Windows Server 2025 Licensing & Pricing

PRICING

Windows Server pricing and licensing overview

Choose from two primary editions of Windows Server based on the size of your organization, as well as virtualization and datacenter requirements.

Connect with a partner Azure Hybrid Benefit

Windows Server 2025

Standard edition

Suggested MSRP: VARIABLE¹

Ideal for physical or minimally virtualized environments
Core-based licensing model
Requires Windows Server CAL²

Windows Server 2025

Datacenter edition

Suggested MSRP: VARIABLE¹

Ideal for highly virtualized datacenters and cloud environments
Core-based licensing model
Requires Windows Server CAL²

Compare editions

Windows Server 2025 editions

See full comparison

	Windows Server 2025 Standard Edition³	Windows Server 2025 Datacenter Edition³
Features
Maximum RAM	4 PB for hosts that support 5-level paging 256 TB for hosts that support 4-level paging	4 PB for hosts that support 5-level paging 256 TB for hosts that support 4-level paging
Can be used as virtualization guest	Yes; 2 virtual machines, plus one Hyper-V host per license	Yes; unlimited⁴virtual machines, plus one Hyper-V host per license
Virtual OSE / Hyper-V isolated containers	2	Unlimited
Windows Server Containers	Unlimited Windows containers and up to two Hyper-V containers	Unlimited Windows containers and Hyper-V containers
Storage replica	1 partnership and 1 resource group with a single 2TB volume	Unlimited

Payment options

Traditional licensing or pay as you go

In addition to above licensing options, customers without unlimited virtualization can now use pay as you go to scale up with additional machines to meet capacity bursts or temporary needs.

Connect to Azure Arc to transact
Variable pricing
Pay only for what you need

Learn more

Take the next step with Windows Server

Find a partner

Connect with partners

Find a partner to help with your Windows Server upgrade or Azure migration project.

Learn more

Licensing

Learn more about Windows Server licensing

Find additional licensing resources and FAQs on our licensing site.

Learn more

Azure Hybrid Benefit

Learn how to save when you migrate Windows Server or SQL Server to Azure

Save when you move to Azure by applying existing Windows Server licenses with Software Assurance.

Learn more

[1]
Please contact your Microsoft representative for a quote.
[2]
CALs are required for every user or device accessing a server. See the Product Use Rights for details.
[3]
Datacenter and Standard edition pricing is for 16 core licenses
[4]
Unlimited virtualization is not available through pay-as-you-go for on-premises Azure Arc enabled servers. This new pay as you go offering is purchased on a per-instance basis. Learn more about pay as you go.