Azure prices rise in Europe: how to keep costs in check

Microsoft is raising prices for a large share of its virtual servers and storage in Azure. From 1 February 2027, several European regions will cost 8 to 17 per cent more, Computable reports. In West Europe, the Amsterdam region where many Dutch organisations run their workloads, the increase is 9 per cent. That may sound modest, but for an organisation with a handful of servers in Azure it adds up quickly over a year.

What is changing

The increase applies to seven regions. North Europe (Dublin) stands out at 17 per cent, France follows at 11 per cent, and West Europe and Norway go up by 9 per cent. Microsoft does not list which services become more expensive, but which ones are excluded. That exclusion list mainly covers older generations of virtual machines (v1 and v2) and part of the newest v7 series, along with a few storage services such as Queues, Tables and standard Block Blob storage.

Managed disks, which sit underneath almost every virtual server, are not on the list. Licensing specialist Erik Hollander therefore advises in Computable to assume that anything not explicitly excluded will cost more. The article points to sharply higher memory chip prices and tight capacity in North and West Europe as the background.

Why it is easy to miss

According to Hollander, Microsoft is less open about price changes than it used to be. The official notice may be limited to a Service Health message in the Azure portal, which only people with the right permissions can see. If your environment is managed by a third party, or nobody in your organisation checks that portal regularly, you will only notice the increase on the invoice.

What you can do now

February 2027 may seem far off, but next year's budgets are being set now. A few practical steps:

• Map what you run. Which virtual machines, in which region and from which series? That tells you which part falls under the increase.
• Work out the impact. Add 9 per cent to your current Azure costs in West Europe, and more for services in Dublin or France. Include that figure in your 2027 budget.
• Clean up. Servers that are always on but do little, old snapshots and unused disks already cost money. Every euro saved there will weigh 9 per cent more next year.
• Right-size. A server that consistently uses a quarter of its capacity can often drop a size. Moving to a different series can also help.
• Make sure someone sees the notices. Decide who receives Service Health messages, so the next change does not slip through unnoticed.

What Qteco does for clients

For clients who buy Azure through us or have us manage it, we will set out over the coming weeks which components fall under the increase and what that means per month. Where possible, we will propose a smaller or different server size, or remove unused resources. We will also look at whether a workload would be better placed elsewhere, inside Azure or outside it. That way February holds no surprises.

Would you like to know what the increase means for your environment? Book a conversation with one of our engineers and we will work it out together.

Sources

1. Azure wordt duurder in Europa: tot 17 procent erbij — Computable (2026-10-15)
2. Microsoft increase Azure prices from February 2027 — Cloudy with a chance of Licensing (2026-10-13)