Microsoft Azure
🇺🇸 US Provider🇮🇳 4 India Regions🏢 Enterprise LeaderThe enterprise cloud - 70+ global regions, 4 Indian data centres (Pune, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad incoming), H100 GPU, Azure OpenAI, Microsoft 365 integration, and the deepest enterprise Windows and SAP support of any cloud.
About Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure, launched in February 2010 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, is the world's second-largest cloud platform with ~21% global market share and $75 billion+ in annual revenue (FY2025). It is the cloud of choice for enterprises - 95% of Fortune 500 companies use Azure, and it serves 350,000+ organizations worldwide through 70+ global regions and 400+ data centres. No other cloud provider has more regions globally.
For Indian customers, Azure has the deepest India presence of any hyperscaler: four regions in India - Central India (Pune), South India (Chennai), West India (Mumbai), all launched in 2015 - plus India South Central (Hyderabad), expected in 2026 as part of Microsoft's $3 billion India AI infrastructure investment. Pune has full Availability Zone support (3 AZs), making it Azure's primary India region for high-availability production workloads.
Azure's defining advantage over AWS and GCP is its enterprise ecosystem integration. For organizations already using Microsoft 365, Teams, Active Directory, SQL Server, Windows Server, and Power BI, Azure is the natural cloud - workloads migrate with minimal friction, and Azure Hybrid Benefit lets enterprises bring existing Windows and SQL Server licences to the cloud, reducing VM costs by up to 85% compared to fully licensed rates.
On AI, Azure has placed the biggest bet: a $13 billion strategic partnership with OpenAI gives Azure customers exclusive access to GPT-4, GPT-4o, o3, and other OpenAI models via Azure OpenAI Service - integrated with Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and the rest of the Microsoft stack. Azure now has 60,000+ AI customers and 11,000+ AI models available through Azure AI Foundry. H100 GPU (ND H100 v5) is available in several regions including India (Central India / Pune).
What's good about Microsoft Azure
- 4 India regions - Pune (3 AZs), Chennai, Mumbai, and Hyderabad (2026); deepest Indian footprint of any hyperscaler
- H100 GPU in India - ND H100 v5 series available in Central India (Pune); enterprise-grade AI training locally
- Azure OpenAI Service - exclusive access to GPT-4, GPT-4o, o3, DALL-E 3, Whisper; pay-per-token, no GPU management
- Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) - bring existing Windows Server and SQL Server licences; reduce VM costs by up to 85%
- Reserved Instances - up to 72% savings over Pay-As-You-Go for 1-3 year commitments; combine with AHB for maximum savings
- Spot VMs - up to 90% off PAYG for interruptible workloads; eviction with 30-second notice but deep discounts for batch/ML training
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) - fully managed Kubernetes with free control plane; GPU node pools supported in India regions
- Native Microsoft ecosystem - Microsoft 365, Teams, Active Directory, Entra ID, Power Platform integrate natively; essential for enterprise IT
- $3 billion India AI investment through 2026 - new Hyderabad region, expanded capacity, local AI accelerators
- 70+ global regions, 400+ data centres - more regions than any other cloud provider; ideal for global enterprises
- Azure Arc - manage on-premises, multi-cloud, and edge infrastructure from a single Azure control plane
- $200 free trial credit for 30 days + 12-month free services - B1s VM, 5GB Blob Storage, 250GB SQL Database, and more
- Industry-leading compliance - 100+ compliance certifications including ISO, SOC, PCI, HIPAA, GDPR, FedRAMP; broadest coverage globally
Watch-outs for Indian teams
- USD billing - no INR pricing, no UPI/NEFT; GST requires separate Azure India billing entity setup; same forex risk as AWS and GCP
- Not MeitY empanelled - ineligible for Indian government and PSU procurement without separate assessment
- Complex VM naming convention - Standard_D4s_v5, Standard_NC40ads_H100_v5 etc. are notoriously cryptic; steep learning curve vs GCP or DO
- Egress charges - outbound data to internet charged at $0.087/GB after 5 GB/month free; adds up significantly for data-heavy workloads
- GPU pricing premium - Azure H100 8-node cluster costs ~₹38.6L/month; Indian providers (E2E, Cyfuture) offer H100 at 10-15× lower cost
- Stopped VM still bills for storage - deallocated VMs don't bill for compute, but managed disk and OS disk keep billing ($2-50/mo each)
- Support tiers are expensive - Developer support $29/mo; Standard $100/mo; Professional Direct $1,000/mo; needed for production SLAs
- India region service gaps - not all Azure services are available in all India regions; some services lag Central India (Pune) by months or years
VM Pricing - India Regions
All prices in USD per month, Linux, Pay-As-You-Go. India regions (Central, South, West) are typically priced similarly to each other and ~10-15% above East US rates. Managed disk billed separately. Per-second billing, 1-minute minimum.
