Always free Mongo DB compatible Azure Cosmos DB instances

The Azure Mongo DB version of Cosmos DB provides a sharable, scalable way of working with MongoDB across sites, different teams or different machines. I have a couple development machines and am always looking for ways to work with the same dataset independent of my current physical location and of the developer machine platform I'm using.

Always Free Cosmos DB - Mongo DB

Microsoft Azure has a Cosmos DB for MongoDB free tier offering. MongoDB (vCORE) has its own SKU (at this time). This means you may be able to use free tier Mongo DB and the free tier standard Cosmos DB
  • You get a dedicated MongoDB cluster with 32 GB storage.
  • The docs don't mention any compute or RU/s limit.
From the docs
Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB (vCore) now introduces a new SKU, the "Free Tier," enabling users to explore the platform without any financial commitments. The free tier lasts for the lifetime of your account, boasting command and feature parity with a regular Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB (vCore) account.

It makes it easy for you to get started, develop, test your applications, or even run small production workloads for free. With Free Tier, you get a dedicated MongoDB cluster with 32-GB storage, perfect for all of your learning & evaluation needs. Users can provision a single free DB server per supported Azure region for a given subscription. This feature is currently only available in the South India region. Global access to cloud resources for the win! Note that this may affect network transport costs.

Creating the database

Log into the Azure console and select Azure cosmos DB.  Click on the "+ Create" button

Select the Mongo DB API


You must use the vCore Cluster for the MongoDB free tier.  This is different from the other Cosmos DB free-tier APIs 


Resources

The next screen starts the resource configuration process.  Make sure you enable the Free tier.  You may not get a choice of locations.  Cosmos DB is usually offered in the South India data center.


Network Access

We wanted to use this DB from our desktops without having to configure a VPN tunnel.  If you want the same, then pick Public access and enable the firewall rule for your IP address. That will limit traffic to your IP.  


Cost estimate

The estimates in this screen are based on the database being configured to shutdown after the configured limit is reached.


Verification

Provisioning took 10 minutes.


Validating

The Overview page shows we are the free tier.




Account

The Azure Cosmos DB service page in the Azure Console shows our two Cosmos DBs, one Mongo DB and the other supports the graph APIs.

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