Billing FAQs

Create an Azure DevOps organization with most Azure subscription types in the Azure public cloud. Supported types include common paid subscriptions, such as pay-as-you-go, Cloud Solution Provider (CSP), and Enterprise Agreement subscriptions, and benefit-based subscriptions, such as Visual Studio, student, trial, and sponsorship subscriptions.

Azure DevOps supports only subscriptions in the Azure public cloud.

If the expected Azure subscription doesn't appear, your Azure portal authentication token might be stale. This issue is common when the subscription is in a different Microsoft Entra tenant. Refresh your sign-in to the target directory:

1. Sign in to the Azure portal.
2. Select Settings .
3. Select All Directories.
4. Find the directory that contains the subscription, and then select Switch.
5. When prompted, sign in again to complete the directory switch and refresh your token.

Return to Azure DevOps and try to create your organization or set up billing again.

If the subscription still doesn't appear, confirm that:

• You have the Contributor or Owner role for the Azure subscription.
• The subscription is in the Azure public cloud (Azure DevOps doesn't support other Azure clouds).
• The subscription isn't disabled or past due.

If you exceed the Azure DevOps free tier limits, your linked Azure subscription is billed for additional usage. Charges can apply when you:

• Add more than five Basic users.
• Assign Basic + Test Plans access.
• Purchase paid parallel jobs for Azure Pipelines.
• Use more than 2 GB of Azure Artifacts storage.
• Enable GitHub Advanced Security.

With user assignment-based billing, you pay for each user who has a paid access level. Charges stop when you remove the user or assign them a free access level.

By default, users added to projects receive free Stakeholder access. To give all new users Basic access instead, change your organization's default access level to Basic.

Use group rules to automate access-level assignments and reduce assignment errors.

For more information, see the Azure DevOps blog post A simpler way to buy Azure DevOps.

To give all new users Basic access, in Organization settings > Billing, change the default access level to Basic.

For more control over access-level assignments, set up group rules. Group rules take precedence over the default access level, which applies only to users who don't match any group rules. To apply group rules to existing users, remove their direct assignments.

If you directly assign Basic or Basic + Test Plans access to a user, billing starts when you make the assignment. If you use a group rule with a Microsoft Entra group, billing starts when the user signs in and receives an access level.

Within a few hours after a user is permanently deleted in Microsoft Entra ID, Azure DevOps removes the user and stops billing for their license. You might need to remove guest users manually from Azure DevOps. For more information, see Delete a user in Microsoft Entra ID.

Remove inactive users or assign them free Stakeholder access. Sort by Last Access to find inactive users. To determine when a user was added, export the user list and check the Date Added column.

Multi-organization billing/licensing is available. For more information, see multi-organization billing.

All Azure DevOps meters, including Basic, Basic + Test Plans, Microsoft-hosted CI/CD, self-hosted CI/CD, and Azure Artifacts, are prorated at 1/31 of a unit per day. Charges for a month with fewer than 31 days are therefore slightly lower than the published monthly rate.

If you set up billing before your trial expires, you don't get charged until the trial ends.

Those users assigned Basic + Test Plans lose access until you do set up billing.

Pay for Azure DevOps Server through Azure monthly and cancel at any time. You need:

• At least one Visual Studio subscription, which includes the server license. Alternatively, buy the server license through classic purchasing.
• A Client Access License (CAL) for each user accessing the server.
• Paid access to Test Plans for each user accessing Test Plans.

Buy Visual Studio subscriptions for users who need access to Visual Studio

Visual Studio Subscriptions include one server license and one user CAL. Visual Studio Enterprise and Visual Studio Test Professional also include access to Test Plans. Test Professional is available as a standard subscription, so you can't purchase it through Azure.

• Buy Visual Studio Enterprise (cloud subscription, monthly)
• Buy Visual Studio Professional (cloud subscription, monthly)
• Buy Visual Studio Test Professional (standard subscription, yearly)

Buy Azure DevOps Basic or Basic + Test Plans for anyone else

1. Create an Azure DevOps organization or select an existing organization.
2. Set up billing for the organization.
3. Add users who need access to Azure DevOps Server and assign them Basic or Basic + Test Plans.

Each organization includes five free Basic users and doesn't include a CAL. Add five non-users to the server to ensure you’re paying for everyone who needs a server CAL.

If you already use Azure, you might have an Azure support plan. Billing support is free.

If you need technical support with Azure DevOps and don't have an Azure support plan already, complete the following steps:

1. Create an Azure subscription.

   • Review your purchase options and decide whether to pay Azure directly, through a partner, or through a Microsoft representative.
   • To pay Azure directly, create a free Azure subscription and pay only for what you use.

