Windows Server pricing and licensing overview Standard edition Ideal for physical or minimally virtualized environments Core-based licensing model Requires Windows Server CAL 2 Datacenter edition Ideal for highly virtualized datacenters and cloud environments Core-based licensing model Requires Windows Server CAL 2 Windows Server 2025 editions 4 PB for hosts that support 5-level paging 256 TB for hosts that support 4-level paging 4 PB for hosts that support 5-level paging 256 TB for hosts that support 4-level paging Yes; 2 virtual machines, plus one Hyper-V host per license Yes; unlimited 4 virtual machines, plus one Hyper-V host per license

Unlimited Windows containers and up to two Hyper-V containers Unlimited Windows containers and Hyper-V containers 1 partnership and 1 resource group with a single 2TB volume Traditional licensing or pay as you go Connect to Azure Arc to transact $33.58 per CPU core / month; $0.046 / hour Pay only for what you need Take the next step with Windows Server Connect with partners Learn more about Windows Server licensing Learn how to save when you migrate Windows Server or SQL Server to Azure [1] Pricing is shown in USD and may vary from country to country. Please contact your Microsoft representative for a quote. [2] CALs are required for every user or device accessing a server. See the Product Use Rights for details. [3] Datacenter and Standard edition pricing is for 16 core licenses [4] Unlimited virtualization is not available through pay-as-you-go for on-premises Azure Arc enabled servers. This new pay as you go offering is purchased on a per-instance basis. Learn more about pay as you go . Chat with sales Available M-F 5 AM to 5 PM PT. Available M-F 5 AM to 5 PM PT.