[Answered] Do staging environments in Azure cost more?

Answer

Staging environments in Azure do not incur additional costs beyond the App Service plan you are using. Here are the key points to consider:

Inclusion in App Service Plan: Staging slots are included as part of your App Service tier. For example, standard instances include up to 5 staging slots, and premium instances include up to 20. These slots are not priced separately from the plan.
No Extra Charges: A used staging slot does not cause extra charges as far as the App Service pricing goes. However, the usage of these slots can affect the overall performance of the VM since they share resources.
Other Resource Costs: While the staging slots themselves do not incur additional costs, other resources used by the staging environment (such as blob data storage, queue messages, etc.) will still be billed as part of the overall application framework.
Cost Optimization: To manage costs effectively, you can consider strategies like shutting down or scaling down non-production environments during non-business hours, which can help reduce compute costs.

In summary, staging environments in Azure are included in the cost of your App Service plan and do not incur additional charges for the slots themselves. However, other resource usage associated with these environments will still be billed.