2. Choose a support plan.

   • When you sign up for an Azure subscription, choose an Azure support plan.
   • All support plans include unlimited support requests for a fixed monthly price.
   • All paid plans, including the Developer plan, offer technical support for Azure DevOps.

3. Submit a support ticket.

   • Open a request in the Azure portal, or learn how to create an Azure support request.

No. You must purchase Azure DevOps through an Azure subscription. Think of it as your Azure billing account.

Yes. Use Azure DevOps up to the free tier limits for your organization, listed as follows:

• First five users free (Basic license)
• Azure Pipelines:
  • One Microsoft-hosted CI/CD (one concurrent job, up to 30 hours per month)
  • One self-hosted CI/CD concurrent job
• Azure Boards: Work item tracking and boards
• Azure Repos: Unlimited private Git repos
• Azure Artifacts: Two GiB free per organization

Buy Azure DevOps with most Azure subscriptions, including subscriptions connected to an Enterprise Agreement (EA), subscriptions set up by Cloud Solution Providers (CSPs) or Microsoft Open License resellers, and pay-as-you-go subscriptions.

The only notable exclusion is that you can't use the Azure free trial, Government, or National cloud subscriptions.

No, you can't use the monthly Azure credits from Visual Studio subscriptions to pay for Azure DevOps. To use the subscription for billing, remove its spending limit.

Try to add the subscription with the Azure Sponsorship Offer. If Azure DevOps accepts the subscription and the subscription has no spending limit, you can use it.

No. Use your Azure subscription only for Azure DevOps if you don't need other Azure services.

Multi-organization billing

Multi-organization billing lets you pay once per human user for organizations that use the same Azure subscription. It doesn't apply to service principals or managed identities, which are billed once for each organization they're added to.

No. With default assignment-based billing, each organization gets five free Basic users. With multi-organization billing, the Azure subscription gets five free Basic users shared among all linked organizations. Default billing is usually more cost-effective when most users access only one organization. Multi-organization billing might be more cost-effective when many users access multiple organizations.

No. Enable multi-organization billing once for the Azure subscription from any organization that uses the subscription for billing.

To turn on multi-organization billing, see how to pay for a user once across multiple organizations.

No. Multi-organization billing groups per-user charges at the Azure subscription level. Only organizations that share the same Azure subscription are billed together.

Yes.

• Organizations that use the same Azure subscription appear in a consistent order each month. The order isn't configurable.
• The five free Basic users apply to the first organization in the list. Any remaining free users carry over to the next organizations.
• A user is billed in the first organization where they're found and isn't billed again in another organization.
• Each organization with charges has a separate line item on the detailed Azure bill.

No. User assignments apply to each organization independently. Administrators can't tell whether a user they're adding already has an access level assigned in another organization.

They're billed for both Basic and Basic + Test Plans, which is a current limitation of multi-organization billing. Assign users with group rules, and set up the same group rules in each organization to ensure consistent access-level assignments.

Export a user list from Organization settings > Users for each organization. Remove duplicate sign-in addresses, such as contoso@contoso.com. The exported file lists sign-in addresses in the Username column.

Before Azure DevOps supported multi-organization billing, some customers received extra free user license grants. Enabling multi-organization billing removes these grants. If you have a free grant, contact Azure support to request that the grant be applied to your Azure subscription instead.

Understand your bill

Azure DevOps charges appear with other Azure charges on your Azure bill. Use Azure Cost Management to review your Azure DevOps charges.

1. In the Azure portal, select Subscriptions > Cost analysis.

   

1. In the Azure portal, select Subscriptions > Cost analysis.

2. Set the Service name filter to Azure DevOps.

   

Azure DevOps charges daily. Review daily costs to determine your current spending.

1. In the Azure portal, select Subscriptions > Cost analysis.

2. Select Daily costs.

   

Azure DevOps includes Azure Boards, Azure Repos, Azure Pipelines, Azure Artifacts, and Azure Test Plans. For pricing information, see Azure DevOps pricing. To review these services on your bill:

1. In the Azure portal, select Subscriptions > Cost analysis.

2. Group costs by Meter subcategory.

   

Separate charges for Azure DevOps organizations that use the same Azure subscription.

To make this split easier, Azure DevOps adds the "_organizationname_" tag and your organization name to the billing data when you set up billing. Use this tag to filter and group charges in Azure Cost Management. Azure DevOps began adding the tag in February 2020, so it isn't available for organizations where billing was configured before then.

