Spending Limit or Maximum Cost CAP for Azure

As a customer, I really care about Spending Limit or Spending CAP feature of Azure.

How does Azure prevent some evil attack to my Azure sites causing charge a large billing of Credit Card?

For example, it should automatically shut off or temporary disable my site when a certain dollar amount has been reached.

Is this feature in the RoadMap of Azure?

Or is there anyway to control my maximum Spending Limit of Azure?

Thanks.

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Mike shared this idea · Oct 7, 2012 · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →

planned ·

AdminAzure Billing Team (Admin, Microsoft Azure) responded · Sep 9, 2015

Quick update,

We have been considering all of the risks and investigating the steps required to ensure we implement this feature with high positive impact and low to no negative impact.

After this investigation we have decided we will enable Pay-As-You-Go customers the option to configure a spending limit on a Pay-As-You-Go subscription, with appropriate safeguards and measures to prevent both service abuse and production service failure.

We have not yet finished determining the details of what this feature will look like, nor do we have a timeline for release, but we have heard your voices and have added this feature to our backlog.

Thanks for your continued feedback,

-Adam (Azure Billing Team)

Show previous admin responses (4)

under review ·

AdminAzure Billing Team (Admin, Microsoft Azure) responded · Jun 23, 2015

Hi there,

My sincere apologies for how long this post has gone unanswered. The Azure billing team has undergone a transformation to ship features faster and improve our responsiveness to our customers. The new team is excited to re-engage with the community and deliver the features you need for a consistent and reliable cloud billing experience.

We are considering the addition of this feature. We do know that many customers are more concerned with availability than cost caps. That being said, we are exploring options through which a configurable cap feature might be integrated. Unfortunately we do not currently have a planned time-frame for this feature.

The good news is that we are integrating billing alerts and notifications into our platform. In using billing alerts, you will receive emails upon reaching certain usage thresholds in a given month.

To access this preview feature, navigate to the Azure accounts portal (account.windowsazure.com) and when viewing your subscriptions there should be a tab entitled “preview features” and you can sign up for billing alerts at the bottom of that page.

We understand that many customers have security concerns, and don’t want to be billed for the activity of fraudsters. We at Microsoft take security very seriously, and work tirelessly to prevent attacks like that. In the event of a breach, we will work with you to solve the issue and ensure appropriate billing occurs.

If there are any other concerns, please continue to express them here. The Azure billing team and I will do our best to let these voices be heard in the rest of our organization.

Update:

Thanks for the continued interest and feedback. I recognize that Billing Alerts don’t address every concern on this post, but we are considering various solutions to address these issues. I will continue to post updates here.

@Chaitanya – We do have offerings for Educational institutions through the Microsoft Educator Grant Program, which implement a form of this feature.

@A Ra – In EA, if you have set up departments, you can access that tab in the portal, select “Edit”, and add a spending quota within that area. You will then receive emails at 25% usage, 50% usage, 75% usage and 90% usage.

Thanks again for engaging!

-Adam (Azure Billing Team)

under review ·

AdminAzure Billing Team (Admin, Microsoft Azure) responded · Jun 23, 2015

Update:

@Chaitanya – We do have offerings for Educational institutions through the Microsoft Educator Grant Program, which implement a form of this feature.

Thanks again for engaging!

-Adam (Azure Billing Team)

under review ·

AdminAzure Billing Team (Admin, Microsoft Azure) responded · Jun 11, 2015

Hi there,

The good news is that we are integrating billing alerts and notifications into our platform. In using billing alerts, you will receive emails upon reaching certain usage thresholds in a given month.

If there are any other concerns, please continue to express them here. The Azure billing team and I will do our best to let these voices be heard in the rest of our organization.

-Adam (Azure Billing Team)

under review ·

Asim Mitra responded · Dec 9, 2013

Thanks for your feedback. We completely understand the importance of the ask and that it is very important for us to deliver this feature as soon as possible. We are looking into this.

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Anonymous commented · May 25, 2017 6:17 AM · Flag as inappropriate

Without a spending cap, the risk of pay-as-you-go is too high. I would prefer to set and adjust some limit, even if it's quite high at times, to suspend operations temporarily in cases of unanticipated (potentially malicious) surges in activity.
commander_257 commented · May 11, 2017 12:31 AM · Flag as inappropriate

This has to be on a subscription level in enterprise agreements as well.
klaus commented · April 26, 2017 5:44 AM · Flag as inappropriate

Too scared of being attacked and go bankrupt
Jason Milczek commented · April 24, 2017 6:24 AM · Flag as inappropriate

Seriously, why is this still incomplete???
Anonymous commented · April 6, 2017 11:40 PM · Flag as inappropriate

