Unauthorized anonymous requests - are they charged?

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Unauthorized anonymous requests - are they charged?

Syine Mineta 20

I cannot find any conclusive statement on this topic. What I've found so far are:

The first document talks about classic metrics, which is retired now. I'm assuming that, considering the transition, requests with following response types are not charged:

ClientThrottlingError, any Authentication
ServerOtherError, any Authentication
ServerThrottlingError, any Authentication
ServerTimeoutError, any Authentication
AuthorizationError, Authentication = Anonymous

What I want to know is whether requests to public endpoints with result "Response type" = "AuthorizationError" and "Authentication" = "Anonymous" are billed or not. I'm thinking they're supposed to be not, but there's no concrete documented fact that confirms this (in context of the new Azure Monitor metrics).

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Answer 1

Hello Syine Mineta

From the Storage Analytics logged operations and status messages page:

For AnonymousAuthorizationError (which corresponds to AuthorizationError with Authentication = Anonymous), the Billable value is No. This means anonymous requests that fail due to authorization errors were not billed under classic metrics

In your case, if a request returns an "AuthorizationError" because it was made anonymously and without permits, it does not result in consumption of the Azure resources and thus should not incur charges. Usually, these unauthorized requests do not add to the count of successful transactions that are billed.

For example, if the request is unauthorized and returns an error code (like 401), this generally indicates that the request was not valid and should not be charged. The relevant documents discuss that certain error responses to anonymous requests, such as "401 Unauthorized" and "404 Not Found," typically suggest that those requests have not been charged.

Logged Request Status Messages

The following table contains the status messages that are logged and reported in metrics data. A definition for each column is listed below:

Status Message: The status message for a request logged by Storage Analytics. This value is included in log entries and is the name of a column in each Metrics table.

Description: A description of the status message including HTTP verbs and status codes, if applicable.

Billable: A yes/no value that indicates whether or not the request is billable. For more information on billing in Azure Storage, see Azure Blob Storage pricing.

Availability: A yes/no value that indicates whether or not the request is included in the availability calculation for a storage service or a specific API operation. All unexpected errors result in reduced availability for the storage service or the specified API operation.

Refer Document: Logged Request Status Messages

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Syine Mineta 20 Reputation points

2026-01-13T11:28:04.16+00:00

What I want to know is that whether the billable property of status messages listed in the page (Storage Analytics logged operations and status messages), which is outdated now, still remains the same to this day with the new metrics scheme that has "Response type" and "Authentication", instead of "status message".
Ganesh Patapati 11,835 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-01-15T04:23:14.2666667+00:00

Hello Syine Mineta

Thanks for the reply!

Yes, that change still applies today. The classic Storage Analytics metrics were officially retired on January 9, 2024, and Azure Storage now uses Azure Monitor metrics exclusively. The new metrics schema introduced by Azure Monitor includes dimensions like:

Response type (e.g., Success, ClientOtherError, ServerTimeoutError)

Authentication (e.g., OAuth, SharedKey, Anonymous)

These replace older fields such as status message from the classic metrics. So if you were previously relying on classic metrics, you must transition to Azure Monitor metrics

Understanding billable requests

See Understanding Azure Storage Billing - Bandwidth, Transactions, and Capacity.

NOTE: Storage Analytics supports only logs. Storage Analytics metrics are retired.

See Transition to metrics in Azure Monitor.

While Storage Analytics logs are still supported, we recommend that you use Azure Storage logs in Azure Monitor instead of Storage Analytics logs.

I hope this has been helpful!

If above is unclear and/or you are unsure about something add a comment below.

Please click Accept Answer and upvote if the above was helpful.
Ganesh Patapati 11,835 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-01-19T14:04:12.22+00:00

Hello Syine Mineta

Can you please update us if the action plan provided was helpful?

Should there be any follow-up questions or concerns, please let us know and we shall try to address them.

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Unauthorized anonymous requests - are they charged?

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