This topic describes the billing methods, billable items, and billing cycles of Global Accelerator (GA).
Global Accelerator To participate in a free trial, submit an application. Free trials are available only for subscription standard GA instances. For more information about free trials and the supported instance specifications, see Time-limited one-month free trials of GA.
Overview of billing methods
Global Accelerator supports the pay-as-you-go and subscription billing methods.
The bandwidth that is used to connect to the global transmission network of Alibaba Cloud supports the pay-by-data-transfer and pay-by-bandwidth metering methods.
Pay-by-data-transfer: Data transfer fees are managed by Cloud Data Transfer (CDT). CDT supports the pay-as-you-go billing method.
You do not need to associate a basic bandwidth plan with your Global Accelerator instance. The system calculates the fees based on where your service is deployed. The fees include Internet data transfer fees and inter-region data transfer fees. For more information, see Pay-by-data-transfer.
Pay-by-bandwidth: You are charged for bandwidth plans. Bandwidth plans support the subscription billing method.
If you use this metering method, you must associate a basic bandwidth plan with your Global Accelerator instance. For more information about how to select a basic bandwidth plan, see the "Bandwidth plan type" section of the Select and purchase GA resources topic.
Billing method | Bandwidth metering method | Scenario |
Pay-by-data-transfer |
If you cannot estimate the resource usage and the amount of data transfer, we recommend that you use pay-as-you-go Global Accelerator instances. | |
Pay-by-bandwidth |
|
The first time you use a pay-as-you-go Global Accelerator instance, go to the pay-as-you-go GA activation page and activate Global Accelerator as prompted.
You can purchase GA resource plans to offset the Capacity Unit (CU) fees and instance fees of pay-as-you-go Global Accelerator instances. Resource plans are more cost-effective than the pay-as-you-go billing method. For more information, see GA resource plans.
You can select the billing method only when you purchase a Global Accelerator instance. The billing method cannot be changed after a GA instance is created.
Billable items
Billable items of standard Global Accelerator instances
Billable items of basic Global Accelerator instances
Billing cycles
The following table describes the billing cycles of Global Accelerator.
Billing cycle | Bill release time | Billable item |
Hour | A bill is generated within 1 hour after the current billing cycle ends. The time when bills are generated is determined by the system. |
|
Month | A bill is generated on the first day of the next calendar month after the end of a billing cycle. The time when bills are generated is determined by the system. |
|
Pricing
For more information about the pricing of Global Accelerator instances, CUs, and specifications, see the "Instance fee" and CU fee sections of the Billing of pay-as-you-go GA instances topic, and the "Instance fees" and Specification fees sections of the Billing of subscription GA instances topic. You can view the actual prices on the Standard instance (subscription) buy page in the GA console or in your bills.
You can use the GA (pay-as-you-go) CU calculator to estimate the instance fees and CU fees of pay-as-you-go GA instances.
If you use the pay-by-bandwidth bandwidth metering method, you must purchase and associate a basic bandwidth plan with the Global Accelerator instance. For more information about the pricing of basic bandwidth plans, see the Basic bandwidth plan (subscription) buy page in the GA console.
If the bandwidth metering method of a GA instance is pay-by-data-transfer, the data transfer fees are managed by CDT. For information about the pricing of CDT, see Internet data transfers and Inter-region data transfers.
For more information about the pricing of GA resource plans, see GA resource plans. The actual prices on the buy page in the GA console shall prevail.