Full price, no commitment. Per-second billing (1-min min). Best for unpredictable workloads, dev/test, and short-lived VMs.
Up to 72% off for 1-3 year commitments. Combine with Azure Hybrid Benefit for up to 85% savings on Windows workloads.
Up to 90% off PAYG. Eviction with 30s notice. Best for ML training with checkpointing, batch jobs, and stateless workloads.
B-series - Burstable (dev, small apps, low-traffic sites) · India Linux PAYG
| VM Size | vCPU | RAM | PAYG / hr | ~Monthly | 1-yr RI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B1s | 1 | 1 GB | $0.0114 | ~$8 | ~$5 |
| B2s | 2 | 4 GB | $0.0416 | ~$30 | ~$19 |
| B4ms | 4 | 16 GB | $0.166 | ~$120 | ~$75 |
D-series - General Purpose (production workloads) · India Linux PAYG
| VM Size | vCPU | RAM | PAYG / hr | ~Monthly | 1-yr RI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D2s v3 | 2 | 8 GB | $0.096 | ~$69 | ~$44 |
| D4s v3 | 4 | 16 GB | $0.192 | ~$138 | ~$88 |
| D8s v5 | 8 | 32 GB | $0.384 | ~$277 | ~$176 |
GPU VMs (N-series) - On-Demand
| VM Size | GPU | Count | VRAM | Region | PAYG / hr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ⚡ GPUND H100 v5 (8×) | H100 SXM | 8× | 640 GB | 🇮🇳 Central India | ~$98 |
| ⚡ GPUNC40ads H100 v5 (1×) | H100 NVL | 1× | 94 GB | US / EU | $13.35 |
| ⚡ GPUNC24ads A100 v4 (1×) | A100 (80 GB) | 1× | 80 GB | Multiple | $7.35 |
| GPUNC4as T4 v3 (1×) | Tesla T4 | 1× | 16 GB | 🇮🇳 Available | $1.20 |
| GPUNC6s v3 (1×) | Tesla V100 | 1× | 16 GB | US / EU | $3.06 |
Azure Hybrid Benefit is one of the most impactful cost levers available. Organisations migrating Windows Server and SQL Server workloads from on-premises should always evaluate AHB before committing to PAYG rates.
Key Managed Services - Starting Prices
| Service | Starting price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Azure Blob Storage | $0.018/GB-mo | LRS hot tier in India. 5 GB free. Egress $0.087/GB after 5 GB/mo. |
| Azure SQL Database | ~$15/mo | Serverless General Purpose, 1 vCore. Auto-pause, scale to zero. Free 250GB backup. |
| AKS (Kubernetes) | Free control plane | Pay only for agent node VMs. Uptime SLA for control plane: $0.10/cluster/hr. |
| Azure OpenAI (GPT-4o) | Pay per token | $2.50/M input, $10/M output tokens. Exclusive OpenAI model access via Azure. |
| Azure Machine Learning | ~$46/mo | Compute instance (DS11_v2). End-to-end ML platform; pay for underlying compute. |
| Azure Functions (Serverless) | Free tier | 1M requests/mo + 400K GB-sec free forever. Pay-as-you-go beyond. |
| Azure CDN | $0.081/GB | India egress from Azure CDN. First 10 GB/mo free. Akamai/Verizon options available. |
Key Services
India Regions
Azure has 4 India regions - more than any other hyperscaler. Central India (Pune) is the primary region with full Availability Zone support.
