You are charged an instance fee and a capacity unit (CU) fee for using an Internet NAT gateway or a VPC NAT gateway. Elastic IP addresses (EIPs) attached to an Internet NAT gateway are subject to separate billing rules.
Billing methods
Internet NAT gateways and VPC NAT gateways support the following billing methods.
NAT Gateway is a pay-as-you-go service. If you purchase a resource plan, your usage is deducted from the plan. However, this does not change the underlying pay-as-you-go billing method of the NAT Gateway.
Pay-as-you-go: You are charged for what you use. A bill is generated for each billing cycle based on the actual usage of billable items, and the fees are deducted from your account.
Resource Plan: You purchase a NAT Gateway resource plan in advance. When fees are settled, your usage is deducted from the resource plan first.
Resource plans offer discounts compared to the pay-as-you-go billing method.
Excess usage is automatically billed on a pay-as-you-go basis.
You can use the NAT CU Estimator to decide the number of CUs that suits your workload.
Billing cycle
The billing cycle for Internet NAT gateways and VPC NAT gateways is one hour. Fees are settled hourly based on the actual usage.
If the usage duration in a billing cycle is less than one hour, it is billed as one hour.
Bills are typically generated one hour later. The actual time a bill is generated is determined by the system.
For example, if you purchase a NAT gateway at 09:10:00 and release it at 10:50:00 on the same day, the usage duration is two hours.
The period from 09:00:00 to 10:00:00 is one billing cycle. A bill is generated after 10:00:00, and the corresponding fees are deducted from your account.
The period from 10:00:00 to 11:00:00 is another billing cycle. A bill is generated after 11:00:00, and the corresponding fees are deducted from your account.
Billable items and pricing
Instance fee
Instance fee = Unit price of a NAT gateway (USD/hour) × Usage duration (hours)Usage duration
Usage duration is the time from when a gateway is created to when it is released. Instance fees are billed hourly.
Unit price of a NAT gateway
The prices in the table are for reference only. The actual prices on the buy page prevail.
Region | Unit price of a NAT gateway (USD/hour) |
China (Hangzhou), China (Shanghai), China (Qingdao), China (Beijing), China (Zhangjiakou), China (Hohhot), China (Ulanqab), China (Shenzhen), China (Heyuan), China (Guangzhou), China (Chengdu) | 0.034 |
China (Hong Kong), Japan (Tokyo), South Korea (Seoul), Singapore, Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Indonesia (Jakarta), Philippines (Manila), Thailand (Bangkok), Germany (Frankfurt), UK (London), US (Silicon Valley), US (Virginia), UAE (Dubai) | 0.043 |
SAU (Riyadh - Partner Region) | 0.052 |
CU fee
A CU is a performance metric used to measure the traffic processed by a NAT gateway. CUs are billed on an hourly basis.
Starting from September 26, 2025, the CU fee is charged based only on the number of CUs for processed traffic per hour.
Previously, the number of CUs per hour was decided by the largest among these items: Number of CUs for new connections per hour, Number of CUs for concurrent connections per hour, Number of CUs for processed traffic per hour.
CU fee per hour = CU unit price (USD/CU) × Number of CUs for processed traffic in the hour
Number of CUs for processed traffic in the hour = Total processed traffic / 1 GBAlibaba Cloud NAT Gateway calculates processed traffic in GB, where 1 GB is equivalent to 2^30 bytes. This unit of measurement is also known as a gibibyte (GiB), as defined by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Similarly, 1 TB is equivalent to 2^40 bytes, or 1,024 GB.
Number of CUs for processed traffic in the hour
The system calculates the total traffic (inbound and outbound traffic in bytes) processed per hour. This traffic data is measured before it is processed by the NAT gateway.
CU unit price
The prices in the table are for reference only. The actual prices on the buy page prevail.
Region | CU unit price (USD/CU/hour) |
China (Hangzhou), China (Shanghai), China (Qingdao), China (Beijing), China (Zhangjiakou), China (Hohhot), China (Ulanqab), China (Shenzhen), China (Heyuan), China (Guangzhou), China (Chengdu) | 0.034 |
China (Hong Kong), Japan (Tokyo), South Korea (Seoul), Singapore, Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Indonesia (Jakarta), Philippines (Manila), Thailand (Bangkok), Germany (Frankfurt), UK (London), US (Silicon Valley), US (Virginia), UAE (Dubai) | 0.043 |
SAU (Riyadh - Partner Region) | 0.052 |
Billing example
Assume that you created two NAT gateways in the Germany (Frankfurt) region at 08:10:00 on June 13, 2025, and deleted them at 08:50:00 on the same day.
The usage in the table is for reference only. The actual costs in your bills prevail.
Instance | Performance metrics for processed traffic | Instance fee | CU fee | Total fee |
Internet NAT gateway 1 | Total processed traffic: 3.5 GB | Usage duration: 1 hour Unit price of an instance: USD 0.043/instance/hour Instance fee: 0.043 × 1 = USD 0.043 | Number of CUs for processed traffic: 3.5 / 1 = 3.5 CU unit price: USD 0.043/CU/hour CU fee: 0.043 × 3.5 = USD 0.1505 | 0.043 + 0.1505 = USD 0.1935 |
VPC NAT gateway 2 | All are 0 | Usage duration: 1 hour Unit price of an instance: USD 0.043/instance/hour Instance fee: 0.043 × 1 = USD 0.043 | No CU fee | USD 0.043 |
Query bills and usage
You can go to the Expenses and Costs - Billing Details page. Set Product Name to NAT Gateway to view your usage and billing information.
Stop billing
After you delete a NAT gateway, billing for the instance automatically stops.
If you use an Internet NAT gateway for Internet access and want to stop billing for an EIP, you must release the EIP. Only pay-as-you-go EIPs can be released. Subscription EIPs are released after they expire.
Detaching an EIP from an Internet NAT gateway does not stop the billing for the EIP or the NAT gateway.
Overdue payments and top-ups
If the available balance of your account, which includes cash, vouchers, coupons, and pre-authorizations, is insufficient to pay an outstanding bill and your purchased resource plans do not cover all fees, your account will have an overdue payment.
The system determines whether your account balance is sufficient to pay the bills for the next three billing cycles based on the average amount of your NAT Gateway bills in the last 24 hours. If the balance is insufficient, the system sends you a notification by text message or email.
Your NAT gateway can still provide services for 15 days after a payment becomes overdue.
If you do not pay the bill within 15 days after the payment becomes overdue, the NAT gateway is stopped. In this state, you cannot perform any operations on it.
If you top up your account and pay the overdue amount within 15 days after the NAT gateway is stopped, the NAT gateway is automatically enabled and you can continue to use it.
If the NAT gateway remains suspended for 15 days and you still have not paid the bill, the gateway is automatically deleted. The system sends you a notification by email one day before it is deleted. After it is deleted, its configurations and data are erased and cannot be recovered.
FAQ
Why does the billing continue after I delete my NAT gateway?
This is due to the delayed billing mechanism of the billing system. The bills you receive are for resource usage that occurred before the NAT gateway was deleted.
You can go to the Expenses and Costs - Billing Details page, set Statistic Period to Billing Period, and view the specific Payment Time to confirm which billing cycle the fees belong to.
Does NAT Gateway support the subscription billing method?
No, it does not. You can no longer create subscription NAT gateways or pay-as-you-go NAT gateways that are billed based on defined specifications. Only the pay-as-you-go billing method is supported.