If you started a Microsoft Fabric trial, you’ve been living large — 64 capacity units of free compute for 60 days. It’s a great way to kick the tires. It’s also a great way to build a bunch of workloads that fall apart the moment you switch to a paid F4.
I started writing this post after a few conversations at conferences — talking with other speakers and attendees — where I realized almost nobody knew this was an option. These are conference regulars and power users who live in this space, and it just wasn’t on their radar — which means it’s probably not on yours either.
Here’s the thing: you can switch your trial down to F4 before the trial ends. It’s not exactly advertised.
Why Bother?
Because testing on F64 and buying an F4 is like training for a marathon on a moving walkway. Everything feels great until it doesn’t. If a smaller capacity is where you’re actually landing, you should know how your workloads behave there before you swipe the card.
How to Do It
1. From the Fabric top nav, select the gear icon → Admin portal
2. Go to Capacity settings → Trial tab
3. Click the name of your trial capacity
4. Select the Change size button
5. Pick your size and hit Apply
A couple of gotchas worth knowing: not everyone will see the Change size button — eligibility varies and Microsoft is a little cagey about why. And switching size doesn’t reset your trial clock. Whatever days you have left, you keep. One more thing worth mentioning: for now, F4 is the only smaller option available. Whether Microsoft adds other sizes to the mix down the road remains to be seen.
Starting a new trial? You may find your trial defaults to F4 rather than F64 — in which case the same Change size button may give you the option to go up to F64 instead. Microsoft even calls this out directly in the docs: “If your trial currently has 4 capacity units, you might be eligible to increase the capacity to 64 capacity units.” Results may vary. See the Fabric trial capacity documentation for the latest.
While You’re In There: Give It a Real Name
While you have the Admin portal open, take ten seconds to rename your trial capacity. By default, Microsoft generates a name that looks something like Trial-20240912-a3f8b2c1... — which is exactly as helpful as it sounds. Imagine naming your dog with a GUID: “Come here, 20240912-a3f8b2c1.” Who’s a GUID boy? No? Just me?
To rename it:
1. On the Capacity settings → Trial tab, select the gear icon (⚙) next to your trial capacity
2. Select the pencil icon next to the Capacity name field
3. Enter something human-readable — and here’s a pro tip: include your trial expiration date in the name. Something like Fabric Trial - Expires_Apr_15 means you always know how much runway you have left without having to dig back into the Admin portal to check.
4. Hit the checkmark (✓) to save
Bonus: this is actually something you can’t do with a paid F SKU capacity — renaming is trial-only. Enjoy it while it lasts.
The Bottom Line
The F64 trial is generous. Use it. But before you commit to a paid SKU, spend some time on the size you’re actually buying. Your future self — the one dealing with throttled pipelines at 9am on a Monday — will thank you.
For full details on the Fabric trial, check out the Microsoft Learn documentation.
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