How can I disable Azure SQL Auto-Pause while remaining on the Free offer?

Question

How can I disable Azure SQL Auto-Pause while remaining on the Free offer?

Jordan Dean 0

This is my first time using Azure. I deployed a web application to Azure as part of a University Capstone project. For the database, I am using Azure SQL Database Free offer with the Serverless compute tier.

The only issue I'm having is with the auto-pause feature. My app will not load because it takes too long to wake up the database when the app tries to launch. This causes the app to fail during startup with an HTTP 500.30 error. Even after the database resumes, the application remains in a failed state unless I manually restart the App Service. I have confirmed this behavior multiple times.

My question is, how can I turn off Auto-Pause without switching off the Free offer. I am trying to avoid spending any money, but am at my wits end with this. Any help will be appreciated. Thank you.

SIVASANKAR YEDDULA 150 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-08-17T18:12:25.8766667+00:00

Hi Jordan Dean,

Thank you for providing the details.

We understand that your application is experiencing delays and HTTP 500 errors because the Azure SQL Database is auto-pausing and requires time to resume. If you want to keep the database available and prevent it from being paused after the free monthly limit is reached,

please follow these steps:

Open the Azure Portal.

Go to your Azure SQL Database.

Select Compute + storage. Under Free Database Offer,

locate Behavior when free limit is reached.

Select Continue using database for additional charges.

Save the changes.

With this option, the database can continue running after the free monthly allowance is exhausted. Any usage above the free allowance will be charged at the applicable serverless rates.

Please note that once Continue using database for additional charges is selected, the database cannot be changed back to the Auto-pause the database until next month option.

If avoiding charges is your priority, we recommend keeping the Auto-pause option enabled and handling the application accordingly.

Regards,

Azure Support Team.
SIVASANKAR YEDDULA 150 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-08-20T10:16:15.22+00:00

Hi Jordan Dean,

I hope you had a chance to review the information shared earlier, and I hope this information has been helpful! If you still have questions, please let us know what is needed in the comments so the question can be answered.

Answer recommended by moderator

Marcin Policht 105.8K MVP Volunteer Moderator

You cannot completely disable Auto-pause while keeping an Azure SQL Database on the specific Free Database offer. Auto-pause is an inherent part of how the Free offer provides its monthly free compute allocation. There is no setting that allows you to retain the Free offer while telling Azure SQL Database to remain continuously running.

What you are experiencing makes sense given the way your application starts. When the database is paused, the first database operation has to wait for Azure SQL Database to resume. If your ASP.NET Core application attempts to connect to or query the database as part of its startup process, that operation can time out or fail. The result can be an HTTP 500.30, ASP.NET Core app failed to start. Once the application process has failed, the fact that the database subsequently finishes waking up does not necessarily cause App Service to restart the application, which explains why manually restarting the App Service gets it working again.

A zero-cost solution would involve making the application tolerant of the database temporarily being unavailable rather than trying to disable Auto-pause. If you are using Entity Framework Core, for example, you can enable SQL connection resiliency with EnableRetryOnFailure:

options.UseSqlServer(connectionString, sqlOptions => sqlOptions.EnableRetryOnFailure(
    maxRetryCount: 5,
    maxRetryDelay: TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30),
    errorNumbersToAdd: null));

This tells Entity Framework Core to retry transient SQL connection failures rather than immediately giving up. However, if your application performs mandatory database operations during ASP.NET Core startup, you may also need to change that startup code so that a temporarily unavailable database does not cause the entire application to terminate. Ideally, the web application should be capable of starting even when the database is still waking up and should retry the database operation afterward.

So, if your priority is keeping the project completely free, there isn't a configuration change that will give you a permanently running SQL Database under the Free offer. The better approach is to modify the application so that the delay caused by waking the database is treated as a temporary condition rather than a fatal startup failure. That also makes the application more robust in general, because databases can be temporarily unavailable for reasons other than Auto-pause.

If the above response helps answer your question, remember to "Accept Answer" so that others in the community facing similar issues can easily find the solution. Your contribution is highly appreciated.

hth

Marcin

0 comments

2 additional answers

Your answer

SIVASANKAR YEDDULA 150 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-08-17T18:12:25.8766667+00:00

Hi Jordan Dean,

Thank you for providing the details.

We understand that your application is experiencing delays and HTTP 500 errors because the Azure SQL Database is auto-pausing and requires time to resume. If you want to keep the database available and prevent it from being paused after the free monthly limit is reached,

please follow these steps:

Open the Azure Portal.

Go to your Azure SQL Database.

Select Compute + storage. Under Free Database Offer,

locate Behavior when free limit is reached.

Select Continue using database for additional charges.

Save the changes.

With this option, the database can continue running after the free monthly allowance is exhausted. Any usage above the free allowance will be charged at the applicable serverless rates.

Please note that once Continue using database for additional charges is selected, the database cannot be changed back to the Auto-pause the database until next month option.

If avoiding charges is your priority, we recommend keeping the Auto-pause option enabled and handling the application accordingly.

Regards,

Azure Support Team.
SIVASANKAR YEDDULA 150 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-08-20T10:16:15.22+00:00

Hi Jordan Dean,

I hope you had a chance to review the information shared earlier, and I hope this information has been helpful! If you still have questions, please let us know what is needed in the comments so the question can be answered.

Answer 1

Hi Jordan Dean,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Q&A forum.

Unfortunately, you cannot disable Auto-Pause and continue using the Azure SQL Database Free offer. Auto-pause is part of how the Free offer manages the included compute allowance and there is currently no option to keep the database continuously running while remaining on the Free offer.

The behavior you are seeing is expected for serverless databases that auto-pause after a period of inactivity. When the application attempts to connect, the database must first resume, which can introduce startup delays.

Your options are:

Continue using the Free offer and modify the application to handle database resume delays (for example, connection retry logic during startup).
Switch to paid usage, which allows greater control over the serverless configuration and database availability. Once a database is moved off the Free offer, it cannot be switched back to the Free offer.

For a university project where minimizing cost is important, the recommended approach is to keep the Free offer enabled and update the application startup logic to tolerate the database wake-up period.

If this answer helps, please consider clicking Accept Answer so that other community members facing a similar issue can benefit from it as well.

If you have any further questions, please let us know. We will be happy to assist.

Answer 2

Erland Sommarskog 137.1K MVP Volunteer Moderator

In the portal, go to the blade for the database. You will see something like this:

User's image

Click on the text Serverless... This will take you to a page where there is a dropdown for Service Tier:

User's image

Select one of Basic or Standard. Basic can be very slow, but an S0 or S1 should be OK (but less powerful to what you have now). Be sure that the lever for DTU is to left, or almost to the left.

A DTU-based database is always online, and at the same time S0 and S1 are very budget-friendly makes you free credits last longer. If you only switch from Serverless to provisioned General Purpose, you will run out of credits quite quickly.

Note: I have never used the free offer myself, but I believe the same choices are available for the free tier, as for the paid alternatives.

Erland Sommarskog 137.1K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2026-08-16T19:20:40.7366667+00:00

Marcin's response intrigued me, since it contradicts what I said. I set up a free database, and indeed he is correct. To be able to change the service tier, I would need to disable the free offer.

I will let my post remain as it is, because even if you cannot get a free DTU-based database, they are indeed very budget- friendly.

Marcin also makes some suggestions about modifications to your application. I like to point out, that these changes are very much applicable, even if you decide to switch to a provisioned tier. In the cloud there can always be short outages, for instance, because Microsoft fail over your database to a different server, so that they can do maintenance. So you should always make your applications resilient.