Perks fall short as third-party AI models rack up costs with minimal notification
Complaints about Microsoft's startup credits and Azure AI Foundry keep mounting, with users reporting surprise credit card charges and invoices they never saw coming.
The culprit is the use of third-party models: Accessing Anthropic's Claude via Azure AI Foundry incurs charges that startup credits don't cover, something a Microsoft support forum moderator initially insisted wasn't the case.
To make matters worse, the system provides few to no notifications warning users when startup credits are converted into real credit card charges.
The Register spoke to Riyaj Shaikh, who was billed for several thousand dollars after he mistakenly assumed startup credits covered his foray into Anthropic's products via Azure. Shaikh found himself trapped in a hellish loop - when he sought a refund, Microsoft pointed him to Anthropic and then Anthropic pointed him back to Microsoft.
Bogdan Sevriukov, a CTO with decades of experience and no stranger to cloud computing, had a similar story to tell. Tempted by the prospect of startup credits, worth up to $150,000, Sevriukov created an Azure account in September 2025. When Microsoft announced its Anthropic partnership in November and advertised Claude availability for Foundry customers, he assumed his credits applied.
They didn't. Microsoft billed him nearly a thousand euros.
Like Shaikh, Sevriukov found himself shuttled between Microsoft and Anthropic with neither taking responsibility. He told us a technical lead for Microsoft Azure Subscription and Billing Management acknowledged that "while deploying the services, the system did not notify you that these credits could not be consumed with your available benefits." He received no warning when the charges began to rack up.
"AWS is very different," said Sevriukov. "It communicates reliably, and resolves overspending tickets in a client-oriented manner. By the way, they offer Claude models – and, yes, they are covered by startup credits."
After the Azure charges - still unresolved - Sevriukov told us he plans to switch to Google's Gemini in future.
Shaikh and Sevriukov's incidents aren't isolated. They join Takuya Tominaga who last week complained about his experience with Microsoft.
The fact that seasoned professionals are getting caught out in this way and face unexpected charges, with no simple path to resolving the issue, is a warning to anyone using AI tech. It's also worth noting that entire companies - Duckbill being one - exist solely to help users wrangle cloud spend.
Microsoft told us: "We listen closely to customer feedback and are continuously working to provide clear guidance in our product documentation, including pricing details and credit eligibility."
Clearly, not all customers agree. ®