Logic Apps ; When do I go for a consumption or a fixed pricing model?

Introduction

Today’s post is about the Logic Apps billing model. As you might know, the Integrated Service Environment has been generally available since May 2019. Since then, there is a consumption plan and a fixed price approach for Logic Apps. Lately I have noticed that this still remains confusing… Let us try to demystify this one then? 😉

 

Bibliography

• Pricing Page ; https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/logic-apps/
• Documentation on Pricing & Billing ; https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/logic-apps-pricing
• Service Limits ; https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/logic-apps-limits-and-config#throughput-limits

 

Consumption Plan

With the consumption plan, you are charged on a per usage basis. In essence, each executed step of your workflow counts as an “action”. So if you have 10 steps in your workflow, and you run it every hour. Then you will have about 7300 steps on a monthly basis. Which links back to €0.000022 * 7300, or 16 cents. Now if you have a control structure in there (like a condition), if those steps are not executed (due to not being in the execution path, or have failed), then you only pay for the ones executed.

Now with actions alone you will not get anywhere. You need connectors with external services to which you get, process and store information. One one hand you have the standard connectors, which are the majority of the connectors. On the other hand, there are the enterprise connectors (IBM 3270, IBM MQ  & SAP). And next to those two, there is also an integration account that covers things like EDI, AS2, XML, X12, … connectors.

If we take a look at the pricing ;

Where if we would have two standard connectors in our 10 step workflow. Then that would mean 1460 executions per month, which would bare down 15-16 cent per month.  If we would do the same for an enterprise connector, then that would still mean 1460 executions per month. That would now be 1,23 Euro per month.

The integration account is a different beast… Here you have a base fee depending on the tier you choose ; between 255 Euro (basic) and 846 Euro (standard).

Despite being in a consumption plan, the integration account works with a base fee and is not consumption based on the amount of messages. Where actions & connectors are.

 

Fixed Pricing Model, aka “Integrated Service Environment”

Aside from the benefit of VNET integration, the Integrated Service Environment comes with a fixed pricing model ;

Which comes down to about 4445 Euro / month for the base unit, and 2226 Euro / month per scale unit. Where this is a steep entry fee, the advantage is that there are no hidden surprises anymore. All the actions and connectors (both standard & enterprise) are included! In terms of integration accounts, the Integrated Service Environment includes one standard integration account.

 

Tipping point – Pricing Example

Let us investigate when it becomes interesting to go for fixed pricing tier ;

Of course your mileage may/will vary… In this example, running 1000 actions per minute, with 450 standard and 15 enterprise connectors. And having a standard integration activated. In that case, the consumption plan would actually cost 10 euro more per month.

 

Closing Thoughts

I hope this post helped you to understand the pricing construct of Logic Apps a bit… And also that at a given point, the Integrated Service Environment will actually be more economic / efficient to leverage versus the consumption plan.