Azure Synapse Analytics

Pricing model: Pay-as-you-go (hourly compute + storage) with options for reserved capacity (1-year, 3-year) and pre-purchased Synapse Commit Units (SCUs).

Free tier/trial:

• Data Pipeline operations: first 1,000,000 operations per month free (operation-rate beyond that shown but numeric per-50k price not displayed on public page).
• Azure free account: $200 credit for 30 days (general Azure trial; can be used with Synapse).

Key components & notes (official site shows many component prices only after region/currency/filters; several per-unit prices are not shown on the public page snapshot):

• Synapse Commit Units (pre-purchase plan – examples shown on vendor page):

  • Tier 1 — 5,000 SCUs — 6% discount — $4,700.
  • Tier 2 — 10,000 SCUs — 8% discount — $9,200.
  • Tier 3 — 24,000 SCUs — 11% discount — $21,360.
  • Tier 4 — 60,000 SCUs — 16% discount — $50,400.
  • Tier 5 — 150,000 SCUs — 22% discount — $117,000.
  • Tier 6 — 360,000 SCUs — 28% discount — $259,200.

• Data Integration (Pipelines / Integration Runtime / Data Flows):

  • Pricing basis: charged by activity run and Integration Runtime hours; Data Flow charged per vCore-hour with minimum cluster size (8 vCores). Public per-vCore-hour prices not shown on the page snapshot.
  • Operation charges: first 1,000,000 operations/month free; thereafter the page shows charge per 50,000 operations but the numeric value is not displayed without selecting region/currency.

• Serverless SQL pool:

  • Pricing basis: charged per TB of data processed (minimum 10 MB per query, rounded to nearest 1 MB). The public page shows the line “Serverless $- per TB of data processed” (numeric price not shown in the default view).

• Dedicated SQL pool (DWU-based):

  • Pricing basis: billed by DWU (DW100c through DW30000c) with Pay-as-you-go and 1-year/3-year reserved options; compute billed hourly. The public page shows the DWU tiers but numeric hourly/monthly prices are not shown in the snapshot without filters.
  • Reserved capacity: vendor states you can purchase reserved capacity (savings up to ~65% vs pay-as-you-go for Dedicated SQL pools) and the SCU pre-purchase option can be used across Synapse products (storage excluded).

• Apache Spark pools:

  • Pricing basis: billed per vCore-hour (memory-optimized and GPU-accelerated); numeric per-vCore-hour prices not shown on the page snapshot.

• Azure Synapse Data Explorer:

  • Pricing basis: compute charged per vCore-hour; storage charged per TB/month (ZRS or LRS). Numeric values not shown in the default public view.

• Storage & snapshots:

  • Storage charged per TB/month (includes 7 days of incremental snapshot storage). Numeric per-TB rates not shown in the page snapshot.

Example costs (explicit numeric values shown on official page):

• Synapse Commit Units (examples / pre-purchase prices): Tier 1 — 5,000 SCUs — $4,700; Tier 2 — 10,000 SCUs — $9,200; Tier 3 — 24,000 SCUs — $21,360; Tier 4 — 60,000 SCUs — $50,400; Tier 5 — 150,000 SCUs — $117,000; Tier 6 — 360,000 SCUs — $259,200.

Discount options:

• Reserved capacity (1-year, 3-year) for dedicated SQL pools (savings advertised, e.g., “Save up to 65%” vs pay-as-you-go).
• Pre-purchased SCU tiers provide tiered discounts (see example tier prices above).

Notes / limitations from official page:

• Many per-unit numeric prices (serverless $/TB, DWU hourly rates, vCore-hour rates, storage $/TB) are shown on the page as placeholders in the public snapshot (e.g., "$- per TB" or "$- per vCore-hour"). The vendor page requires region/currency selection or use of the Azure Pricing Calculator / sign-in to display localized numeric rates.
• Azure free account (30-day $200 credit and free monthly amounts for selected services) is available from Microsoft and can be used to try Synapse workloads.

Source(s): official Azure Synapse Analytics pricing page and Azure free account pages (Microsoft Azure).