Well, found the alerts menu (at least alerts if not hard limits) but for Pay-as-you-go it's not enabled to set an alert... well Microsoft doesn't care for the smaller customers :( , and it's ok, the only thing we can do is use another cloud, luckily there are plenty: AWS, GCE, Softlayer, Rackspace, and what not....
Anonymous commented · April 6, 2017 11:23 PM · Flag as inappropriate

Hi, does it exist now? (2017 =) ) I didn't find any billing alarm or limit options in menu...
Thanks.
Martin Bérubé commented · April 5, 2017 9:06 PM · Flag as inappropriate

This is a real problem for small businesses and individuals. Until this is fixed, I'll have to go for another hosting company.
Jon Reade commented · March 29, 2017 2:55 AM · Flag as inappropriate

It's THE main reason I won't use or recommend Azure.
Please address this, it's a basic business issue that's losing you potential customers.
Anup Mistry commented · March 23, 2017 6:43 AM · Flag as inappropriate

This feature exists in MSDN/Microsoft partner dev accounts and also Azure Trial Credits. Maybe do two levels of caps. Like two limits, one to halt service and second allows to bring service online, so VMs don't get entirely lost/de-allocated. Example: Halt service spending at $100 and keep $25 to allow snoozed service.
Craig Main commented · March 23, 2017 12:03 AM · Flag as inappropriate

come on - this is pathetic, you planned the most voted feature on the entire platform two years ago? No feedback added since then... with four times the votes of the most asked for general features?
Anonymous commented · March 21, 2017 10:05 PM · Flag as inappropriate

I just converted my free trial to a pay-as-you-go subscription and tried to set a spending limit so that I don't get robbed by unexpected traffic, only to find out that this feature is not available for this subscription type. I don't quite understand why it's possible for certain subscriptions, but not for pay-as-you-go. Sounds like there are political motives at work, not technical ones.
I'll be looking elsewhere.
JL commented · March 7, 2017 11:14 AM · Flag as inappropriate

This is insane. So Microsoft has just decided that they can bankrupt their customers for the malicious actions of others? Wow. Azure just lost all credibility. I can't go bankrupt just because they refuse to implement this obviously necessary feature.
Hrvoje Kusulja commented · January 15, 2017 5:09 AM · Flag as inappropriate

I am also interested in opt-in for CSP Azure subscription spending limit. To have hard / financial limit . After reaching the limit to automatically guarantee azure subscription is suspended / no further costs for end-customer should be generated.
Johan Eliasson commented · November 26, 2016 1:44 AM · Flag as inappropriate

Peter, you can be notified. Opt-in for Email Alerts on your Account page.
Peter commented · November 26, 2016 1:17 AM · Flag as inappropriate

Uaaa, I have subscribed to the service recently and was almost shocked that such a basic feature is not available out of the box! Or at least an option to send a notification when some amount is reached. Probably will switch to some other vendor then.
Kyro commented · November 16, 2016 12:28 PM · Flag as inappropriate

Over 4 years and still not implemented. Google and AWS have spending limits. Microsoft implement other "features" such as graphs and "better styling" but not one of the most requested features ever that has actual merits.
Anonymous commented · October 28, 2016 3:44 AM · Flag as inappropriate

Dear,

I would really want to have this feature as well. I don't see a problem when this is an opt-in feature and this cap is not enabled by default?

It's the user that gets to decide whether or not to activate this and he must accept the consequences of his decision. At least he will not be ruined when something goes wrong.

Best regards,

Stijn Claeys
G commented · October 21, 2016 7:31 PM · Flag as inappropriate

@nick Hard limits are a must. My clients feel like they are at risk of spending nearly infinite money due to attack, misconfiguration, or other circumstances. At the level of an enthusiast, even worrying about a few $100 can be enough to trade Azure for Iaas alternatives that provide pre-paid billing.

Why should Microsoft care if production services get shut down due a configuration setting made by Azure users?
Rob Al commented · October 13, 2016 8:24 AM · Flag as inappropriate

@nick there are some really difficult options here. I would guess that one way is to allow spending limits per resource group as well as overall per subscription. Users can select to implement at either level, and at either level to be a "hard" stop or just a warning. So if i have something that absolutely has to keep running, i'd put it in an RG with a soft limit. if it's some development tool i'd put it in an RG with a hard limit etc.
Peter commented · September 25, 2016 3:42 AM · Flag as inappropriate

Dear Team,
Please look at the number of upvotes and the number of comments. I think it's now pretty obvious that it is a must-have feature. I am not even sure if I understand why you are still hesitating 4 years after this was suggested. I mean what is the reason?

I met so many clients who are not willing to implement Azure because it's pretty much an "open wallet". They are simple too scared of being attacked and go bankrupt (and to be frank, I understand them)

Can you please confirm that you are reading these comments in 2016 and please confirm that you are working on this feature? Can you please at least give us an approximate timeframe when it will be ready?

Thanks!