An Azure SQL Elastic Pool continues to incur costs even if it contains no databases. This can occur when databases are deleted, migrated to single-instance configurations, or consolidated elsewhere — but the pool itself remains provisioned. In such cases, the pool becomes an idle resource consuming budget without delivering value.

This inefficiency often goes undetected in large or decentralized environments where cleanup workflows are manual or inconsistent. Since the pool reserves compute and storage regardless of usage, it silently contributes to unnecessary spend over time.