With many of us taking time off work over the holiday season, it’s a great time to have a play around with Azure and get your stockings dirty. What’s better is you can do this completely free if you know where to look.
In this post I’ll list out 12 completely free Azure resources that you can include in your next project.
1. Azure SQL
One of the more exciting features to reach public preview recently is the free tier for Azure SQL Database. This allows us to run an SQL Database for free with a limited quota, which is perfect for development, testing or even as the backend to a small application.
The free tier currently includes 100,000 vCore seconds of compute per month, 32GB of data storage and 32GB of backups per month for the lifetime of the Subscription.
Try for free (preview) – Azure SQL Database | Microsoft Learn
2. Web Apps
If you’re looking to deploy a web app quickly and don’t want to worry about infrastructure costs, Azure offers a completely free tier of Web Apps called F1.
This allows you to deploy small web applications, with up to 1 GB of storage and 60 minutes of compute per day. The free tier is perfect for testing, personal projects, or creating a holiday-themed web app.
You can also easily integrate it with GitHub for continuous deployments or use the built-in scaling features if you plan to scale up later on.
App Service Pricing | Microsoft Azure
3. Function Apps
For lightweight, event-driven applications primarily. Microsoft offers a free consumption plan with 1 million executions per month and 400,000 GB-s of resource consumption.
Azure Functions are a fantastic option if you’re running small jobs or automated tasks. Since you’re only charged for the actual time your functions run, the free tier is often sufficient for small projects.
Whether you’re automating Christmas well-wishes or spending time automating holiday pranks like the Grinch, Azure Functions offers flexibility without the cost.
Note: This isn’t actually a free tier, but has a free ‘allowance’. Be sure to carefully track your consumption or set budgets to avoid being charged.
Pricing – Functions | Microsoft Azure
4. Static Web Apps – Free Hosting
Static Web Apps offer free hosting for websites built with modern front-end frameworks like Angular, React, and Vue.
This includes features such as custom domains, SSL certificates, and authentication integration. You can host your holiday-themed portfolio, a festive blog, or any other static content for free.
The free tier also integrates with GitHub Actions, allowing for continuous deployment straight from your GitHub repository.
What’s even better is that I’ve recently covered exactly how to do this from scratch!
5. Automation Accounts
Azure Automation is a service that helps you automate frequent, time-consuming, and error-prone tasks in your cloud environment. With Automation Accounts, you can manage not only Azure resources but also on-premises and third-party systems.
They come with a free tier that includes 500 minutes of process automation per month, which is perfect for small projects, testing, or basic automation scenarios.
Azure Automation overview | Microsoft Learn
6. Azure AI Services
There’s a whole suite of free tools found within AI Services for those who want to have a play with AI.
AI Services includes up to 3 million characters for the AI Immersive Reader, which allows you to embed text reading and comprehension capabilities into applications.
There’s also the AI Language resource, which allows for up to 5000 free records and which can be used to extract information such as sentiment, key phrases, named entities, and language from text.
What are Azure AI services? – Azure AI services | Microsoft Learn
7. Azure Cosmos DB
With Cosmos DB’s free tier, you get a one-time allowance of 1,000 request units per second (RU/s) and 25 GB of storage, making it an excellent choice for building small to medium-sized applications at no cost.
Similar to SQL, it’s brilliant if you’re creating a holiday application, real-time analytics, or working on a small-scale IoT solution. This is ideal for developers who want to experiment with distributed databases or scale their holiday projects effortlessly.
Azure Cosmos DB lifetime free tier | Microsoft Learn
8. Azure DevOps
With all these projects on the go, there’s never been a better time to get your codebases organised and version-controlled. Luckily Microsoft also offer up to 5 users with unlimited Git repos. Allowing you to upskill on your DevOps skills.
Sign up for Azure DevOps – Azure DevOps Services | Microsoft Learn
9. Azure Maps
Azure Maps is a portfolio of geospatial services that include service APIs for Maps, Search, Routing, Traffic and Time Zones. Great for integrating location information into your Azure solutions.
Microsoft provide between 1000 to 5000 transactions for free depending on the specific feature you’d like to use. The full list is below –
Pricing – Azure Maps | Microsoft Azure
10. Azure Policy
Although not the most exciting project to pick up during the holidays, Azure Policy is completely free at any level and allows for some powerful auditing and enforcement of company or personal policies.
Azure Policy allows you to evaluate resources for compliance at no cost. You can use built-in policies to check for best practices, such as ensuring encryption or proper network security settings, keeping your cloud secure during holiday downtime
Overview of Azure Policy – Azure Policy | Microsoft Learn
11. Logic Apps
With Logic Apps, you get 4,000 free actions per month, allowing you to automate workflows without cost. This is perfect for integrating services and automating routine tasks.
For example, you could automate sending out holiday emails, syncing data between apps like Office 365 and Salesforce, or even creating event-driven workflows such as automated customer notifications. This is all made especially easy with over 1,000 prebuilt connectors to popular services.
Logic Apps make it easy to connect different services without writing complex code, saving you time and effort.
Overview – Azure Logic Apps | Microsoft Learn
12. Web PubSub
Azure Web PubSub offers 20,000 messages per unit per day and up to 20 concurrent connections per month for free, enabling real-time communication between your applications and users.
You can use it to power live chat features, real-time dashboards, multiplayer game experiences, or live streaming updates, all without upfront costs. This is especially useful for building interactive, event-driven holiday applications like live event trackers or interactive online experiences during the festive season.
What is Azure Web PubSub service? | Microsoft Learn
Further Info
All of these services are a great place to start if you just want to have a play about with something new, but there are a ton of brilliant services which are completely free that I’ve not covered, and even more if you’re able to set up a new Azure tenant in which case you get many additional services for free for the first 12 months.
If you’re keen to see the full list, be sure to check it out at the link below.
And finally, happy holidays!
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