Data warehouse cost UK: cloud options priced for SMEs

A UK SME can run a cloud data warehouse for roughly £30 to £230 a month at list prices as of November 2026, excluding VAT. Azure SQL Database sits at the low end and a small Microsoft Fabric capacity, left running, at the high end. Building it costs far more, usually from about £5,000.

The Microsoft figures below are UK South list prices from the Azure Retail Prices API, read on 11 November 2026 and multiplied up by us. Google, Snowflake and AWS figures are shown as those vendors publish them, because we could not confirm a London price for any of the three. Everything that is our own judgement is labelled as such.

What does a data warehouse cost to run each month?

The table uses one small workload throughout: about 20 GB of data, loaded once a night, feeding Power BI reports that import the data rather than querying it live.

Option	How you pay	List price (as of November 2026)	Small workload, per month
Azure SQL Database free offer	Monthly allowance per database	100,000 vCore-seconds and 32 GB free	£0, for a proof of concept
Azure SQL Database Standard S1	Fixed daily price	£0.9097 a day	About £28
Azure SQL Database Standard S3	Fixed daily price	£4.5472 a day	About £138
Azure SQL Database serverless	Per vCore-hour while active, plus storage	£0.4904 per vCore-hour, £0.0994 per GB-month	About £39
Microsoft Fabric F2, left running	Per capacity unit per hour	£0.1579 per CU-hour	About £231
Microsoft Fabric F2, one-year reservation	Annual commitment	£822.53 per CU per year	About £137
Google BigQuery	Per TiB scanned, plus storage	$6.25 per TiB after 1 TiB free, first 10 GiB of storage free (Iowa list)	Often very low at this size
Snowflake	Credits while a warehouse runs	X-Small uses 1 credit an hour; credit price varies	Ask for a quote
Amazon Redshift Serverless	Per second while active	From $1.50 an hour at the 4 RPU minimum	Depends on hours active

Three things stand out. Fixed-price Azure SQL is hard to beat for a small, steady workload. Serverless only saves money if the database is genuinely asleep most of the day. And Fabric is priced for what else it does, as our Fabric pricing guide explains, so it rarely wins on warehouse cost alone.

BigQuery's pricing is the most attractive on paper at small volumes, but you pay for bytes scanned, so a report that queries live and carelessly can multiply the bill. Snowflake bills per second with a 60-second minimum each time a warehouse starts, and suspends idle warehouses automatically. Redshift Serverless offers a $300 credit for first-time users, which expires after 90 days.

How is the serverless example worked out?

Azure SQL serverless bills per second while the database is awake, and only storage while it is paused. For the nightly load above we assumed a one-hour load at 2 vCores, followed by a 15-minute wait before the database pauses:

• Compute: 2 vCores × 1.25 hours × 30.4 days × £0.4904 = about £37.
• Storage: 20 GB × £0.0994 = about £2.

The total is about £39 a month. The auto-pause delay matters more than it looks. Microsoft's default is 60 minutes, not 15, and at the default the same workload costs about £62 a month.

This is also why the way you connect Power BI changes the bill. If reports query the database live through the working day, it never sleeps. Eight hours a day across 21.7 working days, averaging one vCore, adds about £85 a month, at which point the fixed-price Standard tier is usually better value.

Which option suits which SME?

This is our view, not a vendor's.

• You are on Microsoft 365 and Power BI, with tens of gigabytes: start with Azure SQL Database. It is plain SQL, cheap, and any developer can maintain it.
• You also need pipelines, a lakehouse or data science in one place: Fabric earns its price. Microsoft Learn confirms a warehouse needs an F capacity or a trial, and that Pro-only users cannot create one. Our lakehouse explainer covers which Fabric store to choose.
• Your data already lives in Google Analytics or Google Ads: BigQuery is the natural home, and Google lists those connectors as free to transfer.
• Your team already knows Snowflake or AWS: existing skills usually outweigh small differences in list price.

If you are comparing Microsoft's own routes, our Fabric vs Synapse guide sets out when "just Power BI" is enough.

A Fabric F2 can be paused outside its load window, which at two hours a day would cost about £19 a month in compute. Storage continues at £0.018 per GB-month. It needs automation to resume and pause reliably, and anything stored on that capacity is unavailable while it is paused, so it is not a set-and-forget saving.

What does it cost to build a data warehouse?

Build cost depends on the number of sources and how untidy they are, far more than on data volume. The day counts below are our own planning assumptions, not survey data. The money is calculated at £500 a day, the IT Jobs Watch UK median contract rate for a data engineer in the six months to 11 November 2026 (10th to 90th percentile £370 to £688). In our view consultancy rates usually sit above contractor medians, so treat these as a floor.

Scope	What it includes	Days	Cost at £500 a day
Small	Two or three sources, one subject area such as sales	10–15	£5,000–£7,500
Medium	Five to eight sources, history tracked, several subject areas	20–35	£10,000–£17,500
Larger	Many sources, data quality rules, governance, multiple teams	40–70	£20,000–£35,000

If the warehouse is part of a wider reporting project, our guide to budgeting a Power BI project covers the rest of the spend, and our Power BI pricing estimator works out the licences.

Which costs do warehouse quotes often leave out?

The platform is rarely the biggest number. Check that a quote covers these:

• Getting data in. Pipeline tools and third-party connectors have their own pricing, often based on rows or connections moved.
• Upkeep. Source systems change and loads break. We plan on one to two days a month for a small warehouse, which is £500 to £1,000 at the rate above and can exceed the platform bill several times over.
• Power BI licences. A warehouse does not change who needs a licence. Pro was £10.80 per user per month as of November 2026.
• Environments. A separate test database can double a fixed monthly platform cost.
• Data leaving the platform. Moving data between clouds or regions can be charged, so keep the warehouse near its reports.
• VAT. Every price in this guide excludes it.

Do you actually need a data warehouse?

Often not yet. A well-built Power BI model with Power Query handles more than vendors suggest. In our view a warehouse earns its cost when refreshes overrun, several reports rebuild the same logic, you need history your source systems overwrite, or other tools need the same clean data.

If that sounds familiar, our data engineering service starts by mapping your sources, and our data and BI team can tell you whether the simpler route will do.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a data warehouse cost for a small UK business?

At list prices as of November 2026, excluding VAT, running one costs roughly £30 to £230 a month for a small workload on Microsoft's platforms in UK South. Building it is the larger cost: our own data engineering projects typically start from £5,000.

Do I need Microsoft Fabric to have a data warehouse?

No. Azure SQL Database works as a small warehouse without any Fabric capacity. Fabric only becomes necessary if you want its warehouse, lakehouse or pipeline workloads, and Microsoft Learn is clear that those need an F capacity or a trial: Power BI Pro alone cannot create them.

Can I try a data warehouse for free?

Yes. The Azure SQL Database free offer gives each database 100,000 vCore-seconds, 32 GB of data and 32 GB of backup storage a month, with no SLA. Microsoft Fabric also offers a 60-day trial equivalent to 64 capacity units. Both suit a proof of concept better than a production system.

Does a data warehouse replace Power BI licences?

No. A warehouse stores and prepares the data, and Power BI still presents it. Anyone publishing or viewing shared reports still needs a licence, which was £10.80 per user per month for Power BI Pro in the UK as of November 2026, on any Fabric capacity smaller than F64.

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Easy Insight is a UK consultancy for AI, web, apps and data — senior specialists only, no juniors.