Student labs for schools. Pay for the hours you use.
Azure Lab Services retires June 2027. Move your labs in a day.
Windows and Linux machines in the browser, for cybersecurity and the rest of a course. Set the term length and the hours each student gets. A student who never opens the lab costs nothing.
Moving off Azure Lab Services
What schools leaving Azure Labs ask for
Ordered by what people making the move care about most.
Built for classrooms
- Set hours per student with a hard stop, so you never get a surprise bill
- Shows the time left when 15 minutes remain, and you can top a student up any time
- Labs close automatically at the end of term
- Idle machines shut down on their own
- A teacher dashboard showing who's on and how many hours they've used
Cyber and Windows labs
- Nested virtualization, so students can run Kali and network exercises
- Full admin rights inside each student's machine
- Isolated by default, with no public IP and no outbound internet
- Windows and Linux desktops
Easy for staff and students
- Runs in the browser with no VPN, RDP or client, and works on Chromebooks
- Build an image once, version it, and reset any machine to it in one click
- Spin up a whole class at once, up to 1,000 machines in a single request
Simple pricing
- From $0.65 an hour, with a $99 monthly minimum
- One bill, with no Azure, AWS or Google account needed
- Well under the biggest partner's hourly price
From image to classroom
How it works
- 1Ubuntu 24.04 · build
$ apt install kali-tools-top10
Setting up metasploit-framework ...
Setting up wireshark ...
Building version 1Save as version 1Build the image
Your lab technician opens a fresh Ubuntu or Windows machine in the browser, installs the class software, and saves it as version 1.
- 2New lab · cyber 101Term ends15 Dec 2026Hours per student40
Students
aisha@ben@chloe@+47 moreCreate the lab
The teacher picks the image, sets the term's end date and the hours each student gets, and pastes in the students' emails.
- 3Cyber 101 · this termAStart
Aisha
12 of 40 hours used
3 of 50 students on now
Students press Start
Each student gets their own machine in the browser. The teacher sees who is on, the hours each student has used, and can reset anyone.
Why now
What happened
15 July 2024
Azure Lab Services stopped taking new customers.
Since then
Microsoft pointed customers at four partners. A UK training provider spending £300 to £700 a month posted that every partner said it was too small, and Microsoft's reply agreed the partners “often require minimum spending”.
28 June 2027
Lab Services shuts down. Every school still on it needs somewhere else to run its labs before the next term.
Hyperamplify Labs is for the colleges, universities, training providers, and cybersecurity programs left in that gap: a few hundred students, a teacher or a lab technician who sets the labs up, and a budget measured in hundreds of dollars a month, not a six-figure contract. Read the full story.
Infrastructure
Fast labs on Google Cloud
We run lab machines on Google Cloud. One request to Google asks for up to a thousand machines at once, so a whole class pressing Start at nine o'clock is asked for in seconds, not queued for minutes. Lab machines have no public address, by policy, and nobody reaches them except through our browser console.
Runs on Google Cloud infrastructure.
Built on Google Cloud, whose data centres hold ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certifications.
Simple usage pricing
Pricing
You pay for the hours machines run, with a $99 monthly minimum. A student who never opens the lab costs nothing.
Ubuntu desktop
$0.65
per running hour
Windows desktop
$0.95
per running hour
Monthly minimum
$99
per organisation
A 50-student class, 10 hours a week, for 4 weeks
| Offer | How they charge | That class |
|---|---|---|
| Skillable | About $1.16 to $1.20 per small VM-hour, all in | about $2,300 to $2,400 |
| CloudLabs, managed | $6 per active user per month, plus cloud at about $0.18 an hour | about $660 |
| Apporto, fully managed | $27 to $101 per concurrent user per month | $1,350 to $5,050 if all 50 are concurrent |
| Hyperamplify Labs | $0.65 per Ubuntu hour, $0.95 per Windows hour, $99 a month minimum | about $1,365 on Ubuntu, $1,995 on Windows |
Competitor prices are from their public pages, checked 30 September 2026, and are not quotes. Check with each vendor. Our figure is 2,100 running hours, including 30 minutes after each sitting.
Enterprise
Sovereign and in-region deployments
Run the same labs in your own region, or in your own Google Cloud project, when data residency or sovereignty rules require it. Priced per deployment.
- A dedicated region, in your country
- A dedicated backend project, isolated from other schools
- Lab machines and disks that stay in your region
- Deployment into your own Google Cloud project
- Regional quota reserved for your classes
- Onboarding, image work, and a named contact
Independent detail
Read before you choose
story
Azure Lab Services is retiring: what happens on 28 June 2027
The dates, what Microsoft recommends instead, what does not carry over, and what a small college should do this term.
story
Why Hyperamplify Labs exists
Our mission: classroom labs for the small colleges, training providers, and teachers that the Lab Services shutdown left without an option.
guide
Azure Lab Services alternatives for small colleges and training providers
The options after June 2027, what each costs for a 50-student class, and which kind of college each one suits.
comparison
Hyperamplify Labs vs Skillable
Skillable is a Microsoft-recommended Lab Services partner priced per VM-hour. How it compares with Hyperamplify Labs for a small college.
comparison
Hyperamplify Labs vs CloudLabs
CloudLabs by Spektra Systems is a Microsoft-recommended Lab Services partner with a per-user price. How it compares with Hyperamplify Labs.
comparison
Hyperamplify Labs vs Apporto
Apporto is a Microsoft-recommended Lab Services partner selling virtual desktops per user. How it compares with Hyperamplify Labs for classroom labs.
comparison
Microsoft's replacements for Lab Services, and why they are not a lab product
Azure Virtual Desktop, DevTest Labs, Windows 365, and Dev Box compared against what a classroom lab actually needs.
story
Why we chose Google Cloud for fast labs
A whole class pressing Start at once, machines with no public address by policy, and a console that needs no VPN. Why Hyperamplify Labs runs on Google Cloud.
guide
Replacing Lab Services quota hours: hours per student and term end dates
The Lab Services control customers miss most, and how Hyperamplify Labs handles hours per student, extra hours, and the end of term.
guide
Cybersecurity labs in the browser: Kali, nested virtualization, and no internet
What ethical hacking and Windows Server courses need from a lab platform, and how Hyperamplify Labs provides it.
guide
Data residency and regional labs: keeping your labs in your country
What data residency means for a school, college, or training provider, who tends to ask for it, and why running labs in your own region matters.
Get started
Tell us about your school and book a 30-minute onboarding call. We set up your first lab from there.
Get startedRequest information
Pricing for your class sizes, images, hours per student, or moving off Lab Services. We reply personally.
Request informationBefore you start
Questions
- How do we get started?
- Book a 30-minute onboarding call. We go through your labs, students, and term dates, and set up your first lab from there.
- Do students keep their work between sessions?
- No. Every start is a clean machine from the lab image, so you pay only for the hours it runs.
- Can students sign in with our Microsoft accounts?
- Staff and students join by email invite. Sign-in through a school's Microsoft accounts is not part of the product.
- Do we need an Azure, Google, or AWS account?
- No. Machines run in our Google Cloud account and you get one bill from us.
- Can we bring our Lab Services images?
- Not as a disk upload. Your staff rebuild the image from a fresh Ubuntu or Windows desktop in the browser, which most migration guides recommend anyway.