Azure Application Insights pricing and availability test cost
Application Insights bills uptime checks per run, and every location runs separately. Enter your URLs, locations and interval to see the monthly bill before it arrives.
1
URL
x 5
locations
x 8,760
runs a month
$21.90
a month
Availability test cost calculator
LiveRates read from Microsoft's Azure retail price list for East US in USD: $0.0005 per standard test execution, $2.30 per GB of Analytics log ingestion after 5 GB free, $0.10 per alert time series after 10 free. A 730-hour month, the basis Azure's own calculator uses. Pay-as-you-go list, before any enterprise agreement discount.
How much does Application Insights cost?
Azure Application Insights has no plan fee. You pay for the data you ingest ($2.30 per GB on pay-as-you-go in East US, after 5 GB free per billing account each month) and, for uptime checks, $0.0005 per standard availability test execution. Every location runs the test separately, so one URL checked every 5 minutes from the 5 locations Microsoft recommends is 43,800 executions in an average 730-hour month: $21.90 a month, or $262.80 a year, per URL. Twenty URLs set up that way cost $438 a month before any alerting or data charges.
Microsoft's pricing page renders its rates in the browser, which is why most write-ups quote the ingestion price and stop there. The availability test line is the one that surprises teams, because it has no free tier, it multiplies by location, and the default settings Microsoft recommends are the expensive ones. The numbers on this page come from Azure's published retail price list, so you can check every figure yourself.
The short version
- Standard availability test
- $0.0005 per execution, $0.50 per 1,000, no free tier
- One URL, 5 locations, every 5 minutes
- 43,800 runs, $21.90 a month, $262.80 a year
- Log ingestion (Analytics tier)
- $2.30 per GB after 5 GB free each month
- Classic URL ping tests
- No charge, deprecated, removed September 30, 2028
- Tests per resource
- Up to 100
How much do Application Insights availability tests cost per URL?
Each row is one URL. Executions are locations times runs per location in a 730-hour month. The bars are drawn to scale against the 16-location maximum, which is what makes the point: the recommended configuration sits a third of the way up, and it already costs more than a whole plan of 20 monitors on a flat-priced tool.
| Locations | Frequency | Executions a month | Per month | Per year | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Every 15 minutes | 2,920 | $1.46 | $17.52 |
|
| 1 | Every 10 minutes | 4,380 | $2.19 | $26.28 |
|
| 1 | Every 5 minutes | 8,760 | $4.38 | $52.56 |
|
| 3 | Every 5 minutes | 26,280 | $13.14 | $157.68 |
|
| 5 | Every 15 minutes | 14,600 | $7.30 | $87.60 |
|
| 5 | Every 10 minutes | 21,900 | $10.95 | $131.40 |
|
| 5, Microsoft default | Every 5 minutes | 43,800 | $21.90 | $262.80 |
|
| 16 | Every 5 minutes | 140,160 | $70.08 | $840.96 |
|
Microsoft describes the default as testing your site "on average every minute", because five locations each running every five minutes interleave. That is a fair description of the detection, and it is also exactly how the bill works: you are paying for one execution a minute, around the clock, per URL. Failed tests retry before a failure is reported; Microsoft does not state whether those retries are billed, so treat the figures above as the floor during an outage.
Application Insights cost for 20, 50 and 100 URLs
Per-execution pricing is fine for a single health endpoint. It gets expensive the moment uptime monitoring covers what customers actually use: the marketing site, the app, the login, the public API and the webhooks. The recommended column is 5 locations every 5 minutes; the thinnest column is one location every 15 minutes, which is the cheapest configuration Azure allows and gives up the multi-location confirmation Microsoft recommends.
| URLs | Azure, recommended | Azure, thinnest | UptimeHub |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $21.90 a month | $1.46 a month | Starter, $9 a month |
| 5 | $109.50 a month | $7.30 a month | Starter, $9 a month |
| 20 | $438.00 a month | $29.20 a month | Starter, $9 a month |
| 50 | $1,095.00 a month | $73.00 a month | Pro, $29 a month |
| 100 | $2,190.00 a month | $146.00 a month | Pro, $29 a month |
UptimeHub prices are billed yearly: Starter covers 20 monitors checked every minute, Pro 100 monitors every 30 seconds. Azure figures are test executions only, before alert rules, notifications and log ingestion.
