azure's pricing pages list dozens of tiers, which is why most guides stop at 'it depends'. This one prices the handful a website actually uses, works out two complete monthly bills, and flags the free options that are meant for testing rather than a live site.

Azure App Service plans for a website

App Service is Azure's managed platform for web apps: you deploy code or a container and Azure runs the server, patches the operating system and handles scaling. You pay for the plan (the virtual machine size), not per app, so several small sites can share one plan. These are the Linux prices from Azure's App Service pricing page, pay as you go.

The Free plan is tempting, but Microsoft is explicit: it is for trials, experimentation and learning, carries no SLA, and production use is not supported. Basic is the realistic floor for a live site. Azure says Basic suits low-traffic workloads that do not need advanced autoscale or traffic management; if you need those, Premium v4 is the next step, and Azure's savings plans and reservations cut its price sharply if you commit for one or three years. New customers no longer see the older Standard plan; Azure keeps a separate page for existing Standard customers.

Two worked monthly bills

A WordPress or PHP site needs a database as well as the web plan. On Azure that is usually Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server, whose smallest burstable sizes cost $7.01 (B1s, 1 GiB) and $14.02 (B1ms, 2 GiB) a month in the same Central US region, with storage at $0.13 per GB-month. Outbound traffic from North America or Europe is free for the first 100 GB a month and then $0.087 per GB on Microsoft's premium network.

At 50 GB of traffic the bill is $29.76: $13.14 for the B1 plan, $14.02 for the B1ms database and $2.60 for 20 GB of database storage, with traffic inside the free 100 GB. At 500 GB the same site costs $64.56, because the 400 GB above the allowance adds $34.80. Traffic is the line that grows fastest, which is why the auto-scaling guide and a CDN matter more than a bigger plan for most growing sites.

Dropping to the B1s database (1 GiB) saves $7.01 a month and is enough for a small brochure site. Running two or three small sites on the same B1 plan also spreads the $13.14, since App Service bills the plan rather than each app. For the same exercise on Amazon, see our AWS website hosting cost breakdown.

Static sites: Static Web Apps

For a static site (HTML, a static site generator or a single-page app), Azure Static Web Apps is simpler and cheaper. The Free plan includes 100 GB of bandwidth per subscription, two custom domains per app, free SSL and 0.5 GB of storage per app. The Standard plan costs $9 per app per month and adds five custom domains per app, 2 GB of storage, an SLA and bandwidth overage at $0.20 per GB above the 100 GB included.

Read the overage rule before relying on the free plan for anything public. Azure's FAQ says a free-plan site that exceeds the 100 GB quota will not be served, while Standard apps are billed for the excess. Microsoft also describes the free tier as intended for hobby and personal use.

Domains, SSL and the free credit

App Service can sell you the domain too: an App Service Domain costs $11.99 a year with privacy protection included. For SSL, App Service Managed Certificates are free but still in public preview, issue standard (not wildcard) certificates and do not support naked domains, so a bare example.com needs another route. Azure's own paid certificates cost $69.99 a year (standard) or $299.99 (wildcard), and custom-domain SSL works on Basic and above.

New Azure accounts get a $200 credit to use within 30 days, plus some services free for 12 months. Students can instead use Azure for Students, which gives $100 of credit for 12 months with no card. Either is enough to test the bills above for free, but the 30-day clock on the general credit is short.

Is Azure the right host for your site?

Azure makes sense if your business already runs on Microsoft, if you want App Service's managed deployment and scaling, or if you are building an app rather than a brochure site. For a simple WordPress site, a managed cloud host is usually cheaper once you count your own time, because on App Service you still look after WordPress itself: core and plugin updates, and checking that your backups actually restore. Our guide to cloud hosting for WordPress covers the trade-off, and the best cloud hosting ranking lists managed options.

If you would rather have a simpler, flat-priced cloud server, compare DigitalOcean's plans before committing to Azure's metered bill.

Edge cases

• Prices are Azure's pay-as-you-go list rates in USD; regions and currencies change them, and Azure calls its page figures estimates, not quotes.
• Traffic between Azure regions is charged separately (from $0.02 per GB within North America), which matters if your database sits in a different region from the web app.
• Database backup storage is free up to the size of your provisioned storage; longer retention can push it above that and add cost.
• The Free App Service plan meters 60 CPU minutes a day per app, so a site with steady traffic can hit the limit early in the day.