How Much Do Virtual IT Labs Cost? Pricing Models Explained

A virtual IT lab costs a platform fee plus the cloud compute its virtual machines use. Published platform fees start at $6 per active user a month on CloudLabs, while Skillable’s published estimates add about $1 per lab hour on top of Azure. Priced on vendors’ own published rates, a 50-learner class with 2,000 lab hours costs about $660 on CloudLabs and about $2,330 to $2,390 on Skillable.

Most vendors stop at “contact sales”, but enough of them publish prices to compare the pricing models side by side. Quotes come in six shapes: per active user, per lab hour, prepaid hour packages, flat-rate subscriptions, per-seat catalogs and appliance licences. Below you’ll find each model with a real price, a published-price comparison, one class costed from start to finish, the extra costs quotes tend to leave out, and what the Azure Lab Services retirement does to your budget. All prices are in US dollars, taken from the vendors’ own sites on October 8, 2026.

What you pay for: the platform fee and the cloud bill

Every virtual IT lab bill has two parts, even when a vendor quotes one number.

The platform fee pays for the software: provisioning, the learner portal, LMS integration, scoring, reporting and support. Vendors charge it per user, per hour, per seat or as a flat subscription.

The cloud bill pays for the virtual machines, storage and network the labs run on. A small two-core VM runs for cents an hour, while a GPU machine can cost more than a dollar an hour. Some vendors pass this cost through at the cloud provider’s rates. CloudLabs, for example, bills cloud usage “at your actual Azure / AWS / GCP / Oracle compute, storage, and network rates” with no markup. Others fold it into an hourly or flat price, and some let you run labs in your own cloud subscription and pay the provider directly.

When you compare quotes, ask each vendor to split the two. A low platform fee can hide a high cloud bill, and a flat rate can hide hours you never use.

Virtual IT lab pricing models

Most virtual lab platforms use one of six pricing models.

Per active user per month

You pay a fixed monthly fee for each learner who actually uses a lab that month, plus cloud costs.

CloudLabs charges $6 per active user a month when labs run in a CloudLabs-managed subscription and $12 when they run in your own cloud subscription. Its documentation says a user counts only when they launch a lab VM, and administrators and instructors working on template VMs are exempt. Vocareum charges $10 per monthly active user on its Individual/Academic plan and states that “additional resource fees apply for AI, virtual machines and cloud labs”.

This model suits classes and cohorts with a clear start and end, because learners who don’t log in that month cost nothing.

Per lab hour

You pay for each hour a lab runs. Skillable publishes hourly estimates for organizations moving off Azure Lab Services. For a small VM (2 cores, 3.5 GB) it lists $1.163 an hour in total when you bring your own Azure subscription and $1.196 on a Skillable subscription. In every row of its table, the total is $1.00 more than the Azure estimate, and the page notes a one-time setup fee without stating the amount.

Azure Lab Services also bills by the hour, in Lab Units. The Azure Retail Prices API lists a Standard Lab Unit at $0.01 an hour, and a small VM uses 20 units, so it runs at $0.20 an hour. Azure Lab Services hasn’t accepted new customers since July 15, 2024, though.

Prepaid hour packages

You buy a block of lab hours for the year and top up if you run out. Instruqt calls this “consumption-based annual pricing packages”: you estimate the annual hours you need and can add extra hours before renewal. It doesn’t publish prices. Vendr, which tracks software contracts, reports a median Instruqt contract of $28,410 a year in its 2025 data, with a standard package of up to 1,000 hours for $15,000.

ReadyTech offers a variant: a monthly subscription fee plus metered consumption, where “unused units roll over”.

Flat-rate subscription

You pay one fixed price for an agreed level of capacity. CloudShare sells “a simple, upfront flat rate” with “no surprise fees” but doesn’t publish the rate. Vendr reports a median CloudShare contract of $34,008 a year, based on anonymized transactions on its platform.

Flat rates make budgets predictable, but you pay for the capacity whether learners use it or not.