The break-even
At the recommended setup, one Azure URL ($21.90) costs more than 20 UptimeHub monitors ($9). Even at the thinnest setup, 7 URLs ($10.22) pass the Starter price. Below that, Azure is cheaper, and if you only need to know whether one health endpoint answers, it is the sensible choice.
100 URLs for a year
$26,280
Azure recommended setup, against $348 on UptimeHub Pro
Standard tests, URL ping tests and multi-step tests compared
Application Insights has had three kinds of availability test. Only one of them is a long-term option, and it is the one that bills per run.
Standard test
$0.0005
per execution, per location
The current test type. Single request with a choice of HTTP verb, custom headers, a request body, and SSL certificate validity and expiry checks. Up to 16 locations. This is what everything is being migrated to.
Classic URL ping test
$0
deprecated, removed September 30, 2028
GET-only, no custom headers, no proactive SSL expiry check. Originally due to retire on September 30, 2026; Microsoft pushed that out 24 months. Existing tests are deleted on the new date, and their alert rules do not carry over.
Multi-step web test
$10
per test a month, still on the rate card
Recorded Visual Studio web tests. Microsoft lists them as deprecated, and the $10 meter remains on the Azure price list for tests that still exist. For scripted browser journeys Microsoft points to custom TrackAvailability tests instead.
Application Insights cost beyond the tests
An availability test that nobody hears about is a chart, not monitoring. These are the other Azure Monitor meters an uptime setup touches, all from the same price list.
| Meter | Free each month | Then |
|---|---|---|
| Analytics log ingestion | 5 GB per billing account | $2.30 per GB |
| Basic and Auxiliary log ingestion | None | $0.50 and $0.05 per GB |
| Log retention beyond the included period | 31 or 90 days, by data type | $0.10 per GB a month |
| Metric alert rule (availability alerts) | 10 time series | $0.10 per time series a month |
| Email notification | 1,000 | $2 per 100,000 |
| SMS to a US number | 100 | $0.00645 each |
| Voice call | 10 | $0.013 each |
| Webhook | 100,000 | $0.60 per million |
Two things follow. The alerting is cheap: a 20-URL setup with one alert time series per test pays $1 a month for the ten rules past the free allowance, and texts cost well under a cent. The data is where general telemetry bills grow, and it is also where Microsoft gives you the most control, through sampling, daily caps and the cheaper log tiers. The availability line is the opposite. It has no free tier, no sampling and no cheaper tier; the only way to lower it is to test less often or from fewer places. The full alerting side is broken down in Azure Monitor alerts pricing for downtime alerts.
When Application Insights availability tests are worth it, and when they are not
Keep them in Azure when
- You watch one to six endpoints and a single location is enough.
- You want availability results in the same workspace as your traces, so a failed test links straight to the failing request.
- The spend has to sit on the Azure invoice and draw down a Microsoft commitment.
Move external checks out when
- You monitor more than a handful of URLs from several regions.
- You need a public status page for customers; Application Insights does not include one.
- You want checks every minute or faster; standard tests run at most every 5 minutes per location.
- You want the uptime monitor to keep working when the Azure region, subscription or billing account it lives in has a problem.
The last point is easy to underrate. Monitoring from inside the platform you are monitoring shares its failure modes: a subscription disabled over a payment issue, a misconfigured policy or a regional control-plane incident can silence the tests at the moment you need them. An outside monitor is independent by construction. If you are comparing several vendors, the uptime monitoring pricing comparison lines them up by billing model, and Datadog Synthetics pricing covers the other big per-run meter.
Where these numbers come from, and what is deliberately not claimed
Every rate comes from Microsoft's public Azure retail price list for the East US region in US dollars: the Standard Web Test Execution meter, the Multi-step Web Test meter, the Analytics, Basic and Auxiliary log meters, and the alert and notification meters. Test behavior (locations, the five-location recommendation, the 100-test limit, retries and the ping test retirement date) comes from Microsoft's Application Insights availability documentation. Prices in other regions and under an enterprise agreement can differ. We have not assumed whether retries during an outage are billed, how large each availability record is in your workspace, or any discount you may have negotiated.
