What's the difference between Azure Reservations and Azure Savings Plans?

Both offer discounted pricing in exchange for a usage commitment, but they work differently:

Reservations

Commit to a specific resource type and size (e.g. a particular VM size) in a specific region for 1 or 3 years. Best when you know exactly what you'll be running long-term.

Savings Plans

Commit to a spend amount per hour rather than a specific resource — the discount applies flexibly across eligible compute usage, even if the specific VM sizes or services change over time.

Savings Plans generally offer more flexibility at a slightly lower maximum discount than a matched Reservation; Reservations offer the deepest discount if your usage is genuinely stable and predictable.