Per-seat catalog subscription

You buy seats in a library of ready-made labs instead of running your own content. AWS Skill Builder’s Team plan costs $449 per seat a year with a minimum of five seats, and includes AWS Builder Labs. An individual subscription costs $29 a month.

These subscriptions are cheap per learner, but you can’t change the labs or point them at your own product or curriculum.

Perpetual appliance licence

You buy the platform and run it on your own servers. NDG publishes academic prices for NETLAB+: $9,995 for 16 active pods, including the first year of maintenance, and $1,995 a year for maintenance after that. Commercial licences start at $30,000 a year for 16 pods. The hardware, power and staff to run it are extra.

Published virtual lab prices compared

Platform	Pricing model	Published price	Cloud cost
CloudLabs	Per active user per month	$6 (managed subscription) or $12 (your own subscription)	Passed through at provider rates, no markup
Vocareum	Per monthly active user	$10 (Individual/Academic); Enterprise by quote	Extra resource fees, not published
Skillable	Per lab hour	About $1.00 per hour above the Azure estimate, plus a one-time setup fee	Included in the hourly estimate
Azure Lab Services	Per lab hour (Lab Units)	$0.01 per Lab Unit hour; a small VM uses 20	Included; closed to new customers, retires June 28, 2027
Instruqt	Prepaid annual hours	Not published (Vendr median: $28,410 a year)	Included
CloudShare	Flat-rate subscription	Not published (Vendr median: $34,008 a year)	Included
ReadyTech	Subscription plus metered use	Not published	Metered, unused units roll over
AWS Skill Builder	Per seat per year	$449 per seat, five-seat minimum	Included, AWS labs only
NDG NETLAB+	Appliance licence	$9,995 for 16 pods (academic)	Your own hardware

How much a virtual IT lab class costs: a 50-learner example

Skillable’s Azure Lab Services page prices one scenario: 50 students, 4 weeks, 10 hours a week each, for 2,000 lab hours in total. Priced on each vendor’s published small-VM rate, the same class costs between $400 and $2,392.

Platform	Platform fee	Cloud or hourly cost	Total	Per learner
CloudLabs (managed subscription)	50 × $6 = $300	2,000 h × $0.181 = $362	$662	$13.24
Skillable (your own Azure)	Included	Skillable’s own estimate	$2,326 + setup fee	$46.52
Skillable (Skillable subscription)	Included	Skillable’s own estimate	$2,392 + setup fee	$47.84
Azure Lab Services (existing customers only)	None	2,000 h × $0.20 = $400	$400	$8.00

The totals aren’t perfectly like for like:

CloudLabs’ small VM has 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of memory, and its published rate doesn’t name a region. Skillable’s and Azure Lab Services’ small VMs have 2 cores and 3.5 GB.
The CloudLabs platform fee assumes the four weeks fall in one billing month. A class that crosses into a second month pays the user fee twice, for $962 in total.
On CloudLabs with your own subscription, the platform fee is $600 and the cloud cost goes on your own Azure bill.
Azure Lab Services is cheapest on paper, but no new customer can buy it, and it shuts down on June 28, 2027.

Hidden costs in virtual lab pricing

These costs rarely appear in the headline quote:

Machines left running cost money. Microsoft’s cost guide for Azure Lab Services warns that “anytime a machine is Running, costs are being incurred, even if no one is connected to the VM.” Ask whether labs shut down on a schedule or when idle.
Template building isn’t in the estimate. Microsoft’s cost estimate leaves out the hours spent preparing template VMs, image galleries and VMs started by lab creators. On any platform, building and testing a lab image burns compute before a single learner logs in.
Setup fees are often separate. Skillable’s hourly table carries a one-time setup fee. Ask every vendor whether onboarding, lab building or migration is billed separately.
Overage is billed differently by each vendor. CloudLabs counts users each month on annual plans and bills any overage at the monthly rate. Instruqt sells extra hours before renewal. Find out what an extra user or hour costs before you sign.
Some plans have minimums. AWS Skill Builder’s Team plan starts at five seats, and NETLAB+ commercial licences start at 16 pods.
Support levels vary. CloudLabs’ VM Labs page lists standard email support with a 4-hour response and premium support with a 15-minute response. The page doesn’t say whether premium costs extra, so ask which tier the quote includes.

