# Microsoft Dev Box (closed to new customers; retiring 2028-09-18)

Official pricing: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/dev-box/  
Category: windows · Isolation: vm · DISCONTINUED

## Pricing regimes (raw)


## Features

Yes: snapshots, pause/resume, persistent disk, idle auto-stop, ≥24 h sessions, custom image (Docker or snapshot), start from your own snapshot, Docker inside, nested virtualization, root, browser, desktop GUI, egress allowlist, open internet, private networking, SOC 2, HIPAA, SSO, Windows, audit logs, EU data residency, MCP server, automatic snapshots, snapshots on demand, inbound access rules, firewall inside (nftables)

No: memory snapshots, fork/clone, volumes, systemd, computer-use API, code interpreter, browser + desktop control, preinstalled agents, SSH, public IPv4, HTTPS preview URLs, custom domains, raw TCP inbound, self-hosting, BYOC, open source, GPU, arm64, macOS, GPU desktop, live fork (no pause), memory fork, webhooks, agent harness API, secret proxy, secret proxy for any API

Unknown: everything else. Evidence (source + quote) per feature: https://battleships.dev/data/providers/azure-dev-box.json → feature_evidence

## Caveats

- RETIRING: closing-down period began 2026-09-14, retirement 2028-09-18; Microsoft recommends Windows 365 and says not to create new long-lived dependencies.
- No public prices: all mode prices are null, so the engine cannot price this card. Mode flagged 'sales' (signed-in pricing only).
- Hibernation supported; storage billed until the dev box is deleted, even while stopped/hibernated.
- Closed to new customers since 2025-11-01 (Microsoft: 'new sign-ups will no longer be accepted as of November 1, 2025'); only existing Dev Box customers can use it until retirement 2028-09-18.
- Hibernation (compute not billed, state kept) only on 8 and 16 vCPU SKUs; 32 vCPU SKUs can only shut down.
- Stop-on-disconnect grace period is 60-480 minutes, so every session keeps billing compute for at least 1 extra hour after the user disconnects (unless stopped manually or by schedule).
- Smallest SKU is 8 vCPU / 32 GB; 4-core SKUs are not supported.
- Automatic snapshots every 12 h (short) and 7 days (long), 14 retained over 28 days, plus manual snapshots; restore can take hours. No separate snapshot price is documented.
- Serverless GPU (preview): GPU shells run in Azure Container Apps and are billed by ACA, not Dev Box; project must be in BrazilSouth, CanadaCentral, CentralUS, EastUS, EastUS2, SouthCentralUS or WestUS3.
- Licences confirmed live: each user needs Windows 11/10 Enterprise + Microsoft Intune + Microsoft Entra ID P1 (included in M365 F3/E3/E5/A3/A5/Business Premium).

## How this provider charges


Dev Box provides Windows 11 Enterprise developer workstations. **It is retiring.** The closing-down period began 2026-09-14 and the service retires 2028-09-18. Microsoft recommends Windows 365 and advises against new long-lived dependencies.

**No prices can be verified from an official public source:**
- The pricing page shows `$-` without sign-in.
- The public Retail Prices API returns no Dev Box meters (checked 2026-09-28).
- The card therefore carries **null** prices.

## Regime table

| # | Regime | When it applies | How billed | Numbers | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hourly compute + monthly storage, with a monthly cap | Default | Storage fee from creation until deletion, plus compute per active hour. Billing stops when the SKU's max monthly price is reached | **Unpublished (signed-in only)**. 2023 GA press figures, third-party and stale: $138.20/month max for the smallest 8 vCPU/32 GB/256 GB SKU, $628.80 for 32 vCPU/128 GB/2 TB, storage $19-152/month | https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/dev-box/dev-box-retirement-guide, https://devclass.com/2023/07/11/microsoft-hits-ga-with-dev-box-already-in-use-internally-but-pricey-for-the-rest-of-us/, https://infragap.com/tools/microsoft-dev-box/ |
| 2 | Hibernated / stopped | Hibernation or stop | Storage keeps billing, compute stops | Unpublished | same |
| 3 | Prerequisite licences | Every user | Per user: Windows 11 Enterprise + Intune + Entra ID P1 (for example M365 E3) | Not encoded; often more than compute | https://infragap.com/tools/microsoft-dev-box/ |
| 4 | Sizes | SKU choice | Fixed presets | 8, 16 or 32 vCPU with 4 GB/vCPU; 256 GB to 2 TB premium SSD | same |

## Gotchas

1. Retiring: remaining workloads are deleted after 2028-09-18.
2. The smallest SKU is 8 vCPU / 32 GB, so a 4 vCPU need is overprovisioned.
3. Per-user licence prerequisites dominate the cost for small teams.
4. Not suited to agents: seat-based, provisioned through a developer portal, no agent API.

## Worked example

Workload: 4 vCPU / 8 GiB, 50 concurrent × 8 h/day × 22 days (8,800 h), 30% CPU, 50 GiB snapshots, 100 GiB egress.

**Cannot be priced from official sources.** Illustration only, using the stale 2023 third-party cap: if every one of 50 smallest dev boxes hit its $138.20 cap, compute + storage would be about 50 × $138.20 ≈ **$6,910/month**, plus per-user licences. This figure is not encoded in the card.

Sources: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/dev-box/ · https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/dev-box/dev-box-retirement-guide · https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices · https://infragap.com/tools/microsoft-dev-box/ · https://devclass.com/2023/07/11/microsoft-hits-ga-with-dev-box-already-in-use-internally-but-pricey-for-the-rest-of-us/