Introducing Azure's New Tier... Basic

In Response to Google And Amazon, Microsoft Drops Azure Prices, Adds New "Basic" Tier

In addition to lowering prices in response to Google & AWS drastic price cuts, Microsoft has introduced a new tier for Azure.

These “Basic” instances will cost up to 27 percent less than the regular instances and have similar specs. They do not, however, include load balancing and auto-scaling.

A comparison of Azure to AWS pricing can be found here. 

Microsoft Azure – Innovation, Quality and Price - Windows Azure - Site Home - MSDN Blogs