Connecting a Kubernetes cluster to Azure Arc costs nothing. The cluster appears in the Azure portal, next to your AKS clusters, at no charge. The bill starts with the features most teams connect a cluster for: GitOps configuration costs $2 per vCPU per month and Azure Policy for Kubernetes $3 per vCPU per month, each after the first 6 vCPUs, and Defender for Containers, Azure Monitor, and Microsoft Sentinel are billed on top.
This post breaks down each line with Microsoft’s list prices, adds them up for an 80 vCPU cluster, and explains the cost that never appears on the Azure invoice: operating the cluster itself.
What Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes does
Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes attaches existing CNCF-conformant clusters to Azure, whether they run on-premises, at the edge, or in another cloud. Agents in the cluster open an outbound connection to Azure, and each cluster becomes an Azure Resource Manager resource that you can tag, group, and manage with Azure tools.
What Arc does not do is run the cluster. You still create it with a distribution such as RKE2, K3s, OpenShift, or kubeadm, and you still operate its control plane, etcd, upgrades, and nodes. Arc is a management layer on top. That distinction matters for the price, because the Arc invoice is only part of what a hybrid cluster costs.
The Azure Arc price list for Kubernetes
| Feature | List price | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Cluster connection, inventory, and tagging | Free | |
| GitOps configuration with Flux | $2.00 per vCPU per month | First 6 vCPUs free |
| Azure Policy for Kubernetes | $3.00 per vCPU per month | First 6 vCPUs free |
| Microsoft Defender for Containers | $0.00941 per vCore per hour, about $6.87 a month | vCores of worker nodes |
| Azure Monitor Logs, Analytics tier | $2.99 per GB ingested | First 5 GB a month free |
| Log retention beyond 31 days | $0.13 per GB per month | |
| Azure Monitor managed Prometheus | Per 10 million samples ingested and queried | |
| Microsoft Sentinel | Per GB of data analyzed, or a daily commitment tier from 50 GB a day |
Prices come from Microsoft’s Azure Retail Prices API. The Arc meters are global, and the Defender and Log Analytics figures are for the West Europe region. Defender for Containers includes 20 free vulnerability assessments per charged vCore each month, and further image scans cost $0.29 each.
Two details change the total more than the headline rates suggest. GitOps and Azure Policy each have their own meter, so a cluster that uses both pays $5 per vCPU per month beyond the free tier. And Azure Monitor charges for every gigabyte your clusters send: container logs, Kubernetes events, and metrics from Container insights add up quickly on busy clusters.
Worked example: an 80 vCPU cluster
Take an on-premises cluster with 80 vCPUs connected to Azure Arc, with the features most production teams turn on. For Azure Monitor, assume 100 GB of logs a month, which depends heavily on your workloads and log levels.
| Line | Calculation | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Arc connection | Free | $0 |
| GitOps configuration | 74 vCPUs × $2 | $148 |
| Azure Policy for Kubernetes | 74 vCPUs × $3 | $222 |
| Defender for Containers | 80 vCores × $0.00941 × 730 hours | $550 |
| Azure Monitor Logs | 95 GB × $2.99 | $284 |
| Total | about $1,200 |
That is about $14,400 a year in Azure management fees for one cluster, before Sentinel, before managed Prometheus, and before the servers, the Kubernetes distribution, and its support subscription. Add a second 80 vCPU site in the same Azure subscription, and the per-vCPU lines more than double, because the 6 free vCPUs apply once per subscription, not per cluster.
The cost outside the Azure invoice
Because Arc connects clusters instead of running them, the operating work stays with your team: a control plane with etcd at every site, Kubernetes upgrades, certificate rotation, etcd backups, operating system patches, and the network between sites. If the clusters run on a commercial distribution, its subscription comes on top. OpenShift and Rancher Prime are both licensed per core, as OpenShift pricing 2026 and Rancher Prime pricing explained show.
Microsoft’s own on-premises distribution follows a different model. AKS enabled by Azure Arc on Windows Server charges a pay-as-you-go fee per vCPU of running worker nodes per day, includes the control plane, and includes Arc GitOps and Azure Policy at no extra charge. It requires Hyper-V hosts and an Azure subscription.
How to lower an Azure Arc bill
Turn on per-vCPU features only where they add value. Azure Policy and GitOps on a test cluster cost the same per vCPU as on production. Watch Azure Monitor ingestion first, since it is the line that grows without anyone deciding to grow it: collect fewer log types, lower log levels, and move verbose logs to the cheaper Basic Logs tier. And count vCPUs carefully, because every line in the table scales with them.
The larger lever is the cluster itself. Cloudfleet runs the control plane as a managed service and one cluster can span your sites and clouds, so there is no control plane to operate per location. GitOps works with Argo CD or Flux at no per-vCPU fee, and policy engines such as Kyverno or OPA Gatekeeper run on any cluster. On the Pro plan, the 80 vCPU cluster costs about €346 a month, €69 with 24 vCPUs included plus €4.95 for each additional vCPU, with the control plane SLA and support included. See pricing for the plans.
Leaving Arc does not mean leaving Azure. Workloads on a Cloudfleet cluster can call Azure services such as Blob Storage and Key Vault with workload identity federation, without stored credentials. The Azure Arc alternative page describes the migration support, and the Cloudfleet vs Azure Arc comparison goes feature by feature. If you are also weighing AWS’s hybrid options, see EKS Anywhere vs EKS Hybrid Nodes.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Azure Arc cost for Kubernetes?
Connecting a cluster is free. GitOps configuration costs $2 per vCPU per month and Azure Policy for Kubernetes $3 per vCPU per month, each after the first 6 vCPUs. Defender for Containers costs about $6.87 per vCore per month, and Azure Monitor bills per gigabyte of logs ingested.
Is Azure Arc free?
The connection, inventory, and tagging are free. Most features that teams use with Arc-enabled clusters, such as GitOps, Azure Policy, Defender, and Azure Monitor, are billed per vCPU or per gigabyte.
What does a typical Azure Arc Kubernetes cluster cost?
An 80 vCPU cluster with GitOps, Azure Policy, Defender for Containers, and 100 GB of logs a month costs about $1,200 a month in Azure fees. That excludes the servers, the Kubernetes distribution, and the team that operates the cluster.
Does Azure Arc manage Kubernetes upgrades?
No. Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes connects existing clusters to Azure for inventory, configuration, policy, monitoring, and security. The cluster’s control plane, upgrades, and nodes stay with whoever operates the distribution.
