Azure retail pricing API has two PAYG Linux entries per SKU
Reconciling an Azure customer s actual billed rate against the published retail pricing API for B-series VMs
The Azure retail pricing API (prices.azure.com) returns TWO active PAYG Linux entries for each B-series v2 SKU in the same region. The lower one has productName Virtual Machines Bpsv2 Series and the higher one has productName Bpsv2 Series Cloud Services — for B2pls_v2 in westus2 that is $0.0336/hr vs $0.0428/hr (~28% difference). Cross-checking against actual billed usage via the Microsoft.CostManagement/query REST API (az rest --method post --url subscriptions/SUB/providers/Microsoft.CostManagement/query?api-version=2023-11-01) shows the customer was billed at the HIGHER Cloud Services rate exactly. The lower Virtual Machines line is either a stale artifact or quoted-only rate that does not actually bill. Always filter for the Cloud Services productName, not Virtual Machines, when projecting forward. The az consumption usage list CLI command returns None for most cost fields and is unreliable; the Cost Management query REST API is the source of truth.
When projecting Azure VM costs from the retail pricing API, filter to productName starts with the SKU family name followed by Cloud Services not Virtual Machines. To validate against actual billing, use az rest --method post against Microsoft.CostManagement/query with grouping by ResourceId and Meter — divide each meter s cost by its usageQuantity hours to get the real per-hour rate. The legacy az consumption usage list CLI returns None for most fields so avoid it.