| Region Name | City | Code | AZs | GPU / Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central India | Pune (Primary) | centralindia | 3 ✓ | ✓ H100, T4, full services |
| South India | Chennai | southindia | 1 | Select services, T4 GPU |
| West India | Mumbai | westindia | 1 | Select services (paired with South India) |
| India South Central | Hyderabad (2026) | indiasouthcentral | 1 | 🚧 Coming 2026 - part of $3B India AI push |
Beyond India: Azure operates in Singapore, Japan East/West, South Korea, Southeast Asia, and Australia across APAC. Full region list at azure.microsoft.com/en-us/explore/global-infrastructure.
Alternatives to Microsoft Azure
Compare Azure against other providers popular with Indian teams:
Market leader with 200+ services and two India regions. Deeper managed service catalogue; better for cloud-native teams. H100 in Mumbai. No OpenAI exclusivity but has Bedrock with Claude.
AI-first cloud with BigQuery, Vertex AI, TPUs, and GKE. Better for data-heavy and Kubernetes workloads. SUDs applied automatically; $300 free trial. Two India regions (Mumbai, Delhi).
NSE-listed Indian cloud with H200/H100 from ₹49/hr spot - ~5-10× cheaper than Azure on GPU compute. INR billing, Indian data sovereignty, no forex risk.
MeitY-empanelled Indian cloud with GPU from ₹39/hr and full AI stack. Better for Indian government workloads, DPDP compliance, and INR billing.
Blackstone-backed Indian neocloud with managed AI platform (MLOps, Inference, RAG). Indian alternative to Azure Machine Learning with sovereign compute. H200 from $3.4/hr.
Developer cloud with Bangalore DC and Droplets from $4/mo. Much simpler than Azure, no Windows lock-in, predictable pricing. Best for startups avoiding enterprise cloud complexity.
$200 credit for 30 days plus 12 months of free services (B1s VM, 5 GB Blob, 250 GB SQL, and more). No credit card required to start.
Start Azure Free →Azure bills in USD and is not MeitY-empanelled. GPU in India costs ~5-10× more than Indian providers. Choose Azure when you need Azure OpenAI, Microsoft 365 integration, or Hybrid Benefit for existing Windows/SQL licences.
See how Azure stacks up against AWS, GCP, and Indian cloud providers.
Open Compare Tool →Common questions
Microsoft Azure GPU FAQs
What GPUs does Microsoft Azure offer?
Azure offers GPU VM families using NVIDIA H100, H200, A100, RTX PRO 6000, A10, T4, GB200 and V100 accelerators, along with AMD MI300X systems. Availability varies by VM series and region.
How much does an Azure GPU VM cost?
Pricing varies by VM size and region. Example pay-as-you-go rates range from about $0.53 per hour for a one-GPU T4 VM to more than $100 per hour for large H200 or GB200 multi-GPU systems.
Does Azure offer Spot GPU VMs?
Azure Spot Virtual Machines can use unused capacity at a discount, but support depends on the VM size and region. Spot VMs can be evicted with short notice and do not provide an availability SLA.
Can Azure GPU VMs be reserved?
Azure offers one-year and three-year Reserved VM Instances for eligible VM sizes and subscriptions. Eligibility and savings vary by region, VM series, agreement and market.
Which Azure GPU VM is best for LLM training?
ND-series GB200, H200 and H100 systems target large distributed training. A100 and single-GPU H100 VMs may be more practical for smaller training, fine-tuning and applied-AI workloads.
Does Azure offer GPU VMs in India?
Azure lists regions in Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai and Mumbai. However, each GPU VM family has its own regional availability, so confirm the exact SKU before deployment.
Are the prices on this page guaranteed?
No. Azure prices vary by region, currency, operating system, subscription and agreement. Use the official Azure Pricing Calculator to confirm the final estimate.