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.