Azure Functions Beyond the Basics Continues from Azure Functions for .NET Developers (Parts 1-9) Part 1: Running Azure Functions in Docker: Why and How Part 2: Docker Pitfalls I Hit (And How to Avoid Them) Part 3: Scaling Azure Functions: Consumption vs Premium vs Dedicated (you are here) Your Consumption plan function works fine in dev. Then production traffic arrives, the app scales to zero during a quiet period, and the next request takes 6.8 seconds. The question that follows is always the same: do you switch to Premium at $146/month, or is there something between free-with-cold-starts and always-warm-but-always-billing? Azure Functions has five hosting options now (Consumption, Flex Consumption, Premium, Dedicated, and Container Apps), each with a different billing model and a different answer to that question. This article covers the four App Service-based plans; Container Apps is a different deployment model aimed at containerized microservices. All code samples are in the companion repo .…