Microsoft Azure vs Contabo

Microsoft Azure is strongest for enterprises. Contabo is strongest for budget-conscious developers. Here's how they stack up on price, uptime, and support.

Feature	Microsoft Azure	Contabo
Starting price	$0.01/mo	$3.23/mo
Best for	Enterprises Windows/.NET workloads Hybrid cloud Regulated industries	Budget-conscious developers Personal projects Storage-heavy workloads Self-hosters
Stated uptime SLA	99.99%	99.90%
Storage	SSD	NVME
Regions	60	4
Managed Kubernetes	Yes	No
Support channels	Ticket, Phone (paid plans), Docs, Community forum	Ticket, Docs, Community forum
Compliance	SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, GDPR, PCI DSS	GDPR
Hidden costs to watch for	Windows Server VMs carry a license surcharge on top of the Linux compute rate Outbound bandwidth billed above 100 GB/month pooled free tier, tiered by volume Premium SSD/Ultra Disk IOPS and throughput billed separately from disk capacity Blob Storage Cool/Cold/Archive tiers bill a minimum 128 KiB per object and impose early-deletion penalties (90/180 day minimums) Archive tier retrieval fees are notably high ($6.50/10,000 read ops) AKS Standard tier control plane fee ($0.10/hr per cluster) on top of node VM costs	Quoted monthly prices are the effective rate for a 24-month prepaid/contract term; shorter terms (1 or 12 months) cost more per month Additional IPv4 addresses, extra backup slots, and storage extensions are billed as add-ons Outgoing traffic is technically unlimited but subject to a fair usage policy that can throttle abusive/sustained high-bandwidth usage Support is ticket-only on lower tiers; phone support requires add-on
Last reviewed	2026-07-18	2026-07-18