Microsoft has announced that a FREE pricing tier of Azure Cosmos DB (NoSQL, cloud-scale database engine) is now available. This new free tier is offering the ability to create a new Azure Cosmos DB Account with 400 RU/s and 5 GB storage for free for the lifetime of the account. However, the catch is that you can only create a single free tier Cosmos DB Account per Azure Subscription, and you need to opt-in to the Free pricing when creating the account.

Cosmos DB: Free Pricing Tier

Azure Cosmos DB offers a highly scalable (cloud-scale) NoSQL database hosting within Microsoft Azure. While some of the more advanced features such as multi-region distribution, multi-master editing, and other distributed, big data features do warrant the cost associated. However, there has been pricing concerns among many of Microsofts customers looking at using Azure Cosmos DB within their solutions. Basically, the cost of Cosmos DB can be really high when comparing to hosting MongoDB or other NoSQL databases within a Virtual Machine either on-premises or in the Microsoft Azure cloud. The Microsoft Cosmos DB team has been making changes the last couple of years to address these pricing concerns, with this new Free pricing tier of Cosmos DB being among those changes.

Here are some notable details about the Azure Cosmos DB Free pricing tier that you’ll want to be aware of:

• Includes 400 RU/s and 5GB storage for the lifetime of the account
• Up to 25 containers can be created within the Free pricing tier account using a shared throughput database to share the 400 RU/s across those containers
• There is a limit of 5 shared throughput databases within a Cosmos DB Account on the Free pricing tier
• Only a single Free tier of Cosmos DB Account can be used per Azure Subscription
• Meant for Development and Testing purposes only

If you look into the documentation for the Azure Cosmos DB Free pricing tier, you will find further information about what the new pricing tier includes.