How to claim an SLA credit from Microsoft Azure
Azure owes you a service credit when Virtual Machines, SQL Database, App Service and other resources miss their SLA. Here's the exact credit schedule, the deadline, the evidence you need, and how to file the support request.
When Azure misses an uptime commitment, Microsoft doesn't refund you automatically — it waits for you to open a support request and ask. Here's exactly what Azure owes, how it's calculated, and how to claim it before the window closes.
The short answer
When an Azure service falls below its SLA target for the month, you're owed a service credit worth a percentage of that service's monthly bill — 10% when uptime dips just below target, 25% for a worse month, and 100% for a severe outage (below 95% uptime). You claim it by opening a support request in the Azure Portal within two months of the end of the billing month in which the incident occurred, citing your subscription ID, the affected resource, the incident timestamps, and the Service Health incident reference. The credit is applied to a future invoice after Microsoft approves it — it's not a cash refund.
What Azure commits to
Azure publishes a separate SLA per service, and the committed number depends on how you deployed the resource. The ones Ontracko tracks:
| Service | Monthly uptime commitment |
|---|---|
| Azure Virtual Machines (Multi-AZ) | 99.99% |
| Azure SQL Database | 99.99% |
| Azure App Service | 99.95% |
Architecture matters: a single-instance VM on premium storage carries a lower commitment than the same workload spread across an availability set or availability zones. Confirm which figure your deployment qualifies for on the service's SLA page before you measure a breach.
What you're owed
Credits are tiered by how far monthly uptime fell below the target. Azure's schedule for Virtual Machines and SQL Database is the reference example:
| Measured monthly uptime | Credit |
|---|---|
| 99.0% – under 99.99% | 10% of spend |
| 95.0% – under 99.0% | 25% of spend |
| below 95.0% | 100% of spend |
The credit is a percentage of the affected service's monthly fee for the affected resource — not damages for your lost revenue, and never more than what you paid that service for the month. You can model your exact figure with the Azure credit calculator — enter your monthly spend and observed uptime and it returns the tier and dollar amount.
The evidence Azure expects
- Your Subscription ID (and tenant details)
- The affected resource ID (the VM, database, or App Service)
- The incident start and end times, with the time zone
- The Service Health incident reference, found in the Azure Portal under Service Health → Health history
Account-specific confirmation from Service Health strengthens the claim, because it shows the outage hit your subscription and not just the public region on the Azure status page.
How to claim an Azure SLA credit
- Confirm the outage window and incident ID in the Azure Portal under Service Health → Health history, and note the exact start and end times with the time zone.
- Identify which Azure service breached its SLA, calculate that service's uptime for the billing month, and match it to the credit tier above.
- Sign in to the Azure Portal with the subscription that incurred the affected usage, select Help + support, and choose Create a support request.
- Set the issue type to Billing (or the service and credit request path), then describe the breach: state the service, resource ID, incident reference, measured uptime, and the credit percentage you're claiming.
- Submit within two months of the end of the billing month, and track the request — approved credits appear on a future invoice, not as a refund to your card.
Watch the exclusions
Azure SLAs exclude downtime from planned maintenance, guest OS or customer-configuration issues, third-party software, and force majeure. Free and Shared tiers, and some deployment slots, carry no credit-bearing SLA at all. And because the deadline runs from the end of the billing month — not from when you noticed the outage — an incident early in a month effectively gives you longer to file than one at month-end. Track the billing-cycle boundary, not just the incident date.
Frequently asked questions
Does Azure give you money back for downtime?
Not as cash. When an Azure service misses its monthly SLA, you're owed a service credit — a percentage of that service's monthly fee applied to a future invoice. It ranges from 10% for a small miss to 100% when uptime falls below 95%, and it never exceeds what you paid that service for the month.
How much SLA credit is Azure downtime worth?
It depends on how far below target the month fell: 10% of the affected service's monthly spend when uptime is between 99% and the target, 25% between 95% and 99%, and 100% below 95%. Use the Azure SLA guide to see the per-service tiers and estimate your amount.
How long do I have to claim an Azure SLA credit?
Microsoft requires the claim within two months of the end of the billing month in which the incident occurred. Because the clock starts at the billing-month boundary rather than the outage itself, calculate the deadline from your invoice cycle — see what an SLA credit is and how the window works.
How do I file an Azure SLA credit claim?
Open a support request in the Azure Portal under Help + support → Create a support request, set the issue type to Billing, and cite your subscription ID, the affected resource, the Service Health incident reference, and your measured uptime. An approved credit is applied to a future invoice.
Which Azure services have an SLA credit?
The ones Ontracko monitors include Virtual Machines, SQL Database and App Service, with commitments from 99.95% to 99.99%. Most other paid Azure services carry a service-specific SLA too — but Free and Shared tiers generally do not. Check the relevant SLA page for the exact commitment.
Methodology & caveats
The commitments and credit tiers above are transcribed from Microsoft's published Azure SLAs into Ontracko's profiles; verify the exact clause on the service's SLA page before filing, since terms differ by service and deployment architecture. Live incident history for Azure is on its status page. For how Azure compares to other providers, see which SaaS vendors actually pay SLA credits and the AWS credit guide, or browse the SLA glossary and the reliability rankings.
*Ontracko monitors Azure's public status feed, detects SLA breaches, and assembles the claim package with evidence attached. Monitor Azure free — 8% only on recovered credits. See Azure live status or the Azure SLA calculator.*
Related reading
What does a 99.9% SLA actually allow? Uptime, downtime, and your credit
A 99.9% SLA allows about 43 minutes of downtime a month; 99.99% allows about 4. Here's the full uptime-to-downtime cheat sheet, when downtime becomes a breach, and how to calculate the SLA credit you're owed.
How to claim an SLA credit from Atlassian (Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket)
Atlassian Premium and Enterprise owe a service credit when Jira, Confluence, or Bitbucket miss their uptime SLA — but you have only until the 15th of the next month to file. Here's the credit schedule and how to claim.
Which SaaS vendors actually pay SLA credits?
Not every vendor with an SLA pays out easily. Here's a side-by-side of the uptime commitments, credit percentages, and claim deadlines for the major cloud and SaaS vendors that owe credits when they go down.
What is an SLA credit, and how do you claim it?
A plain-English definition of SLA credits: what they are, when a vendor owes you one, how much you can claim, and the step-by-step process to get the money back.
Or browse the SLA glossary and the reliability rankings.
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