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Dynamic Content Delivery Network:Billing overview

Last Updated:Oct 30, 2023

This topic describes the billing methods, billable items, and pricing of Dynamic Content Delivery Network (DCDN).

Important

Bills for DCDN are generated 3 to 4 hours after each billing cycle ends.

The following figure shows the procedure of using DCDN.计费全流程图

Billing methods

DCDN supports the pay-as-you-go billing method, which is the default billing method. You can also use resource plans to offset fees of commonly used resources.

  • Pay-as-you-go: You are charged for the actual usage of each billable item. Fees are deducted when resources are consumed. This billing method is ideal for scenarios in which you cannot accurately predict resource usage.

  • Resource plans (subscription): Resource plans use the subscription billing method, and provide savings on the costs of individual billable items. Resources are consumed before fees are offset by resource plans. Resource plans are ideal for scenarios in which you can accurately predict resource usage.

Note
  • The subscription billing method is more cost-effective than the pay-as-you-go billing method.

  • If your usage exceeds the capacity of the resource plans, the overages are billed based on the pay-as-you-go billing method and are included in the bills. We recommend that you purchase resource plans based on the services that you need and the estimated amount of resource usage. For more information, see Guidelines for choosing resource plans.

Billable items

Important

DCDN and IP Application Accelerator (IPA) are two independent services and are billed separately. If you use IPA, you are charged for the traffic that is accelerated by IPA. You are not charged for HTTP or HTTPS requests. For more information, see Billing of IPA.

DCDN generates bills for basic services and value-added services. If you select IPA, you are charged for IPA based on its billing schedule.

  • DCDN:

    • Basic services (required): You can choose between pay-by-data-transfer and pay-by-bandwidth. For more information, see Billing of basic services.

    • Value-added services (optional): You can enable one or more value-added services, such as HTTPS requests for static content and QUIC requests. For more information, see Billing of value-added services.

  • IPA: You can choose between pay-by-data-transfer and pay-by-bandwidth.

Billing cycle

The following table describes the billing cycle of DCDN.

Billing cycle

Bill release time

Billable item

Hourly

You are charged on an hourly basis. After each billing cycle, the bill is generated and sent to your account after 3 to 4 hours. The actual time when the bill is sent is determined by the system.

Daily

You are charged on a daily basis. Bills for the previous billing cycle are sent to you at around 04:00 every day. The actual time when the bill is sent is determined by the system.

Billable regions

Important

The data transfer fee is calculated based on the unit price for the billable region where the data transfer is generated. DCDN has deployed sufficient redundant points of presence (POPs) in each billable region to ensure that each POP belongs only to one billable region.

Billable regions are listed in the following table. For more information, see POP distribution.

Billable region

Abbreviation

Region/Country

Chinese mainland

CN

Regions in the Chinese mainland are in the same billable region.

North America

NA

United States

Europe

EU

Ukraine, UK, France, Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Germany, and Spain

Asia Pacific 1

AP1

Hong Kong (China), Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, and Malaysia

Asia Pacific 2

AP2

Indonesia, India, Republic of Korea, and Pakistan

Asia Pacific 3

AP3

Australia

Middle East and Africa

MEAA

Türkiye, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Nigeria, and South Africa

South America

SA

Brazil

DCDN pricing

For more information about the pricing of each billable item, visit the DCDN pricing page.

For more information about the pricing of resource plans, see Resource plan pricing.

Outbound data transfer plans

When you use the pay-by-data-transfer metering method, outbound data transfer plans are used to offset the fees for the generated data transfer. Fees for WebSocket data transfer cannot be offset. Visit the buy page.

Note
  • We recommend that you choose resource plans based on the features and services that you want to use, and your business volume. For more information, see Overview, Guidelines for choosing resource plans, and Resource plan rules.

  • Alibaba Cloud DCDN outbound data transfer plans are applied only when the pay-by-data-transfer metering method is used. Otherwise, the data transfer plans are suspended until you switch back to the pay-by-data-transfer metering method. For more information about how to change the metering method, see Change the metering method.

References

  • Billable items and billing methods
    Billing of basic services
    Billing of value-added services
    Billing of IPA
    Change the metering method
    DCDN pricing
  • Resource plans
    Guidelines for choosing resource plans
    Rules for applying resource plans
    Query details about resource plans
    Why am I still charged for resources after I purchase resource plans of DCDN?
    Money-back guarantees
  • More
    Overdue payments
    Query resource usage
    Query bills
    Configure high bill alerts
    FAQ about billing