Pay-as-you-go - Pricing| Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center

Overview

Pay-as-you-go resources are charged based on the billing cycle and are billed by hour. If you have a quota agreement with Alibaba Cloud, fees are deducted when the cumulative consumption of your account exceeds the quota. You must complete the payment at least once a month.

After you create a pay-as-you-go ECS resource, you can change its configurations. For more information, see Change the instance type of a pay-as-you-go instance and Modify the bandwidth configurations of pay-as-you-go instances.

You can change the billing method of your pay-as-you-go ECS resources. For more information, see Change the billing method of an instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription.

You can use one of the following methods to view your bills:

To view the fee calculation method, see Billing.
To understand how ECS resource status affects the billing duration, see Billing duration.

Note If you stop an ECS instance but do not release related resources, you continue to be charged for the resources.
For information about settlement, see Settlement cycle.

Applicable resources

The pay-as-you-go billing method is available for the following ECS resources:

Computing resource (vCPUs and memory)
Image
Cloud disk
Public bandwidth (pay-by-bandwidth)
Snapshot

When you create an ECS instance, you must configure the computing resources, Elastic Block Storage (EBS), image, and network type. The images and cloud disks created along with the pay-as-you-go ECS instance also use the pay-as-you-go billing method. However, you can select the billing method for network usage.

Note After you create a pay-as-you-go instance, you can attach a separately created pay-as-you-go cloud disk to the instance. For more information, see Attach a data disk.

You are charged for created snapshots.

You can view the total price of the preceding resources in the lower-left part of the instance buy page.

Total indicates the total price of the following resources:
- Computing resource (vCPUs and memory)
- Cloud disk
- Public bandwidth (pay-by-bandwidth)
  
  Note If you select pay-by-traffic as the billing method for network usage, the total price does not include the price for public bandwidth. For more information, see Public bandwidth.
Marketplace Image Fees indicates that you selected a paid Alibaba Cloud Marketplace image.

Billing

You are charged for pay-as-you-go ECS resources after they are created. Resources are billed separately. You can calculate the total fee that you must pay for a period of time based on the configurations you choose. The following table describes the billing cycle of each ECS resource and the formula used to calculate the fee of each ECS resource.


Resource	Billing cycle	Formula	Unit price
Computing resource (vCPUs and memory)	Second	Unit price of an instance type × Billing duration	For more information, see the Instance section on the Pricing tab of the Elastic Compute Service page. Note Local disks are tied to specific instance types. The prices of local disks are included in the prices of corresponding instance types.
Image	Second	Unit price of an image × Billing duration	You can view the price on the instance buy page and in Alibaba Cloud Marketplace.
Cloud disk (system disk)	Second	Unit price of a cloud disk × Disk capacity × Billing duration	For more information, see System Cloud Disk Fee of the Storage section on the Pricing tab of the Elastic Compute Service page. Note The price for a pay-as-you-go disk on the page is displayed in the USD/100 GiB/hour format. Divide the unit price by 100 to obtain the unit price per GiB.
Cloud disk (data disk)	Second	Unit price of a cloud disk × Disk capacity × Billing duration	For more information, see Data Cloud Disk Fee of the Storage section on the Pricing tab of the Elastic Compute Service page. Note The price for a pay-as-you-go disk on the page is displayed in the USD/100 GiB/hour format. Divide the unit price by 100 to obtain the unit price per GiB.
Public bandwidth (pay-by-bandwidth)	Second	Unit price of bandwidth × Bandwidth value × Billing duration For more information, see Public bandwidth.	A tiered billing model is used for bandwidth. You can select a bandwidth value on the buy page to view the changes in fees.
Snapshot	Hour	Unit price of a snapshot × Snapshot capacity × Billing duration For more information, see Snapshots.	For more information, see the Snapshot section on the Pricing tab of the Elastic Compute Service page.

Note

If the billing cycle is one second, the fee generated each second is added to the bill. If an hourly price is displayed, you can divide the price by 3,600 to obtain the price per second.
If the billing cycle is one hour, the fee generated every hour is added to the bill. A usage duration of less than an hour is calculated as an hour.

Assume that you created a pay-as-you-go instance in the China (Qingdao) region and the resource was in use from 11:00:00 to 12:00:00 on August 8, 2019. The following figure shows the process for calculating the price of the instance.

Note The price in the preceding figure is for reference only. For more information about the actual price, see the links in the preceding table.

Billing duration

If a pay-as-you-go instance is automatically stopped due to an overdue payment, the billing of its resources is suspended. The billing resumes after you settle the overdue payment and reactivate the instance.

The following table describes the billing duration of each resource type on the prerequisite that you have no overdue payments.


