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A billing benefit is any offer that provides customers with financial advantages by changing the effective cost associated with service usage or purchases. These offers can include discounts, credits, and cost-optimizing commitments. Billing benefits can help customers reduce spending, plan capacity confidently, and align purchasing with business needs.
Azure models billing benefits as Azure Resource Manager (ARM) resources, enabling consistent lifecycle management across the Azure portal, APIs, and SDKs.
Types of billing benefits
Billing benefits typically fall into one of the following four categories.
Commitments
Commitments are long-term agreements where customers commit to spending a certain amount or using certain resource types in exchange for lower prices or optimized billing.
Examples include:
Credits
Credits act like a monetary balance applied toward applicable Azure usage.
Examples include:
- Promotional credits
- Azure Credit Offers (ACOs)
Discounts
Discounts lower the purchase price or usage charges of eligible resources.
Free Azure services
Free services provide a set monthly amount to help you explore and test solutions at no cost.
For more information, see the Azure page about choosing an account.
Management of billing benefits in Azure
You can view and manage billing benefits through multiple supported interfaces.
Azure portal
You can view and manage billing benefits, including credits and discounts, in the Azure portal. The portal provides dedicated experiences within Cost Management + Billing, along with dedicated Credits, Discounts, and Azure Consumption Commitments service views. The portal views summarize benefit metadata, balance (for credits), and usage impact.
Azure Resource Manager
Most billing benefit types are implemented as Resource Manager resource types under the Microsoft.BillingBenefits provider.
Examples include:
Microsoft.BillingBenefits/discountsMicrosoft.BillingBenefits/creditsMicrosoft.BillingBenefits/savingsPlanOrders/savingsPlans
REST APIs
Developers can programmatically interact with billing benefits by using the Azure Billing Benefits REST API. It provides operations for managing benefits such as savings plans and discount-related resources.
SDKs and CLI
Azure SDKs (.NET, Python, JavaScript) and the Azure CLI (az billingbenefits) support reading or managing billing benefits programmatically.
See the Azure PowerShell billing benefits module.