How to Create a Free Azure VM with a Student Account

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Are you having trouble with a Marketplace Free VM offer? There’s a known bug that sets the public IP to the correct Standard SKU but keeps the allocation as Dynamic, which is not correct. The best way to bypass this issue and ensure your VM qualifies for the free tier is to create it manually using the correct settings.

Start by visiting this link to begin creating your VM: Create a Virtual Machine. This guide covers Linux VMs, and there are notes below for Windows VMs as well.

For creating a Linux VM, make sure to set these parameters:

Size: Standard_B1s
Image: Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS – x64 Gen2
OS disk size: 64 GiB (P6)
OS disk type: Premium SSD (locally-redundant storage)
Monitoring tab: Disable Boot diagnostics

To avoid extra charges, do not enable options like backups or other add-ons that come with additional costs.

Once your VM is set up, keep an eye on your costs daily by checking your subscription. If you used the correct configuration, you shouldn’t see any charges except for the public IP address. Keep in mind that billing for the IP address can be delayed by several hours after creation, with charges around $3.65 per month if the IP is associated with your VM. To save money, you can detach the IP when not in use and delete it, then recreate and associate it again when needed.

When you’re ready to use the VM again, simply create a new public IP and link it to your VM’s network interface.

For Windows VMs, use small disk Windows Server images with a P6 LRS disk to stay within free tier limits.

Don’t forget to expand the disk partition after creating your Linux VM so you’re utilizing the full 64 GiB. You can follow this guide for Linux: Expand a Disk Partition and Filesystem. Similarly, for Windows, expand the disk to use the full capacity here: Expand Disks for Windows Azure VMs.

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