Visual Studio: Microsoft’s browser IDE changes name and is cheaper

Microsoft changes the name of the Visual Studio Online online development environment. The service is now called Visual Studio Codespaces. The range of features remains the same: Developers receive a complete development environment that runs on a Microsoft cloud-hosted virtual machine. This costs money accordingly per hour. However, the manufacturer drastically lowers the price. The changes are expected to take place with the start of the Build 2020 developer conference on May 19.

The standard level will drop from $ 0.45 an hour to $ 0.17 an hour. The Premium tier is $ 0.34 per hour instead of $ 0.87 per hour. Eight CPU cores and 16 GB of RAM are provided here compared to four cores and 8 GB of RAM in the standard version for the VM.

New offering with two CPU cores

“We want to make sure that as many people as possible have access and use code spaces, especially with the challenges we are currently facing.”Microsoft manager Nik Molnar says in the blog post. For this reason, the company is probably also introducing a new base tier. Customers can rent a virtual machine with two cores and 4 GB of RAM. It currently costs $ 0.24 per hour. However, the price will soon drop to $ 0.08 an hour as the other levels drop.

In addition to the Azure cloud, developers can also use self-hosted virtual machines. Clients register them on the platform and can then use them with Visual Studio Code or the Codespaces browser editor. The product is now available under a new name on the Microsoft website. As mentioned, the new reduced prices will only be introduced in May.