Remain on Free Tier – Disable Automatic Upgrade to Pay-As-You-Go

@Nasir Sharif - Thanks for the question and using MS Q&A forum.

According to the Azure OpenAI quota management documentation, tierUpgradePolicy controls whether a resource is automatically upgraded when a higher quota tier becomes available. Setting the policy to NoAutoUpgrade is the supported method to opt out of automatic tier upgrades.

The presence of:

• nextTierName: Tier 1
• upgradeAvailabilityStatus: Available

indicates that your resource is eligible for a Tier 1 upgrade, but these values alone do not indicate that the upgrade will be performed automatically.

If the NoAutoUpgrade policy is successfully applied and retained, the resource should remain on the Free Tier without being automatically upgraded to Tier 1. Converting a Free Trial subscription to Pay-As-You-Go is not required solely for opting out of automatic tier upgrades.

For more details refer: Manage Azure OpenAI in Microsoft Foundry Models quota (classic)

Hope this helps. Do let us know if you have any further queries.

Thank you for confirming that NoAutoUpgrade is the supported method and that converting my Free Trial subscription to Pay-As-You-Go is not required.

My issue is that the policy does not appear to remain applied.

I successfully sent the PATCH request and the response showed:

currentTierName: Free Tier

tierUpgradePolicy: NoAutoUpgrade

However, when I later ran a GET request on the same quota tier resource, it showed:

currentTierName: Free Tier

nextTierName: Tier 1

upgradeAvailabilityStatus: Available

tierUpgradePolicy: OnceUpgradeIsAvailable

So the problem is not the eligibility for Tier 1. The problem is that NoAutoUpgrade is not being retained.

Could you please advise how I can make NoAutoUpgrade persist permanently, or whether this requires Microsoft backend/support intervention?

I want to remain on Free Tier and do not want any automatic upgrade to Tier 1 or Pay-As-You-Go.

@Nasir Sharif - Your PATCH returning NoAutoUpgrade means ARM accepted the write. The most likely explanation for the GET disagreeing is that the read is stale, for one of two reasons:

1. Propagation lag: Another user reported the identical symptom thread 5918791, 2026-08-05): "If you check current level immediately... give it 5 to 10 min and check again and should show the NoAutoUpgrade."
2. You may be reading a different endpoint than you wrote to. In the docs the PATCH targets .../quotaTiers/**default** (singleton), while the GET example targets .../quotaTiers (collection, no /default). These are separate ARM surfaces and can return different cached views. A clue that this is what happened: your GET returned nextTierName and upgradeAvailabilityStatus, and neither field appears in the documented GET sample output (which returns only currentTierName, assignmentDate, tierUpgradePolicy).

Please run this exact sequence in Cloud Shell (Bash):

Step 1 — re-apply the policy, capturing headers

1. subscription_id="<your-subscription-id>"
2. az rest --method patch \
3. --url "https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/$subscription_id/providers/Microsoft.CognitiveServices/quotaTiers/default?api-version=2025-10-01-preview" \
4. --body '{"properties": {"tierUpgradePolicy": "NoAutoUpgrade"}}' --verbose Response shows "tierUpgradePolicy": "NoAutoUpgrade". Note the x-ms-request-id and UTC time.

Step 2 — wait a full 10 minutes. A GET inside that window tells you nothing.

Step 3 — GET the same singleton URI, same api-version (note the /default)

1. az rest --method get \
2. --url "https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/$subscription_id/providers/Microsoft.CognitiveServices/quotaTiers/default?api-version=2025-10-01-preview"

If this reads NoAutoUpgrade, the opt-out is applied and your earlier reading was a stale collection view.

Step 4 — if it still shows OnceUpgradeIsAvailable, repeat Steps 1–3 with ?api-version=2026-05-01 on both calls. The docs still sample 2025-10-01-preview, but this resource type has since shipped stable versions 2026-03-01 and 2026-05-01.

Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/templates/microsoft.cognitiveservices/quotatiers?pivots=deployment-language-bicep

Step 5 — re-check once after 24 hours. Still NoAutoUpgrade the next day is what proves durability rather than propagation.

On billing: a quota tier governs rate limits (RPM/TPM) only — the docs direct billing control to Cost Management. A Tier 1 quota change does not convert your Free Trial subscription to Pay-As-You-Go. For reassurance, in thread 5988572 a user who didn't opt out and let the 3-day window lapse still remained on Free Tier.

Reference: Quotas and limits — "Can I opt out of auto upgrades?"

If Step 3 still returns OnceUpgradeIsAvailable, reply with the x-ms-request-id from both calls, the UTC timestamp of each, and the exact api-version used — with those I can take this to the Foundry quota team instead of leaving you retrying.

Hope this helps. Do let us know if you have any further queries.