TL;DR: You can flip an existing ExpressRoute circuit from Standard (or Premium) to Local in minutes, but you’ll need to hop out of the Azure portal and run a couple of Az PowerShell commands. Here’s how we did it.

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Why bother with the Local SKU?

• Cost-effective egress: Local includes unlimited data egress to one or two nearby Azure regions, with the data fees baked into the circuit price. For bulk, regional traffic it’s a tidy saving. Microsoft Learn
• Same feature set, slimmer scope: You keep the Standard feature set, minus Global Reach and the ability to stretch into distant regions – perfect when your workloads live close to the peering site. Microsoft Learn

If that sounds like your use-case, read on.

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The official word

Microsoft’s docs spell it out: you can’t make this change in the portal. Use PowerShell or the Azure CLI instead. Microsoft Learn

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Before you start

1. Unlimited data plan only. Local circuits are always Unlimited. Make sure your current circuit is on Unlimited; if it’s Metered, you may not want to do anything.
2. Provider heads-up. Some carriers still like to be told – give your telco a courtesy call.
3. Maintenance window. We saw no drop (the update is in-place), but schedule a window just in case.

Running this first to check current SKU:

# Interactive device login keeps the creds flow simple
Connect-AzAccount -UseDeviceAuthentication

# Substitute your own details
$Subscription       = "Subscription_Name"
$ResourceGroupName  = "ResourceGroup_Name"
$CircuitName        = "Circuit_Name"

Select-AzSubscription -Subscription $Subscription

(Get-AzExpressRouteCircuit -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName -Name $CircuitName).Sku | fl *

The output would look something like this:

To change the SKU – here’s the PowerShell recipe:

# Interactive device login keeps the creds flow simple
Connect-AzAccount -UseDeviceAuthentication

# Substitute your own details
$Subscription       = "Subscription_Name"
$ResourceGroupName  = "ResourceGroup_Name"
$CircuitName        = "Circuit_Name"

Select-AzSubscription -Subscription $Subscription

# Pull the circuit object
$circuit = Get-AzExpressRouteCircuit -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName -Name $CircuitName

# Downgrade the SKU
$circuit.Sku.Tier = "Local"

# Commit the change
Set-AzExpressRouteCircuit -ExpressRouteCircuit $circuit

What happens:

• The cmdlet updates the SKU tier in place.
• Azure’s back-end validates that you’re already on the Unlimited data family (required).
• Provisioning state flips to Updating for a minute or two, then back to Succeeded.

We saw the billing tier change within minutes and traffic kept flowing.

Verifying the downgrade

(Get-AzExpressRouteCircuit -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName -Name $CircuitName).Sku | fl *

For belt-and-braces reassurance, open the circuit in the portal – the SKU field will now show Local (though you still can’t edit it there).

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Gotchas & tips

Issue	Fix / Work-around
Circuit on Metered data	Switch to UnlimitedData first; meter-to-unlimited is allowed, the reverse isn’t. Microsoft Learn
Need Global Reach later	You’ll have to upgrade back to Standard or Premium – the lifecycle isn’t blocked, but upgrades may attract a new 12-month term with your provider.
Multiple regions required	Stick with Standard or bump to Premium; Local limits you to one metro pair. Microsoft Learn
Portal still says Standard	Hard-refresh the blade or wait a few minutes for the cache to clear.

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Wrapping up

Switching an ExpressRoute circuit from Standard/Premium to Local is a quick win when your workloads live in the same metro and you’d rather not pay per-gig egress. With a single PowerShell tweak, we shaved our monthly bill and kept the change transparent to the business.

Give it a crack in your next maintenance window and let me know how you go.