0.0.201

This topic provides an overview of the billing methods and billable items of ApsaraDB RDS.

Billing methods

Definition: This billing method lets you use resources of your choosing for a specified period of time on an upfront payment. Longer subscription periods offer more savings.
Scenarios: You have long-running, predictable workloads.
Change billing methods: You can change the billing method of an RDS instance from subscription to pay-as-you-go. For more information, see Change the billing method of an ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL instance from subscription to pay-as-you-go.
Specification changes: The price for a subscription RDS instance before and after a specification change may be different. Depending on which is higher, you may need to pay the price difference, or you may receive a refund. For more information, see Specification changes.
Renewal: You need to renew an expired subscription RDS instance within a specific period of time if you want to continue using it. After this period of time, instance resources such as CPU cores, memory, and disks are released, and the data stored in the RDS instance is deleted. For more information, see Renewal policy.

Definition: This billing method lets you use resources of your choosing before you pay for them. Fees are calculated and automatically deducted from the balance of your Alibaba Cloud account every hour. You can release pay-as-you-go RDS instances at any time.
Scenarios: You have short-term workloads.
Change billing methods: You can change the billing method of an RDS instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription. For more information, see Change the billing method of an ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription.
Specification changes: Pay-as-you-go RDS instances are billed on an hourly basis. When you change the specifications of a pay-as-you-go RDS instance, you are billed based on the price of the new specifications. For more information, see Specification changes.
Overdue payments: If your Alibaba Cloud account has overdue payments, all pay-as-you-go RDS instances that belong to the account become overdue. For more information, see Overdue payments.

Definition: A serverless RDS instance is not billed based on instance types, but based on the actual amount of resources used each hour. Resources are measured in RDS Capacity Units (RCUs). For more information, see Overview.
Note This billing method is supported only for ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL instances.
Scenarios: You have intermittent or unpredictable workloads.
Change billing methods: You cannot change the billing method of a serverless RDS instance.
Specification changes: The specifications of a serverless RDS instance cannot be manually changed. During the use of the instance, the system automatically scales the instance to suit your workloads.
Overdue payments: If your Alibaba Cloud account has overdue payments, all serverless RDS instances that belong to the account become overdue. For more information, see Overdue payments.

Basic billable items

The basic fees of an RDS instance consist of the fee for computing resources and the fee for storage resources.


Billable item		Definition	Billing method	Price inquiry
Computing resource	Instance type	Fees for the instance types that you select for the primary and secondary RDS instances in your database system.	Subscription Pay-as-you-go	Go to the ApsaraDB RDS buy page, configure the required parameters, and then check the price and applied discounts in the lower-right corner of the page. If you set the Billing Method parameter to Subscription, you must configure the Duration parameter. Longer subscription periods provide more savings.
Computing resource	RCU	RCUs are the computing resources of serverless ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL instances. The performance of an RCU is equivalent to that of a Basic Edition RDS for MySQL instance that has 1 CPU core and 2 GB of memory. For more information, see Overview.	Serverless
Storage capacity		Fees for the storage capacity that you purchase for your RDS instance. The RDS instance can be a primary RDS instance, secondary RDS instance, read-only RDS instance, or disaster recovery RDS instance. The price varies based on the storage type that you select. For more information, visit the ApsaraDB RDS buy page.	Subscription Pay-as-you-go

Note In addition to the preceding billable items, ApsaraDB RDS also provides value-added options. For more information, see Billable items, billing methods, and pricing.