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Consumption Plan

The Consumption-only environment is the legacy Azure Container Apps model for pure usage-based compute. It is still available, but Microsoft Learn recommends the Workload profiles (v2) environment with its built-in Consumption profile for new environments.

Main Content

What the Consumption-only environment is

The Consumption-only environment runs apps only on the Consumption plan:

  • Compute is allocated on demand.
  • Billing follows replica usage instead of node allocation.
  • Scale-to-zero remains the main fit for low-idle or bursty workloads.
flowchart TD
    ENV[Consumption-only environment] --> APP1[Public API]
    ENV --> APP2[Worker]
    APP1 --> R1[Replica count scales on demand]
    APP2 --> R2[Replica count can scale to zero]
    R1 --> B1[vCPU-seconds + GiB-seconds]
    R2 --> B2[Request-based billing]

Billing model

Microsoft Learn describes Consumption plan charges in three buckets:

Meter What it tracks Notes
vCPU-seconds CPU allocated per running replica Billed per second
GiB-seconds Memory allocated per running replica Billed per second
HTTP requests Requests received by the app External requests are billable

GPU-seconds are a Consumption-plan meter, but not for Consumption-only v1

The billing page documents GPU-seconds for serverless GPU scenarios. The Consumption-only environment page separately states that Consumption-only environments have no GPU access.

Characteristics and limitations

Area Consumption-only (v1) behavior
Status Legacy environment type
Compute ceiling per app environment model 4 vCPUs / 8 GiB memory
Dedicated SKUs Not available
GPUs Not available
UDR Not supported
NAT Gateway egress Not supported
Minimum subnet size /23

Good use cases

Consumption-only still fits when you need:

  • Prototyping environments with minimal baseline cost.
  • Low-traffic apps that spend meaningful time idle.
  • Event-driven workers where scale-to-zero matters more than advanced networking.
  • Legacy environments you are maintaining while planning a v2 landing zone.

Migration considerations

Microsoft Learn now recommends using the built-in Consumption profile in a Workload profiles (v2) environment for new deployments.

Treat Consumption-only to v2 as an environment migration project

The Microsoft Learn pages reviewed for this guide recommend the v2 environment type, but they do not document a simple in-place conversion path from Consumption-only to Workload profiles. Plan a parallel environment, redeploy apps with IaC, validate networking, and then cut over.

Verify Consumption-plan surfaces in Azure Portal

cae-basics-d38538 | Container Apps Environment | Refresh | Delete | Essentials | View Cost | JSON View | Resource group (move) | rg-aca-basics-d38538 | Status | Succeeded | Location (move) | Korea Central | Subscription (move) | Visual Studio Enterprise Subscription | Subscription ID | 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 | Aspire Dashboard | Not yet active (set up) | Tags (edit) | Add tags | Environment type | Workload profiles | Static IP | 4.230.156.3 | Applications | 1 | KEDA version | 2.18.1 | Dapr version | 1.16.4-msft.7 | Applications | Get started | Monitoring | Tutorials | Name | App Type | Resource Group | ca-sample-d38538 | Container App | rg-aca-basics-d38538

[Observed] cae-basics-d38538 Container Apps Environment Refresh Delete Essentials View Cost JSON View Resource group (move) rg-aca-basics-d38538 Status Succeeded Location (move) Korea Central Subscription (move) Visual Studio Enterprise Subscription Subscription ID 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 Aspire Dashboard Not yet active (set up) Tags (edit) Add tags Environment type Workload profiles Static IP 4.230.156.3 Applications 1 KEDA version 2.18.1 Dapr version 1.16.4-msft.7 Applications Get started Monitoring Tutorials Name App Type Resource Group ca-sample-d38538 Container App rg-aca-basics-d38538.

[Inferred] The Environment type Workload profiles value is consistent with the v2-recommended environment surface discussed in Migration considerations.

[Not Proven] Additional environment provisioning detail, billing detail, workload profile detail, and network binding detail are not visible on this view.

See Also

Sources