Microsoft Azure Free Account (Compute)

Free allowance: USD 200 of credit for 30 days plus 750 hours each of B1s, B2pts v2 and B2ats v2 burstable VMs for 12 months
Verdict: triala time-boxed or one-time trial, not a recurring allowance
Cost: free tier
Identity: cardcard required, phone required
Binding limit: retention-clampedVM hours are free for 12 months, then billed; the USD 200 credit lasts 30 days
Evidence: documented3 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
Freshness: stale on 2026-11-22checked 2026-10-22 (live); stale on 2026-11-22

Free tier	USD 200 of credit for 30 days plus 750 hours each of B1s, B2pts v2 and B2ats v2 burstable VMs for 12 months unit hours; metered on wall-clock; the VM hours are 12 months for new customers; the credit is 30 days
Price	none stated
Limits	retention-clamped (binding) VM hours are free for 12 months, then billed; the USD 200 credit lasts 30 days source request-rate 750 hours each of B1s, B2pts v2 and B2ats v2: one of each fits 24/7 for a month source a USD 1 authorisation hold is placed at signup and removed
Binding	retention-clamped the 12-month window ends the 750 hours, so the clock is the constraint
Identity	card a card and a phone number are required for identity verification, quoted
Egress	not part of the free-account terms read; standard egress applies past any allowance
Retention	12 months for the VM hours; the USD 200 credit expires after 30 days (365 days)
Interface	ssh the Azure portal, CLI and ARM API; SSH keys set at VM creation
Tooling	az CLI, the ARM and Bicep templates, the SDKs
Composes with	12 months of a burstable VM and then a pay-as-you-go bill
Reliability	no reliability event recorded
Notes	Twelve months is longer than AWS's six and it is still a trial. The 65 or more always-free services on the same page are the durable ones, and the VM hours are not among them.
Parsed numbers	has-free-tier 1 retention-clamped 200 credit request-rate 750 hours

Evidence 3

date	source	what it proved
2026-10-22	azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/	750 hours each of B1s, B2pts v2 (Arm) and B2ats v2 (AMD) burstable VMs for 12 months
2026-10-22	azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/	a USD 200 credit usable for 30 days; a USD 1 temporary authorisation hold at signup
2026-10-22	azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/	the phone number and card are used for identity verification to validate that account holders are real people

More fields 4

billing model	allocated
keep rate	`{"value": 1.0,"basis": "a running VM bills its hours against the 750","source": "https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/"}`
network out	`{"allow_outbound": true,"allow_inbound_listen": true,"ports": "all through a network security group","static_ip": true,"ipv6": true,"per_session_bytes": null}`
free tier kind	one-time-credit

Unknown values 2