Alibaba Cloud Prometheus Service Pro Edition supports the pay-as-you-go billing method. You are charged based on your resource usage. Bills are generated and fees are deducted from the balance of your Alibaba Cloud account at the end of each billing cycle. This topic describes the billing information and pay-as-you-go billable items of Alibaba Cloud Prometheus Service.
Billable items
You are charged for Prometheus Service based on the number of reported data samples of metrics and the storage duration of each data sample.
The metrics are classified into two types: basic metrics and custom metrics. For more information about basic metrics, see Metrics. Custom metrics refer to non-basic metrics.
Starting from January 1, 2023, no free quota is provided for reporting data samples in the custom metrics category, and the billing unit for data sample reporting in this category is 1 million reported data samples. The minimum number of data samples of custom metrics for billing is 1 million. If the number of reported data samples in the custom metrics category is between 0 and 1 million, you are charged for 1 million data samples.
Data samples: You are not charged a data reporting fee for the data samples of basic metrics. You are charged a data reporting fee only for the data samples of custom metrics. For information about the pricing of custom metrics, see Billing information.
The number of data samples is calculated based on the data model of open source Prometheus. A data sample includes a metric name, labels, a timestamp, and values. Data samples are organized in a time series. For example, the kube_node_status_allocatable_cpu_cores metric is used to monitor the number of CPU cores that can be allocated per node in a Kubernetes cluster. If your cluster contains three nodes, data samples are collected from the three nodes and form three time series. If each node is sampled at an interval of 15 seconds, the total number of data samples reported per minute is calculated by using the following formula: 3 × (60/15) = 12 (data samples), as shown in the following figure.
Storage duration: All metrics can be stored for 15 days free of charge. After the free storage duration ends, you are charged a data storage fee based on the storage duration of basic metrics and custom metrics. If the storage duration exceeds 15 days, you are charged USD 0.01 for every one million data samples per day.
Billing cycle
Prometheus Service generates a bill between 13:00 to 22:00 (UTC+8) each day for the previous day based on the pay-as-you-go billing method and deducts the amount of fees on the bill from the balance of your Alibaba Cloud account.
Prometheus Service generates a bill for each Prometheus instance. If your account (Alibaba Cloud account or RAM user) has multiple pay-as-you-go Prometheus instances, multiple bills are generated.
Usage notes
The size of a reported data sample cannot exceed 2 KB.
By default, each data sample is stored for 15 days. If you want to store data for a longer duration, you can modify the Storage Days parameter on the Storage Duration tab based on your business requirements. For more information, see How do I change the storage duration of the data samples for a metric?
Prometheus Service can monitor services in the Alibaba Cloud public cloud. For more information, see Supported regions.
Billing information
Chinese mainland
Data reporting fee: You are charged a data reporting fee for custom metrics based on the number of reported data samples per day. Fees are cumulatively calculated by using a tiered pricing model in which the unit price for a tier is lower than the unit price for the previous tier.
Number of reported data samples per day (million)
Unit price (USD/million)
Daily fee (USD)
0~50
0.126
0~6.299
50~150
0.102
6.299~16.535
150~300
0.087
16.535~29.528
300~600
0.071
29.528~50.787
600~1200
0.055
50.787~83.858
More than 1,200
0.039
More than 83.858
Data storage fee: Metrics can be stored for 15 days free of charge. By default, the Storage Days parameter is set to 15 days. If you change the value of the Storage Days parameter to a duration that is longer than 15 days, you are charged USD 0.01 for every one million data samples per day.
The actual prices on the buy page of Prometheus Service shall prevail.
Billing example
For example, you use Prometheus Service Pro Edition in the China (Hangzhou) region. Assume that the average number of data samples reported per day is 300 million, among which 200 million belong to basic metrics and 100 million belong to custom metrics. The following items demonstrate how the total fee per day is calculated if the 300 million data samples are stored for 15 days or 90 days.
Total fee = Data reporting fee + Data storage fee. If the data is stored for 15 days, the total fee per day is calculated by using the following formula:[50 × 0.126 + (100 - 50) × 0.102] + 0 = USD 11.4
If the data is stored for 90 days, the total fee per day is calculated by using the following formula:[50 × 0.126 + (100 - 50) × 0.102] + [300 × 0.01 × (90 - 15)] = USD 236.4
The preceding billing example is only for reference. The actual prices on the buy page of Prometheus Service shall prevail.
Regions outside the Chinese mainland
Data reporting fee
Number of reported data samples per day (million)
Unit price (USD/million)
Daily fee (USD)
0~50
0.176
0~8.819
50~150
0.143
8.819~23.150
150~300
0.121
23.150~41.339
300~600
0.099
41.339~71.102
600~1200
0.077
71.102~117.402
More than 1,200
0.055
More than 117.402
Data storage fee: Metrics can be stored for 15 days free of charge. By default, the Storage Days parameter is set to 15 days. If you change the value of the Storage Days parameter to a duration that is longer than 15 days, you are charged USD 0.01 for every one million data samples per day.
The actual prices on the buy page of Prometheus Service shall prevail.
Billing example
For example, if Prometheus Service reports 150 million data samples the first day you use the service, the daily fee is calculated by using the following formula: [50 × 0.176 + (150 - 50) × 0.143] = USD 23.119.
The preceding billing example is only for reference. The actual prices on the buy page of Prometheus Service shall prevail.
Activate Prometheus Service
Activate Prometheus Service Pro Edition in the ARMS console.
Impact of overdue payments on resources
For information about the impact of overdue payments on resources, see Overdue payments.
View your bills and resource usage
You can check the bills related to Prometheus Service in the Billing Management console. For more information, see View your bills.
To view your resource consumption details of Prometheus Service, log on to the ARMS console. On the Prometheus Monitoring page, click Resource Consumption in the upper-right corner. For more information, see View resource consumption.