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FinOps Blog
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You Get One Exchange Left: Rethinking Azure Commitments Before February 2027

Madhura Amlekar's avatar
Madhura Amlekar
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Sep 20, 2026

Starting February 1, 2027, choosing the right Azure reservation upfront becomes more important.

Azure gives you two main ways to pay less by committing up front. A reservation gets you the deepest discount, but you are locking in a specific SKU in a specific region. A savings plan gives up so...
Updated Sep 20, 2026
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PerOlsen's avatar
PerOlsen
Copper Contributor
Nov 04, 2026

This is a significant limitation in our abilities to control cost. The standard AI-text-section with "The part most teams get backwards" are rubbing salt - the Savings Plans are not anything near in discount-rate compared to Reservations, hence not an option in reality - flexible yes, financial beneficial, no. What we do now are exchanging every existing Reservation to lots of small Reservations so we don't get cornered after February when usage or regions change, a very tedious work though!