Your team moves to Azure DevOps. Everything looks fine. Until that Azure invoice hits you with a number you did not expect. Most teams don’t understand how Azure DevOps pricing works, and that confusion is costing them hundreds or even thousands every month. The billing model looks simple on the surface. But under the hood? It’s filled with sneaky limits, silent overages, and default settings that favor Microsoft, not you.
Let’s break down where the real costs hide — and how to avoid getting burned.
But I Thought Azure DevOps Was Free
That’s the trap. Microsoft offers a generous free tier… but with some important asterisks.
Here’s what’s “free” (on paper):
- 1 free Microsoft-hosted CI/CD pipeline (1,800 minutes/month)
- Unlimited free self-hosted agents
- 5 users with Basic access (free for public projects)
- Unlimited public projects
What don’t they highlight?
- Extra parallel pipelines = $$$
- Going over 1,800 minutes/month = $$$
- Each additional user after 5 = $$$
- Test Plans, Artifacts, Release Pipelines = $$$
- Storage overages = $$$
Most teams blow past the free tier by month two without even realizing it.
Hidden Cost #1: CI/CD Pipeline Minutes
The 1,800 free minutes? That’s per organization, not per user. Got 2 teams pushing multiple builds a day? You’ll burn through that in a week. Once you cross that line, you’re billed per pipeline minute, and Microsoft-hosted agents aren’t cheap:
~$0.008/minute = ~$5/hour = $120/month for a modest usage pattern.
Multiply that by multiple branches, multiple developers, and parallel jobs… And suddenly your “free” DevOps tool is eating your lunch.
Hidden Cost #2: Paid Users You Didn’t Know Were Paid
After the first 5 “Basic” users, each additional user costs $6 per month (or more, depending on your plan).
- Azure automatically counts any user with access as “active.”
- If you add users via Azure AD or GitHub sync — even for one-off access — they can silently get counted.
- If they use advanced features like Test Plans, they get bumped to a $52/month tier.
Teams with rotating contractors or synced directories often end up with dozens of charged accounts they didn’t even know about. Check your “User Billing” tab — you might be paying for ghosts.
Hidden Cost #3: Artifacts + Storage Creep
Azure Artifacts is great — until you realize:
- You get just 2 GB free per organization.
- After that? $2 per GB per month
If you’re caching builds, storing packages, or letting NuGet/npm artifacts accumulate over time, that adds up fast.
The same goes for:
- Pipeline cache
- Logs
- Build outputs
- Container registry
Azure doesn’t aggressively prune any of this. You have to manually set retention policies, or it just grows.
Hidden Cost #4: Parallel Jobs and “Host Starvation”
Want to run tests on multiple branches at once?
- Azure gives 1 hosted parallel job for free.
- Need more? That’s $40–$60+ per extra job per month.
Even with one parallel job, host allocation is shared across customers. You might wait 2–5 minutes just to spin up a job, depending on the region load. That’s not just annoying — it’s productivity loss. Which becomes salary burn.
What You Should Do Right Now
1. Audit Your Active Users Monthly
- Go to Organization Settings → Users.
- Remove or downgrade inactive users.
- Watch for accounts that have “Stakeholder” access (free!).
2. Enforce Pipeline Limits and Retention Policies
- Set a hard limit on builds per day.
- Limit build retention to 7–14 days.
- Clean out unused pipeline caches and logs.
3. Move to Self-Hosted Agents (If You Can)
- Self-hosted = unlimited minutes
- Ideal for consistent hardware, internal tools, or large teams
- Yes, it’s more setup — but it can save $1,000+/mo in large orgs.
4. Use YAML Pipelines Over Classic UI Pipelines
- Classic pipelines are harder to version, debug, and optimize.
- YAML pipelines are scriptable and easier to control for cost-aware builds.
5. Monitor Artifact and File Storage Weekly
- Set alerts for S3-style storage bloat.
- Archive or prune old packages regularly.
Azure DevOps Is Powerful — But It’s Not Cheap By Accident
Microsoft’s pricing model is built for gradual overage creep.
- It lures you in with “free forever.”
- You scale naturally.
And one day, your finance team sends a Slack message like, “Why is our Azure DevOps spend $3,200 this month?”
No comments:
Post a Comment