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title Upgrade Azure IoT Hub
description Change the pricing and scale tier for IoT Hub to get more messaging and device management capabilities.
author cwatson-cat
ms.service azure-iot-hub
ms.topic upgrade-and-migration-article
ms.date 07/25/2025
ms.author cwatson

How to upgrade your IoT hub

As your IoT solution grows, Azure IoT Hub is ready to help you scale. Azure IoT Hub offers two tiers, basic (B) and standard (S), to accommodate customers that want to use different features. Within each tier are three sizes (1, 2, and 3) that determine the number of messages that can be sent each day.

When you have more devices and need more capabilities, there are three ways to adjust your IoT hub to suit your needs:

  • Add units within the IoT hub to increase the daily message limit for that hub. For example, each extra unit in a B1 IoT hub allows for an extra 400,000 messages per day.

  • Change the size of the IoT hub. For example, migrate a hub from the B1 tier to the B2 tier to increase the number of messages that each unit can support per day from 400,000 to 6 million. Both these changes can occur without interrupting existing operations.

  • Upgrade to a higher tier. For example, upgrade a hub from the B1 tier to the S1 tier for access to advanced features with the same messaging capacity.

    [!Warning] You cannot upgrade from a free hub to a paid hub through our upgrade function. You must create a paid hub and migrate the configurations and devices from the free hub to the paid hub. For more information about this process, see How to automatically migrate an IoT hub using the Azure CLI.

    [!Tip] When you are upgrading your IoT hub to a higher tier, some messages may be received out of order for a short period of time. If your business logic relies on the order of messages, we recommend upgrading during non-business hours.

If you want to downgrade your IoT hub, you can remove units and reduce the size of the IoT hub but you can't downgrade to a lower tier. For example, you can move from the S2 tier to the S1 tier, but not from the S2 tier to the B1 tier. Only one type of IoT Hub edition within a tier can be chosen per IoT hub. For example, you can create an IoT hub with multiple units of S1. However, you can't create an IoT hub with a mix of units from different editions, such as S1 and B3 or S1 and S2.

These examples are meant to help you understand how to adjust your IoT hub as your solution changes. For specific information about each tier's capabilities, you should always refer to Azure IoT Hub pricing.

For more information about tiers and sizes, see Choose the right IoT Hub tier and size for your solution.

Upgrade your existing IoT hub

If you want to upgrade an existing IoT hub, you can do so from the Azure portal or Azure CLI.

Azure portal

In the Azure portal, navigate to your IoT hub to view and update its settings.

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal and navigate to your IoT hub.

  2. Select Pricing and scale from the resource menu.

    :::image type="content" source="./media/iot-hub-upgrade/pricing-scale.png" alt-text="Screenshot that shows the pricing and scale page for an IoT hub.":::

  3. To upgrade the tier for your hub, select Upgrade on the tier tile. You can only upgrade from the basic tier to the standard tier. You can't change the tier of a free or standard hub.

  4. To change the size or units for your hub, select Adjust on the daily message limit tile.

    On the Message and pricing options page, choose the new daily message limit that you want for your IoT hub. Or, if you prefer to choose the specific tier and units combination, select Advanced options. For more information, see Choose the right IoT Hub tier and size for your solution.

    :::image type="content" source="./media/iot-hub-upgrade/message-pricing-advanced-options.png" alt-text="Screenshot that shows how to upgrade the size or units of your IoT hub.":::

Azure CLI

Use the az iot hub show command to view the current details of an IoT hub.

az iot hub show --name <HUB_NAME>

Use the az iot hub update command to make changes to an existing IoT hub.

For example, the following command updates the IoT hub tier to S2, or standard tier, size 2.

az iot hub update --name <HUB_NAME> --sku S2

For example, the following command sets the number of units for an IoT hub. The size value of the tier (1, 2, or 3) determines the unit type in an IoT hub, but you can scale up or down by changing the number of units.

az iot hub update -n MyIotHub --unit 2

The maximum limit of device-to-cloud partitions for basic tier and standard tier IoT hubs is 32. Most IoT hubs only need four partitions. You choose the number of partitions when you create the IoT hub. The number of partitions relates the device-to-cloud messages to the number of simultaneous readers of these messages. The number of partitions remains unchanged when you migrate from the basic tier to the standard tier.