Capacity calculator¶
Estimate how much Business Central database capacity Media Bridge frees in your tenant, and what that capacity costs compared with Azure Blob Storage.
Disclaimer
The prices on this page are subject to market fluctuations, exchange rates and your licensing agreement, and serve only as an indication. The calculator gives an estimate, not a quote. The Framework cannot be held liable for discrepancies or for results that differ from these estimates.
How Business Central capacity works¶
A Business Central online tenant has one database capacity pool, shared by all its environments: production, UAT, DEV and any other sandbox. The pool is made up of:
- a fixed 80 GB per tenant;
- an allowance per licence (Essentials, Premium, Device, Partner Sandbox);
- 4 GB per extra production environment;
- any capacity add-ons you bought.
You see the split in the Business Central admin center, on the Capacity page, under Storage capacity, by source.
Pictures stored in Business Central live in the Tenant Media and Tenant Media Thumbnails tables, and Microsoft counts them in the pool. Every sandbox copied from production stores the same pictures again. With three environments, each GB of pictures takes three GB of capacity.
When the tenant goes over its capacity, daily work continues, but Microsoft blocks creating, copying and restoring environments until you free space or buy more capacity.
Find your picture volume
In Business Central, search for Table Information and look at the size of the Tenant Media and Tenant Media Thumbnails tables in each environment.
Price per GB¶
| Where the GB lives | € / GB / month | € / GB / year | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| BC Database Capacity, 1 GB add-on | 10.00 | 120.00 | List price $10, bought per GB through your CSP |
| BC Database Capacity, 100 GB add-on | 5.00 | 60.00 | $500 per tenant per month, bought as a block of 100 GB |
| BC Database Capacity Overage | 5.00 | 60.00 | Only available after buying the 100 GB add-on |
| Azure Blob Storage, Hot, LRS | ≈ 0.02 | ≈ 0.24 | Recommended tier: pictures are read every time a card opens |
| SharePoint (Microsoft 365) | 0.00 | 0.00 | Free while it fits in the tenant's pooled Microsoft 365 storage |
The Business Central capacity prices are Microsoft's USD list prices, used here as round euro figures; your CSP price may differ. Every price is editable in the calculator.
Calculator¶
The calculator opens with an example: a tenant with 149 GB of capacity, 108 GB in use, 25 GB of pictures in production, and UAT and DEV copied from production. Replace the values with your own.
Microsoft capacity avoided uses the cheapest way to buy the same capacity: 1 GB add-ons, or the 100 GB add-on plus overage once that is cheaper.
Examples for a 125 GB tenant¶
Three environments (production, UAT, DEV), default prices.
| Pictures per environment | Capacity freed | Share of 125 GB | Microsoft option avoided / year | Azure Blob / year | Gross saving / year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 GB | 15 GB | 12% | €1,800 | €16 | €1,784 |
| 10 GB | 30 GB | 24% | €3,600 | €19 | €3,581 |
| 20 GB | 60 GB | 48% | €6,000 | €26 | €5,974 |
| 40 GB | 120 GB | 96% | €7,200 | €41 | €7,159 |
Read the numbers correctly¶
- Cash saving or headroom. The saving becomes cash when the tenant is at or over its capacity, or would otherwise buy capacity. Below that, it is headroom: room for growth, a new company or an extra sandbox without a purchase.
- Sandboxes. Pictures leave a sandbox when it is copied from production after the migration, or when you run Clear item pictures in the sandbox. The calculator counts Azure storage per environment, so a separate container per environment is included in the cost.
- Several companies. With a media source company, one company holds the item pictures for the others in the same environment.
- Scope. Media Bridge moves item, item variant and employee pictures. Other files stored in the database, such as document attachments, are not moved.
Sources¶
- Microsoft Learn, Managing capacity: 80 GB tenant base, allowance per licence, shared pool, Tenant Media counted, admin actions blocked over capacity, capacity add-ons.
- Summary of Microsoft's announcement Business Central database capacity changes as of July 1, 2021: $10 per GB, $500 per 100 GB, $5 overage.
- Microsoft Azure Retail Prices API, West Europe, EUR: Hot LRS data stored €0.0168 per GB per month, read operations €0.0037 and write operations €0.0464 per 10,000. The calculator rounds storage up to €0.02.
Prices checked on 1 October 2026.