1. In the Azure portal, select Subscriptions > Cost analysis.

   

   • Filter by the tag to review charges for one organization.

     

   • Group by the tag to stack charges by organization.

     

The Standard User meter corresponds to the Basic + Test Plans access level. The Basic User meter corresponds to the Basic access level.

Azure portal integration

Your Azure DevOps organization appears as a resource in the Azure portal, but you create and manage it outside the portal. The integration has the following limitations and workarounds.

No, you can't move the organization resource between Azure subscriptions in the Azure portal. Instead, change the subscription that your organization uses for billing. Azure DevOps creates a new resource group for your organization, and you can safely delete the old resource group.

If your organization resource doesn't appear after you set up billing, an Azure policy might require tags on new resource groups. Azure DevOps creates the resource group without tags, but billing works with or without the organization resource. To let Azure DevOps create the resource, temporarily disable the Azure tag policy before you set up billing. After Azure DevOps creates the resource, reenable the policy. For more information, see Assign policy definitions for tag compliance.

No. The organization resource is created in its own resource group with a predefined naming convention. To identify the Azure DevOps organization in a resource group, create an organization-name tag and add it as a column in the Resource groups view.

1. Create a tag named Organization name.
2. Tag each resource group with the name of the organization that it contains.
3. Select Manage view > Edit columns.
4. Change the selection from Properties to Tags.
5. Select the Organization name column.
6. Move it to Selected columns, and then select Apply.

The organization resource location might be incorrect after a change such as moving your organization to another geography. Check the geography in Azure DevOps, which is the source of truth. If it doesn't match the location in the Azure portal:

1. In Azure DevOps Billing settings, remove your billing subscription.
2. In the Azure portal, delete the Azure DevOps resource group if it still exists.
3. In Azure DevOps Billing settings, set up billing for your organization.

If you rename your organization after you set up billing, the organization resource retains the original name. To update the resource name:

1. In Azure DevOps Billing settings, remove your billing subscription.
2. In the Azure portal, delete the Azure DevOps resource group if it still exists.
3. In Azure DevOps Billing settings, set up billing for your organization.

You can't delete an Azure DevOps organization resource while it's in use for billing. In Azure DevOps, select Organization settings > Billing > Change billing and change to another Azure subscription. For more information, see Change your billing subscription.

If the user removing billing has permission on the Azure subscription, the resource in the Azure portal gets removed automatically. If the user removing billing in Azure DevOps doesn't have access to the Azure subscription, the organization resource persists and a user with access to the Azure subscription can safely remove it later without error.

Yes. In the Azure portal, select the Azure subscription linked to the Azure DevOps organization. Then select Settings > Resources.

Select the organization from the list, and then select Assign tags. The tags appear on your Azure bill with the charges for the organization.

Charges get calculated daily to the Azure subscription you selected when you set up billing. Charges accumulate and are included on the next Azure bill you receive.

Reductions and cancellations are effective immediately.

When the Azure subscription used for billing isn't active—for example, because you canceled the subscription or the credit card expired—your organization reverts to the free tier. To resume access to paid services, reactivate your subscription or change your organization's billing subscription.

If you have the Owner or Contributor role for the Azure subscription, in Azure DevOps, select Organization settings > Billing to review billing details. If you're the Azure account administrator, go to Cost Management + Billing.

Yes. You need the Owner or Contributor role for an Azure subscription created for your Enterprise Agreement.

To check your privileges, start to set up billing for your organization. The available Azure subscriptions are linked to your sign-in credentials. Subscription names often indicate the billing account type, such as pay-as-you-go or Enterprise Agreement.

You can also open the Azure Enterprise portal. Access to the portal indicates that you have the enterprise administrator or organization owner role. Only organization owners can set up new Azure billing in an Enterprise Agreement.

Ask your Enterprise Administrator to add you as an organization owner within the Azure Enterprise portal. If you can't find this person, submit a support ticket and request the contact information. You need your organization's name and your Enterprise Agreement enrollment number for the support ticket.

Yes. Use these prepaid funds for any Azure DevOps service. When you set up billing for your organization, choose an Azure subscription created for your Enterprise Agreement.

Someone already set up billing for your organization. Each organization can use only one Azure subscription for billing. You can't split across multiple Azure subscriptions.

Yes. Use the same Azure subscription to bill multiple organizations. You can't link a single organization to multiple Azure subscriptions.

Yes, if your reseller participates in the Cloud Solution Provider program.

Buy Azure DevOps now

• Azure DevOps Basic users
• Parallel jobs
• Azure Artifacts
• Azure Pipelines

Related content

• Azure DevOps pricing
• Azure DevOps billing support