Application Insights pricing questions
How much does Application Insights cost?
Application Insights has no subscription fee. On a workspace-based resource you pay for ingested data, $2.30 per GB on pay-as-you-go in East US after the first 5 GB each month, plus $0.0005 for every standard availability test execution. A small app sending 10 GB a month with one URL tested from 5 locations every 5 minutes runs about $11.50 in data and $21.90 in tests.
Is Azure Application Insights free?
Partly. The first 5 GB of data ingested per billing account each month is free, and classic URL ping tests carry no charge until they are removed. Standard availability tests, which replace ping tests, have no free allowance at all: the first execution is billed at $0.0005, so any real uptime setup costs money from day one.
How much do Application Insights availability tests cost?
Standard availability tests cost $0.0005 per execution, and each test location is a separate execution. A test every 5 minutes from one location is 8,760 runs in a 730-hour month, $4.38. From Microsoft's recommended five locations it is 43,800 runs, $21.90 a month per URL. The cheapest possible setup, one location every 15 minutes, is $1.46.
Are URL ping tests free in Application Insights?
Yes, classic URL ping tests have no execution charge, but they are deprecated. Microsoft moved their retirement from September 30, 2026 to September 30, 2028, and on that date existing ping tests are removed from your resources. You cannot plan a monitoring budget around them; the replacement is the standard test, billed per execution.
When are URL ping tests retired in Application Insights?
On September 30, 2028. The original date was September 30, 2026, and Microsoft extended it by 24 months after customers asked for more migration time. Migrated standard tests start billing as soon as they are enabled, and alert rules are not migrated automatically, so both the new tests and their alerts have to be rebuilt.
How many locations should an availability test use?
Microsoft recommends a minimum of five test locations, so you can tell a real outage from a network problem at one location, and allows up to sixteen. Its suggested alert threshold is the number of locations minus two. Every added location multiplies the execution count, so five locations cost exactly five times one.
How many availability tests can I have in Application Insights?
Up to 100 availability tests per Application Insights resource. Teams with more endpoints split them across several resources. The limit is on tests, not on spend: 100 tests at the recommended five locations every 5 minutes would be 4,380,000 executions, or $2,190 a month.
Do availability test results count toward data ingestion?
Yes. On a workspace-based resource, ingestion and retention are billed by the Log Analytics workspace that stores the data, and availability results are stored there with the rest of your telemetry. Each result is a small record, so the charge is usually minor next to the executions, but it is not zero. Measure it with a query on billed size in your own workspace.
How do I reduce Application Insights costs?
For telemetry, turn on sampling, set a daily cap, and route verbose logs to the Basic ($0.50 per GB) or Auxiliary ($0.05 per GB) tiers instead of Analytics ($2.30). For uptime checks, the only levers are fewer locations, a longer interval or fewer URLs, and each one trades away detection speed. Moving external uptime checks to a flat per-monitor tool removes that trade-off.
Is Application Insights cheaper than a dedicated uptime monitoring tool?
For one or two URLs checked lightly, yes: a single location every 15 minutes is $1.46 a month. At Microsoft's recommended setup, no. One URL costs $21.90 a month, while UptimeHub Starter covers 20 monitors checked every minute from several regions for $9 a month billed yearly, with alerts and a status page included.
Twenty monitors for less than one Azure test
UptimeHub checks your sites, APIs and ports from outside your cloud, every minute on Starter and every 30 seconds on Pro and above, confirms a failure from a second region before it alerts anyone, watches SSL and domain expiry, and includes a branded status page on every plan. Priced per monitor, never per run or per location.
Related breakdowns
Azure Monitor alerts pricing
Alert rules, SMS, voice and webhooks, and what paging someone about a down site costs.
Synthetic monitoring pricing
Per-run meters across the major vendors, and how interval and locations drive them.
LogicMonitor pricing
Hybrid units, and why one URL checked every minute is five LM Uptime units.