Why are the daily costs for my Sql database increasing with little activity?

Question

Why are the daily costs for my Sql database increasing with little activity?

Jeff Harris 20

I have a database that is less than 4G and has very little activity.

The activity is from myself and 1 or 2 other users for sporadic intervals that rarely last more then a few minutes.

Activity is thru a small Azure app service web application and SSMS.

I changed the database from S0 DTU model (which was underperforming) to Hyperscale - serverless yesterday.

Today, the daily cost is already rising and the activity has just been myself for a very few minutes.

What would cause the daily costs to be increasing already?

How can I see the details of how daily costs are determined? Such as actual resource usage?

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Answer 1

Erland Sommarskog 121.4K MVP Volunteer Moderator

Unless the pricing is different for Hyperscale Serverless (which I have never used myself), the activity has nothing to do with it. What matter is whether the database is loaded on to a server or not.

To get benefit from Serverless, you should stop the database when you don't use it, or have it set to autopause. Here you have to be a little careful so that you don't have something that pings the database regularly.

Note that once pause, it takes some time for the database to come back, since "pause" means that the database is rolled out to a disk somewhere without any connection to SQL Server.

Jeff Harris 20 Reputation points

2025-06-05T00:40:57.2933333+00:00

I really appreciate your response. It clears up a lot of what I have seen happening.

I thought that daily costs were based on activity/utilization. I guess I was wrong.

The Hyperscale Serverless does NOT have Auto Pause feature. So, the database is online always - which I do not need in my situation.

I have scaled to General Purpose Serverless with Auto Pause set for 15 minutes.

My app/database is only used by 1 or 2 people at most and only for a few minutes occasionally.

I am hopeful that the new config works better.
Erland Sommarskog 121.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2025-06-05T20:53:38.3366667+00:00

I converted my comment to an Answer in case you want to accept it.
Jeff Harris 20 Reputation points

2025-06-05T21:20:15.01+00:00

Have been using Azure SQL Database for over a year.

But I've learned a lot about configuration in the past week or so.

Appreciate the help.

Answer 2

Andreas Baumgarten 123.1K MVP Volunteer Moderator

Hi @Jeff Harris ,

to get a better understanding what might causing the costs you can use the Cost Analysis in the Azure Portal.

The view CostByResource gives a more detailed overview about costs by resource:

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(If the reply was helpful please don't forget to upvote and/or accept as answer, thank you)

Regards

Andreas Baumgarten

Jeff Harris 20 Reputation points

2025-06-04T14:46:06.66+00:00

The Cost By Resource is helpful, but it still doesn't provide details as to the daily/activity costs for a resource.

How are daily costs calculated by activity in the database?

How does a database with very little activity produce increasing daily costs?

If there is activity for a database then I would like to see the details.

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Why are the daily costs for my Sql database increasing with little activity?

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