Pay-as-you-go is a billing method that allows you to pay only for resources that you actually use. You can purchase and release resources on demand. Pay-as-you-go resources help reduce costs by 30% to 80% compared with traditional hosts. This topic describes the billing and settlement rules for pay-as-you-go ECS resources.
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.
- 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
- Computing resource (vCPUs and memory)
- Image
- Cloud disk
- Public bandwidth (pay-by-bandwidth)
- Snapshot
You are charged for created snapshots.

- 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
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. |
- 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.

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.
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:
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. |
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
- 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.
- 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
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 |
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.
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IP address |
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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. |