Azure Sql Serverless Vs Basic Tier
That's exactly the benefit the programming manager of one of the companies I work with highlighted, he told me "with serverless we can test with the same performance level of the production database, but paying less. We will pay only for the specific period of times when we test".

Azure SQL Serverless application scenarios:

Examples:


New apps when compute sizing requirements are unknown.
Development/test workloads
Line-of-business applications
Content management systems, e-commerce and more.


Typical serverless usage patters are:


Intermittent, unpredictable usage and lower average compute utilization over time.
Frequently rescaled databases.
New databases without usage history.


Usage patterns when serveless is not recommended:


More regular, predictable usage and higher average compute utilization over time.
Databases sensitive to performance trade-offs from scaling.
Multiple databases that can be consolidated into elastic pools.


Price-performance shape (serverless).


In terms of auto-scaling, min and max vcore range available to database.  Memory and IO limits proportional to vCore range selected.
Database is auto-paused if inactive for long enough. Database is autoresumed when login is received.
In terms of billing, compute billing is per second based on vcores and memory used. Minimum compute billed based on min vcores and min memory configured. Only the storage is billed when the database is paused.


The following image compares provisioned compute vs serverless compute.