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Pricing & Cost Management
Understanding Foundry Costs
There is no single "Foundry" line item on your Azure bill. Instead, charges appear for individual resources:
Cost Components
| Resource | Billing Model | Typical Cost Range |
|---|---|---|
| Model Inference | Per 1K tokens (input/output) | $0.15–$60 per 1M tokens |
| Fine-Tuning | Per training hour + hosting | $3–$100/hour |
| Azure AI Search | Per unit per hour | $0.10–$10/hour per unit |
| Storage | Per GB/month | $0.02/GB |
| Managed Compute | Per VM hour | $1–$40/hour |
Cost Management Best Practices
- Set budget alerts in Azure Cost Management to catch runaway costs early
- Use tags on deployments to track costs per team/project
- Start with Standard tier - only upgrade to PTU when you have steady demand
- Use batch deployments for async workloads (50% cheaper)
- Monitor token usage via Application Insights dashboards
- Use project-level cost attribution - LLM token consumption tracking is now available per-project for granular cost attribution across teams
💡 Key Insight: Use the Azure Pricing Calculator to estimate costs. Search for each service individually (Azure OpenAI, AI Search, etc.) since there's no single "Foundry" calculator entry.
FOUNDRY VERIFICATION
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How does Azure AI Foundry appear on your Azure bill?
As a single 'Foundry' line item
As individual charges for each underlying Azure resource (OpenAI, Search, Storage, etc.)
It doesn't appear - it's free
As a monthly subscription