For genuinely useful workloads, it's available for $5/month (per database, not per server) on Azure. There's a free version if you hunt around.

I'm paying $10/month since 2012 and happy. Cannot find even a hint of these DTU packages on the Azure site to link to. (Good lord, Microsoft.)

The query optimizer is truly amazing as well. I've seen it take complete madness as input and still perform reasonably. Now that you can keep targeting old behaviors until explicitly requested, upgrades have been much less concerning too.

Additionally columnstore support is awesome!

I think .NET is Microsoft's best product, followed very closely by MSSQL.

SQL Server has some incredible 3rd party tools build up around it. 3~4 Red Gate tools can one-shot your entire devops lifecycle.

I still prefer SQLite for anything that can handle reasonable, non-zero recovery point objectives. But, if it's serious business and we cant drop anything on the floor I am reaching for MSSQL without even blinking.