What the Azure Lab Services retirement means for lab costs

Azure Lab Services retires on June 28, 2027, and after that date you lose access to lab accounts, lab plans and labs. Microsoft’s retirement guide recommends Apporto, CloudLabs and Skillable as replacements.

The guide also flags two cost differences to plan for. Azure Lab Services covers the cost of storage as a complimentary service, so “dedicated virtual machines with persistent storage might not be as cost efficient with other lab solutions.” Your subscription’s core limits also “can’t be transferred”, so request new quota early.

To ease migration, CloudLabs offers up to $2,000 in Azure credits for qualified Azure Lab Services migrations, plus a trial of up to five labs with three deployments each.

How to estimate your virtual lab budget

Multiply the number of learners by the lab hours each will use. A four-week course at 10 hours a week is 40 hours per learner.
Pick a VM size. Most IT labs run on a small or medium VM. On CloudLabs’ rate card, a medium VM costs about twice the small rate, and the GPU sizes cost four to ten times as much.
Multiply total hours by the hourly VM rate. Add storage if VMs keep their disks between sessions.
Add the platform fee in the vendor’s unit: per active user per month, per hour, or the annual package.
Add template build time, setup fees, support tier and a buffer for learners who leave labs running.
Divide the total by the number of learners, and compare that figure across quotes.

FAQ

How much do virtual labs cost per student?

On published rates, a student using 40 hours of a small VM costs about $13 on CloudLabs with a managed subscription and about $47 on Skillable. Azure Lab Services works out to about $8 but takes no new customers. Platforms that don’t publish prices, such as Instruqt and CloudShare, sell annual packages, and Vendr reports median contracts of about $28,000 and $34,000 a year.

Is per-user or per-hour lab pricing cheaper?

Per-user pricing is cheaper once learners use a lab for more than a few hours a month. On published small-VM rates, CloudLabs’ $6 user fee plus $0.181 an hour overtakes Skillable’s $1.163 an hour at about six hours per learner per month. For a learner who opens a lab once for an hour or two, hourly pricing costs less.

Are cloud costs included in virtual lab pricing?

It depends on the vendor. Skillable, Instruqt, CloudShare and AWS Skill Builder fold compute into their price. CloudLabs passes cloud costs through at the provider’s rates with no markup, and Vocareum charges resource fees on top of its user fee. Always ask for the platform fee and the cloud cost as separate lines.

Where does the “$35 to $60 per user per month” figure come from?

It comes from a December 2024 CompTIA blog post, which says that “subscription pricing ranges from $35 to $60 a month per user” without citing a source. Other roundups repeat it. None of the vendors priced here publishes a per-user subscription in that range, so don’t budget against it.

Conclusion

For cohort-based IT training, CloudLabs has the lowest published cost of the platforms still open to new customers.

At $6 per active user a month on a managed subscription, a 50-learner class with 2,000 lab hours costs $662, against about $2,330 to $2,390 on Skillable’s own estimates. Users who don’t launch a lab aren’t billed, and admins and instructors building templates are exempt. Cloud usage passes through at provider rates with no markup, so you see exactly what the VMs cost. Labs run on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or Oracle Cloud, or in your own subscription for $12 per active user.

Microsoft names CloudLabs as a recommended replacement for Azure Lab Services, and qualified migrations can get up to $2,000 in Azure credits. CloudLabs has provisioned more than 5 million labs and upskilled more than 1 million participants.

If you need a ready-made catalog of AWS labs for a few people, a per-seat subscription such as AWS Skill Builder may cost less. For labs built around your own courses or product, start with CloudLabs’ published pricing.

For platform comparisons, see the top 10 virtual lab platforms and the best cyber range platforms.