[Premium] How to compare baseline prices of EP1 plan

[ishepherd]

The only way I found to get a price is: pick a region, select in tab 1 of "New Function App" wizard, go to tab 2, look at "Spec Picker". Repeat for the next region, and the next, ...

This method showed me that East US 2 is 3% cheaper than West US 2.

Is East US 2 the cheapest or are there cheaper?

Can you publish a list to compare easily, like https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/app-service/windows/ is published for normal app service plans?

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FYI there seems to be trouble in North Central US. The spec picker finds no price there. On my first few attempts of plan creation, I got this error written up by @jeffhollan - even though it was a new resource group.

[ishepherd]

TL;DR please add "ElasticPremium" SKUs to https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/app-service/windows/ - Or tell me if they are already published somewhere else. Thanks

[alexkarcher-msft]

This is the page with Functions Premium pricing, and there is a region picker at the top https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/functions/

You do need to multiply by the GB and CPU count for your desired SKU here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-premium-plan#available-instance-skus

US East 2 and US West 2 are the least expensive regions. If you're feeling charitable, France South is the most expensive region 😄

[ishepherd]

Thanks Alex

Source	West US 2	East US 2
Premium pricing page (1 vCPU & 3.5 GB)	$145.927 + consumption	$145.927 + consumption
Spec picker estimate	$74.03 baseline	$71.69 baseline
Azure Cost Analysis data	(~2.50 per day) => ~$76	not tried

I am curious why East US 2 is estimated as less than West US 2. Oh well, it's not so different.

I need to know: has GA pricing kicked in yet?

• the pricing page says

GA pricing effective January 1, 2020

• but the price shown in Cost Analysis is still (Jan 6) only ~half what the pricing page quotes

[alexkarcher-msft]

Hello,

The pricing page is the ultimate source of truth for our billing rate.

We are aware that the spec picker is still estimating preview prices and are updating it in this sprint to show correct baselines.

As for cost analysis, I'm not sure where they get their info, but it looks like it is just a historical record of what you have paid over the last billing cycle. I would expect that over the next 30 days your estimate would creep closer and closer to the GA rate.

[ishepherd]

Thanks @alexkarcher-msft, but this was the wrong answer. Our premium plan app already looked expensive to justify and now you have to go and double it 😭

Thanks for your help though 🤣

[onionhammer]

EP1 plans seem to run about 2x higher cost than advertised; which is at 157/mo (~ $5/day) for EP1 in Central US, but about $9-$10/day in practice.. even with only a couple thousand invocations per day, and since the metrics lack any information about the scale it's impossible to tell which functions are causing the scale to spike up, or even if things like Cosmos changefeed triggers vs service bus triggers are causing scale-outs.

If you ask support they will just point you to the scale settings, which obviously exists but it doesnt tell you how many instances are running over time.

Also, if you want your functions to talk to Cosmos or SQL, using consumption plan isnt a real option, since you need private endpoint or VNET on your database in order to avoid vulnerabilities like ChaosDB. For us ChaosDB changed the game, now instead of functions being essentially free (consumption), we pay $300/month for an EP1.

[petro2050]

Premium instances are too expensive, IMO. The performance and reliability of consumption instances is subpar, so we're forced to shell out for the privilege of running a dedicated function instance.