Upgrading a basic public IP address to Standard SKU - Guidance
Important
On September 30, 2025, Basic SKU public IPs will be retired. For more information, see the official announcement. If you are currently using Basic SKU public IPs, make sure to upgrade to Standard SKU public IPs prior to the retirement date. This article will help guide you through the upgrade process.
In this article, learn guidance for upgrading your Basic SKU public IPs to Standard SKU. Standard public IPs are recommended for all production instances and provide many key differences to your infrastructure.
Steps to complete the upgrade
We recommend the following approach to upgrade to Standard SKU public IP addresses.
Learn about some of the key differences between Basic SKU public IP and Standard SKU public IP.
Identify the Basic SKU public IP in your organization that requires upgrade.
Determine if you would need Zone Redundancy.
a. If you need a zone redundant public IP address, create a new Standard SKU public IP address using Portal, PowerShell, CLI, or ARM template.
b. If you don't need a zone redundant public IP address, use the following upgrade options.
Create a migration plan for planned downtime.
Depending on the resource associated with your Basic SKU public IP addresses, perform the upgrade based on the following table:
| Resource using Basic SKU public IP addresses | Decision path |
|---|---|
| Virtual Machine or Virtual Machine Scale Sets (flex model) | Disassociate IP(s) and utilize the upgrade options detailed after the table. |
| Load Balancer (Basic SKU) | New Load Balancer SKU required. Use the upgrade script Upgrade Basic Load Balancer to Standard SKU to upgrade to Standard Load Balancer |
| VPN Gateway (using Basic IPs) | A migration path will be provided in the future. When this migration path is available, we'll update this decision path with migration information and send out a service health alert. |
| ExpressRoute Gateway (using Basic IPs) | New ExpressRoute Gateway is required. Follow the ExpressRoute Gateway migration guidance for upgrading from Basic to Standard SKU. |
| Application Gateway (v1 SKU) | New AppGW SKU required. Use this migration script to migrate from v1 to v2. |
Note
If you have a virtual machine scale set (uniform model) with public IP configurations per instance, note these are not Public IP resources and as such cannot be upgraded; a new virtual machine scale set is required. You can use the SKU property to specify that Standard IP configurations are required for each VMSS instance as shown here.
Basic SKU vs. Standard SKU
This section lists out some key differences between these two SKUs.
| Aspect | Standard SKU public IP | Basic SKU public IP |
|---|---|---|
| Allocation method | Static. | For IPv4: Dynamic or Static; For IPv6: Dynamic. |
| Security | Secure by default model and be closed to inbound traffic when used as a frontend. Allow traffic with network security group is required (for example, on the NIC of a virtual machine with a Standard SKU public IP attached). | Open by default. Network security groups are recommended but optional for restricting inbound or outbound traffic. |
| Availability zones | Supported. Standard IPs can be nonzonal, zonal, or zone-redundant. Zone redundant IPs can only be created in regions where three availability zones are live. IPs created before availability zones aren't zone redundant. | Not supported |
| Standard Load Balancer Support | Both IPv4 and IPv6 are supported | Not supported |
| NAT Gateway Support | IPv4 is supported | Not supported |
| Azure Firewall Support | IPv4 is supported | Not supported |
Upgrade disassociated public IPs using Portal, PowerShell, or Azure CLI
Use the Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, or Azure CLI to help upgrade from Basic to Standard SKU.
Next steps
For guidance on upgrading Basic Load Balancer to Standard SKUs, see: