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Unexpected Transaction Charges for Cold Tier Storage Account — Need Clarification

CBM Cloud 0 Reputation points
2025-11-25T10:30:43.4366667+00:00

Hello Microsoft Support Team,

I am seeing usual transaction costs for my Azure Storage Account which is configured in Cold tier.

From Azure Cost Analysis, I see large values of the following operations:

  • ListBlobs – 544,380 transactions

GetBlobProperties – 1,870,000 transactions

PutBlob – 1,660,000 transactions

DeleteBlob – 722,000 transactions

In the invoice, these are appearing under:

10K Write Operations

10K All Other Operations

10K List and Create Container Operations

I need help confirming:

Which transaction category (Write Ops, All Other Ops, List/Create Container Ops) each of these API operations belong to.

Why some control-plane operations (List Containers, etc.) are billed at Hot tier even though the account is Cold tier.

  1. Please provide a breakdown or mapping of each operation type to the corresponding meter in the invoice.

I am attaching screenshots of Azure Monitor transaction metrics.

Please help me understand:

The billing logic

Why these operations are being categorized this way

And how I can reduce these transaction costs going forward

Thank you

Azure Storage
Azure Storage
Globally unique resources that provide access to data management services and serve as the parent namespace for the services.
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  1. Vallepu Venkateswarlu 1,145 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2025-11-25T11:27:30.76+00:00

    Hi @CBM Cloud,

    Welcome to Microsoft Q&A Platform.

    Azure groups API operations into three billing categories

    • Write Operations – Actions that modify data or metadata (e.g., PutBlob, CreateContainer).
    • List/Create Container Operations – Management-level operations such as listing or creating containers.
    • All Other Operations – Read operations and metadata queries, such as GetBlobProperties.

    Why some control-plane operations (List Containers, etc.) are billed at Hot tier even though the account is Cold tier.

    The ListContainers operation falls under the List/Create Container Ops category, which is grouped with control-plane operations. These operations are billed at a flat transaction rate that aligns with the Hot tier pricing shown in the documentation not because your data is in Hot tier, but because Microsoft uses the Hot tier rate as the standard for these management-level calls. The access tier (Hot, Cool, Cold) only affects data storage and retrieval costs, not control-plane transactions

    User's image

    Ref: Azure Blob Storage pricing and How you're charged for Azure Blob Storage

    Please provide a breakdown or mapping of each operation type to the corresponding meter in the invoice. Please raise billing support request to provide a breakdown or mapping of each operation type.

    Kindly let us know if the above helps or you need further assistance on this issue.

    Please "Accept the answer" if the information helped you. This will help us and others in the community as well.

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