Use Azure SQL Database for free

Tech Knowledge
Published on September 28, 2025 Last updated on September 30, 2025

Table of Contents

Introduction

A free tier has been quietly added to Azure SQL Database. 1

Deploy Azure SQL Database for free
Try Azure SQL Database at no cost with our free tier offer. Each Azure subscription allows you to create up to 10 General Purpose databases. For each database, you receive a monthly allowance of 100,000 vCore seconds of compute, 32 GB of data storage, and 32 GB of backup storage, free for the lifetime of your subscription.

"100,000 vCore seconds" is approximately 27 hours in a simple calculation. If you use a serverless configuration, the database does not consume core hours while paused, making it ideal for trials, technical verification, and learning. 32 GB of storage is also ample for prototype development.

Let's quickly create a SQL Database on the free tier.

Create a SQL Database

1Start SQL database creation

From the Azure portal, click Azure SQL > Azure SQL Database's Try for free (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Try Azure SQL Database for freeFigure 1. Try Azure SQL Database for free

Figure 2. Free plan messageFigure 2. Free plan message

Free database offer applied! You got first 100,000 vCore seconds and 32GB of data & 32GB of backup storage free per month for lifetime of the subscription.

This message indicates that you have selected the free tier (Figure 2).

Click "New" for the server (Figure 3). If a SQL Database server already exists, you can choose an existing server. In that case, proceed to step 3.

Figure 3. Click "New"Figure 3. Click "New"

2Create a server

Let's briefly organize the differences between "SQL Database" and "SQL (Database) Server".

Item SQL Database SQL Server (Logical Server)
Resource Unit A single database A unit that groups multiple databases
Billed Billed (vCore, storage, etc.) Not billed
Managed Scaling, backup, etc. Authentication, firewall

The image is that databases are under a server. This is similar to the relationship between an on-premise database server and databases. Authentication is set per server, so different authentication methods cannot be used for each database. Also, firewall configuration is per server.

Figure 4. Create Database ServerFigure 4. Create Database Server

  • Server name: Required
  • Location (Region): Required
  • Authentication method: Select any authentication method.
    Here, "SQL authentication" is selected.

Click the "OK" button to complete server creation. You will automatically return to the database creation screen.

3Create a database

Figure 5. Execute database creationFigure 5. Execute database creation

Enter the required fields (Figure 5).

  • Resource group: Required
  • Database name: Required
  • Server: The server created in step 2, or an existing SQL server
  • Behavior when free offer limit reached
    Select the behavior when the free offer limit is reached.
    • Auto-pause the database until next month: Automatically pause
    • Continue using database for additional charges: Continue operation (will incur charges)

The Behavior when free offer limit reached setting can be changed after database creation, so you may create it with Auto-pause for now. Click "Review + create" to confirm database creation.

4Database creation completed

When you check the deployed database, "Free" is displayed in the pricing plan (Figure 6).

Figure 6.Figure 6.

5Allow public access

This step is not mandatory, but let's configure it so you can connect from your local PC. On the server, navigate to Settings > Networking > Public access tab and select "Selected networks" (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Selected networksFigure 7. Selected networks

Click "+ Add client IPv4 address (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)" to add a row, then click "Save" (Figure 8).

Figure 8. Add client IPv4 addressFigure 8. Add client IPv4 address

The IP address added here will be your current global IP address. While this configures access only from your global IP address, most people do not have a fixed IP address. If your IP address changes, you will need to perform "Add client IPv4 address" again (you'll notice immediately due to connection errors). If you add a new IP address, it's a good idea to delete the old one.

Let's try connecting from a local PC. Here, we will use SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio) (Figure 9).

Figure 9. Enter connection informationFigure 9. Enter connection information

Enter the connection information as follows:

  • Server Name: Server name created in step 2 + .database.windows.net
  • User Name: User name registered in step 2
  • Password: Password registered in step 2
  • Database Name: Database name created in step 3

Click the "Connect" button to connect. Since only the database was created, there are no tables (Figure 10).

Figure 10. Connection successfulFigure 10. Connection successful

Access SQL Database from a Program

For C#

Let's create a table in the SQL Database we created using the "Code-first with minimal configuration" procedure from Entity Framework Core with Code-First. The connection string can be copied from SQL Database > Settings > Connection strings > ADO.NET (SQL authentication).

To make it more interesting than just creating a table, I added code to register a record (lines 3 to 5).

using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore;

var context = new AppDbContext();
context.Hoge.Add(new Hoge { Name = "hoge" });
context.SaveChanges();

public class AppDbContext : DbContext
{
    public DbSet<Hoge> Hoge { get; set; }

    protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder options)
        => options.UseSqlServer("<connection string>");
}

public record Hoge
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

After Add-Migration > Update-Database > program execution, data was registered (Figure 11).

Figure 11. Hoge databaseFigure 11. Hoge database

For Python

Install pymssql to connect to SQL Server.

pip install pymssql

import pymssql

conn = pymssql.connect(
    server='<server name>.database.windows.net',
    user='<username>',
    password='<password>',
    database='<database name>'
)

cursor = conn.cursor()
cursor.execute('SELECT * FROM Hoge')
for row in cursor:
    print(row)

conn.close()

The registered data was displayed.

> python hoge.py
(1, 'hoge')

References

Deploy Azure SQL Database for free

Footnotes

  1. It seems to have been added in February 2025.
    Generally Available: Azure SQL Database free offer↩

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