Lesson 1: Your Azure Subscription and the Free Account

Before we start

This course is independent. Microsoft does not produce, sponsor or endorse it. Azure's free allowances, prices and portal screens change often, so whenever this course quotes a number, check it against Microsoft's current page before relying on it.

Over 20 levels you'll build and run one small web app with a database. Each level adds one working piece and ends with a check that it works, plus the command that removes anything that costs money. This first level creates nothing billable. Its job is to make sure you know whose account you're in, which subscription will be billed, and what the free offer actually covers. Many surprise Azure bills start with someone getting one of those three wrong.

Account, tenant, subscription: three different things

The AZ-900 material lists these terms, but the difference only starts to matter once you're the one paying. Think of a block of flats:

• Your account is the key you sign in with, such as you@outlook.com or a work address. It identifies a person.
• The tenant is the building. It's an instance of Microsoft Entra ID that holds one organisation's users and settings. When you sign up for Azure with a personal address, a tenant is created for you.
• A subscription is a utility meter in that building. Microsoft's CLI documentation calls it an "agreement with Microsoft to use cloud services". Every resource you create belongs to exactly one subscription, and that subscription receives the bill.

A tenant can hold several subscriptions, and one person can have access to several tenants. That's why you need to check which subscription you're working in before you create anything.

Tenant (Microsoft Entra ID: users, sign-in)
└── Subscription "Azure subscription 1"   <- billing + limits live here
    └── Resource groups (Level 3)
        └── Resources (web app, database...)

Walkthrough: sign up or sign in, then find your IDs

If you don't have Azure yet, go to the free account page at azure.microsoft.com/free and sign up. You'll need a phone number and a card. The card verifies your identity, and the free account doesn't charge it unless you choose to upgrade.

Then find the two facts about your subscription that matter in this course:

1. Open https://portal.azure.com and sign in.
2. In the top search bar type: Subscriptions   -> select it.
3. The list shows each subscription with its ID. If Offer / Offer ID
   columns aren't visible, select the subscription to see them
   in its Overview.
4. Note down:
   Subscription ID  e.g. 3f2b9c1e-0000-0000-0000-7a1d2e9b4c55  (a GUID)
   Offer            e.g. Free Trial
   Offer ID         e.g. MS-AZR-0044P

Common offer IDs you might see:

If you're curious, you can also open Cloud Shell (the >_ icon) and run this. Level 3 covers the CLI properly.

az account show --output table   # shows the subscription the CLI will act on

EnvironmentName    IsDefault    Name                  State    TenantId
-----------------  -----------  --------------------  -------  ------------------------------------
AzureCloud         True         Azure subscription 1  Enabled  9c4d...-....-....-....-..........e1

Notice two things. State will matter later in this lesson. And the CLI output doesn't show the offer type, so use the portal for that.

Gotcha: if your work account already has access to a company tenant, you may see several subscriptions. Never create course resources in your employer's subscription by accident. Choose your own subscription now and remember its name.

What the free account gives you

At the time of writing, Microsoft's free account page lists three kinds of benefit:

1. $200 of credit (in your billing currency) to spend on almost any service within 30 days.
2. 12 months of free services: monthly allowances of popular services, for new customers only. Examples include 750 hours each of B1s, B2pts v2 and B2ats v2 burstable VMs, and 750 hours of a PostgreSQL Flexible Server Burstable B1MS instance.
3. Always-free services: Microsoft says 65+ of them, available to every customer for as long as you have an account. Examples include up to 10 App Service web or API apps (1 GB storage, 1 hour of compute per day), 1 million Azure Functions requests, and Azure SQL Database serverless with 100,000 vCore seconds per month and 32 GB of storage.

Three rules to keep in mind:

• Allowances are monthly and don't roll over. If you use 2 GB of a 5 GB allowance, the other 3 GB is gone at month end.
• Only certain tiers are free. Choose a bigger tier and you're paying, or using up credit.
• The 12-month and monthly free services apply only to the subscription created at sign-up. A second subscription you create doesn't get them.

To see how much you've used, open your subscription in the portal and select View all free services. The Free services for 12 months table shows each meter's Usage/Limit and a Status such as "Unlikely to Exceed" or "Exceeds on ". Usage appears one to two days late, so don't read it as real-time.

What happens when the credit or time runs out

A Free Trial subscription comes with a spending limit, which is switched on by default. You can't change its amount. You can only keep it or remove it.

• Credit used up or day 30 reached: Azure disables the subscription so you can't run up charges by accident. Your resources stop, and State no longer shows Enabled.
• You upgrade to pay-as-you-go: the subscription is enabled again, and you keep the free services for the rest of your 12 months. Any resources that aren't free start running again and get billed. Before you upgrade, delete anything you don't want to pay for.
• You remove the spending limit during the trial: you keep the remaining credit until day 30, and at the end of the trial the subscription becomes pay-as-you-go.
• Month 12 ends: the 12-month free services expire. Anything still running is billed at pay-as-you-go rates, while always-free allowances continue.

Production habit: treat a disabled subscription as a warning that you've lost access, not as a backup plan. Don't count on Microsoft keeping it forever. If you want to keep something, upgrade or export it in time.

Check and clean-up

Check: you can name your subscription, its ID and its offer ID, and the View all free services page opens.

Clean-up: nothing to remove. This level created no resources. Level 2 sets up a budget and alerts before you build anything.

Key takeaways

• An account is a person, a tenant is the organisation's directory, and a subscription is the billing container that every resource belongs to.
• Find your subscription ID and offer ID (Free Trial = MS-AZR-0044P) on the portal's Subscriptions page.
• The free account gives you $200 of credit for 30 days, 12 months of monthly free allowances, and always-free services. The 12-month and monthly allowances apply only to the sign-up subscription.
• When the credit runs out or day 30 arrives, the subscription is disabled. If you upgrade, non-free resources start again and are billed.
• Microsoft's pages are the source of truth for these figures, and this course is independent of Microsoft.