Azure bills usually grow not because the cloud is expensive, but because resources are used with on-premises habits: every hour a resource runs is billed. Start with visibility by tagging every resource by department, project, environment and owner, enforcing tags with Azure Policy and setting budgets and alerts in Azure Cost Management.
Then rightsize virtual machines based on real usage and Azure Advisor recommendations, and schedule test and development environments to shut down outside office hours, making sure VMs are deallocated. For steady workloads, consider Reserved Instances for fixed sizes and regions, or an Azure Savings Plan for flexibility, but only after rightsizing. Eligible Windows Server and SQL Server licenses can reduce costs through Azure Hybrid Benefit. Use hot, cool, cold and archive storage tiers with lifecycle rules, clean up orphaned disks, public IPs and snapshots every month, and review architecture choices such as managed databases and Spot VMs. Treat it as an ongoing FinOps practice with monthly reviews.
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