Expenses and Costs:Using and managing coupons

Coupon types

Coupons are classified in two ways: by how they discount and by which products they apply to.

View your coupons

On the Coupons page, filter by Effective Time, coupon status, or Coupon No. to find a specific coupon. The coupon list shows the following details:

Before applying a coupon, check its details. Each coupon has specific applicable products, billing methods (subscription or pay-as-you-go), and usage conditions. Some coupons cannot be combined with other promotional offers.

Get coupons from promotional campaigns on the official website. Review the rules and conditions before claiming.

Apply coupons to subscription orders

When purchasing a subscription resource (such as an ECS instance), the payment page automatically filters and displays coupons that match the product, payment type, and order amount. Select a coupon from the list to apply it.

Key rules:

• One coupon per order. A cash coupon can be applied to multiple orders until its balance is depleted.

• Frozen status. A coupon applied to an unpaid order is frozen and unavailable for other orders. To unfreeze it, go to My Order, find the unpaid order, and void it. The coupon status returns to Valid after the order is canceled.

• Renewals. For manual renewals, select a coupon on the renewal payment page. For auto-renewal, the system automatically selects and applies the most suitable coupon.

Automatic deduction for pay-as-you-go bills

For pay-as-you-go resources, the system automatically applies active coupons at billing time — no manual action needed.

How the system selects coupons:

The system applies coupons in this order:

1. Coupons expiring soonest are used first.

2. If multiple coupons share the same expiration date, the one with the highest balance is used first.

Example: Your pay-as-you-go bill is $10. You have three eligible cash coupons:

The system uses Coupon B first (same expiry as A, but higher balance). Coupon B ($8) is applied first; $2 is then deducted from Coupon A, exhausting it. The $10 bill is fully covered — Coupon C is not used.

Multi-coupon deduction: If one cash coupon's balance is insufficient, the system applies the next available cash coupon to the remaining amount until the bill is fully paid or all available coupons are used. Any remaining balance after all coupons have been applied must be paid separately.

To view the usage history of a coupon, go to the Coupons page and click View Details in the Actions column.

To see how much a coupon reduced a specific order or bill, check the Coupon Deduction Amount field in Billing Details.

Share coupons across accounts

If your organization has multiple Alibaba Cloud accounts, use equity asset sharing to share coupons across accounts and optimize costs.

Prerequisites: The Enterprise Account Center feature is enabled.

Procedure:

1. Log on to the Expenses and Costs console, click Account Sharing, and go to the Equity Asset Sharing page.

2. Select the coupon to share, click Edit in the Actions column, and configure the sharing settings.

3. Set the Sharing Scope:

   • Organization — the coupon is shared with all accounts under the selected organization node. The scope adjusts automatically as accounts are added or removed.

   • Account — the coupon is shared with specific accounts. The scope is fixed and does not change automatically.

4. To stop sharing, click Cancel sharing in the Actions column for the shared coupon.

Coupon refunds

When an order is canceled, a resource is unsubscribed, or provisioning fails, the system may refund a used coupon based on the product, payment status, and order type.

FAQ