Forum Discussion
Advocate IIIFabric billing
Hey team
i had a question on fabric capacity billing when you are on payg
my understanding was if an operation consumes say 10 CUs you are billed 10x (cu per second rate).
Now I hear the billing is per minute;Is the billing per minute or is there a minimum charge of a minute ?
I am not very clear on this
Please clarify
Hi msprog ,
Fabric billing for Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) capacities is based on runtime, not actual usage. As long as the capacity is running, you are billed, regardless of how much of the allocated compute you consume. The only way to stop charges is to pause the capacity.
When you purchase a PAYG capacity, you’re provisioned a fixed number of Capacity Units (CUs), and billing occurs per minute based on the CU allocation, not usage. This means even if your workload only uses a small fraction of the capacity, you're still billed for the full provisioned amount as long as it's active.
For reference, here is a reddit thread with a similar inquiry from another user. In this thread, this concept is confirmed by a Microsoft Employee: https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftFabric/comments/1f9o6nu/fabric_capacity_usage_costs_if_i_dont_pause_it/If this helped, please mark it as the solution so others can benefit too. And if you found it useful, kudos are always appreciated.
Thanks,Samson
6 Replies
- SamsonTruong
Super User
Hi msprog ,
Fabric billing for Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) capacities is based on runtime, not actual usage. As long as the capacity is running, you are billed, regardless of how much of the allocated compute you consume. The only way to stop charges is to pause the capacity.
When you purchase a PAYG capacity, you’re provisioned a fixed number of Capacity Units (CUs), and billing occurs per minute based on the CU allocation, not usage. This means even if your workload only uses a small fraction of the capacity, you're still billed for the full provisioned amount as long as it's active.
For reference, here is a reddit thread with a similar inquiry from another user. In this thread, this concept is confirmed by a Microsoft Employee: https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftFabric/comments/1f9o6nu/fabric_capacity_usage_costs_if_i_dont_pause_it/If this helped, please mark it as the solution so others can benefit too. And if you found it useful, kudos are always appreciated.
Thanks,Samson
msprogThanks SamsonTruong I was thinking it's based on usage. Thanks for the clarification so if we are paying regardless of usage, just wondering what's the point of per minute billing? If we. have F2 , we have to pay for the F2 allocation. Why then there is per minute billing? Thanks
- SamsonTruong
Hi msprog ,
With Fabric capacity, you have two options: Reserved or Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG). The per-minute billing applies specifically to PAYG capacities.
The key benefit of PAYG is flexibility, you can pause the capacity from the Azure Portal when it's not in use. While the capacity is paused, you are not billed. This is where per-minute billing matters: you're only charged for the minutes the capacity is active, rather than a flat daily or monthly rate.
So even though you're billed for the full allocation (e.g., F2), you're only charged for the time it’s running, not 24/7, which can lead to savings if you're able to pause during idle periods. Hope this adds some clarity!
- suparnababu8
Hi msprog
yes your understanding is correct. If your billing is Payasyougo (PAYG) method, your billing will be done based on Capacity units (CUs) consumed also ther is a minimum charge for one minute capacity usage.
If your taks has performed less than one minute, it will charge for 1 minute and after crossing 1 minute it will be charged for per second based on your actual CUs consumption. Read more about Fabric pricing here Microsoft Fabric - Pricing | Microsoft Azure
If you want to estimate your please do it here Fabric Capacity Estimator | Microsoft Fabric
Thank you!
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Proud to be a Super User! - msprog
Thanks SamsonTruong for your help on this. Looking at the snip that suparnababu8 has posted,
What does one-minute minimum mean here ? any thoughts,
v-achippaCommunity Support
Hi msprog,
Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Fabric Community.
Here the billing is calculated per minute, not per second. There is a minimum charge of 1 minute even if your workload runs for just a few seconds and you will be billed for one full minute. After that the charges are still calculated in full minute increments not per second.
For example if your capacity runs for 10 seconds it will charge for 1 minute.
This model is flexible to pause the capacity when not in use, which saves cost by only paying for active time per minute, not for the entire day or month.
Please refer below document:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/microsoft-fabric/
If this post helps, then please consider Accepting as solution to help the other members find it more quickly, don't forget to give a "Kudos" – I’d truly appreciate it!
Thanks and regards,
Anjan Kumar Chippa