Resource	Billing duration
Computing resource (vCPUs and memory)	The billing duration of computing resources (vCPUs and memory) is affected by the network type of the instance: For an ECS instance in the classic network, the billing starts when the instance is created and stops when the instance is released. For an ECS instance in a VPC, the billing duration depends on whether the No Fees for Stopped Instances (VPC-Connected) feature is enabled. If this feature is not enabled, the billing starts when the instance is created and stops when the instance is released. If this feature is enabled, the billing starts when the instance is created and is suspended when the instance is stopped in the ECS console. The billing is resumed when the instance is restarted in the ECS console and stops when the instance is released. For more information, see No Fees for Stopped Instances (VPC-Connected). Notice If you stop the instance by shutting down its operating system, the No Fees for Stopped Instances (VPC-Connected) feature is not triggered. You can purchase reserved instances to reduce your costs. For more information, see Reserved instance overview.
Image	Billing starts when the instance is created and stops when the instance is released.
Cloud disk (system disk)	The billing starts when the instance is created and stops when the instance is released.
Cloud disk (data disk)	The billing starts when the data disk is created and stops when the data disk is released.
Public bandwidth (pay-by-bandwidth)	The billing starts when public bandwidth (pay-by-bandwidth) is enabled and stops when public bandwidth is disabled or when the ECS instance is released. For information about how to disable public bandwidth, see Modify the bandwidth configurations of pay-as-you-go instances.
Snapshot	The billing starts when the snapshot is created and stops when the snapshot is deleted.

Note If a pay-as-you-go instance incurs less than USD 0.01 in charges during its entire lifecycle, USD 0.01 is charged.

To avoid unexpected fees incurred when a pay-as-you-go instance is not released in a timely manner, we recommend that you enable the automatic release feature. If automatic release is enabled, the billing stops when the resources are released. The automatic release time is accurate to seconds.

Settlement cycle

Pay-as-you-go resources are billed by hour. These resource fees are paid together with the fees incurred by subscription resources in your account. If you have a quota agreement with Alibaba Cloud, fees are deducted when the cumulative consumption of your account exceeds the quota. If the cumulative monthly consumption of your account is less than the quota, fees are deducted on the first day of the following month.

If your default payment method is bank card, the quota is USD 1,000.
If your default payment method is PayPal or Paytm (India), the quota depends on your ECS resource usage.

Fee deduction is attempted three times: on the due date (T), T+7, and T+14. If fee deduction fails on the due date (T), the system attempts to deduct fees again on the day T+7 and day T+14. If fee deduction fails for these three times, the instance is stopped on the day T+15 and the billing of its resources also stops.

The following changes occur to the resource status after a payment becomes overdue:

Within 15 days after the payment becomes overdue, you can use existing ECS resources but cannot purchase new instances, upgrade instance configurations, or renew instances.
Within 15 days after the instance is stopped, you must submit a ticket to complete the overdue payment and then reactivate the instance. Otherwise, the instance is released. For information about resource status, see Resource status when an ECS instance is stopped.
More than 15 days after the instance is stopped, the pay-as-you-go ECS resources are released.

Resource status when an ECS instance is stopped

Notice If you have overdue payments in your account, your ECS instances may be stopped. The system sends you notifications about the overdue payments. We recommend that you settle the overdue payments in time to ensure your service availability. If you still have problems, submit a ticket.

If all three deductions for an instance fail, the instance is stopped. The following table describes the resource status after your instance is stopped due to an overdue payment.


Resource	Within 15 days after the instance is stopped	More than 15 days after the instance is stopped
Computing resource (vCPUs and memory)	The computing resources (vCPUs and memory) are retained, but the instance is stopped and stops providing services. When a pay-as-you-go instance is automatically stopped due to an overdue payment, it enters the Expired state and the billing stops. After an ECS instance is stopped, you cannot connect to the instance or access websites deployed on the instance, and service errors may occur.	The computing resources (vCPUs and memory) are released. Note If your computing resources (vCPUs and memory) are released due to overdue payments, the system sends an email notification.
Image	The image is unavailable.	The image is unavailable.
EBS	Cloud disks and data stored on them are retained, but the cloud disks cannot be used. Local disks and data stored on them are retained, but the local disks cannot be used. Note After cloud disks or local disks become unusable, they cannot properly process I/O read and write requests. This affects the normal running of ECS instances to which these disks are attached, such as excessive time needed to perform operations and unpredictable power-off or restart failures for some operating systems.	Cloud disks are released and data stored on them cannot be restored. Note Cloud disks (data disks) created with pay-as-you-go instances and pay-as-you-go cloud disks (data disks) created separately on the Disks page in the ECS console are released. Local disks are released and data stored on them cannot be restored.
IP address	In the classic network: The public IP address is retained. In a VPC: The public IP address is retained. The elastic IP address (EIP) associated with the instance remains unchanged.	In the classic network: The public IP address is released. In a VPC: The public IP address is released. The EIP is disassociated from the instance.
Snapshot	All snapshots are retained, but automatic snapshots cannot be created.	All snapshots are deleted except for those used to create cloud disks or custom images.