This topic describes the billing method and associated billing items of physical connections. Both exclusive physical connections and shared physical connections involve Alibaba Cloud fees and third-party service provider fees. Exclusive physical connections use dedicated ports, and shared physical connections use shared ports.
Billing items of exclusive physical connections
The following figure and table show the billing items of exclusive physical connections.

- By default, in the regions within China, you cannot use your current account to create VBRs for other accounts. The physical connection owner and the physical connection user must belong to the same enterprise. If you require special permissions, you can submit a ticket. The enterprise that owns the A26 license for telecommunication infrastructure service granted by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) can submit a ticket to create VBRs for other accounts.
- By default, in regions outside China, you cannot use your current account to create VBRs for other accounts. If you require special permissions, you can submit a ticket.
Charged by | Billing item | Description | Payment method |
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Third-party service provider | Optical fiber installation fee Indoor cable rental fee |
A leased line rental fee is charged by the leased line provider. You must contact the provider yourself to obtain a price quote for end-to-end resources. A cable connection fee and an indoor cable rental fee may be charged by the provider of the data center where the access point is located. | One-time charge. |
Alibaba Cloud | Initial installation fee | An initial installation fee is charged for port installation. | A one-time charge of USD 1,500. |
Resource occupation fee | A resource occupation fee is charged based on the specification of the port. | Billed on a monthly basis. | |
Outbound network traffic fee | An outbound network traffic fee is charged for the network traffic from the Alibaba Cloud data center to the on-premises data center. Fees are calculated on an hourly basis. Bills are generated on an hourly basis. A billing period less than an hour is calculated as an hour. |
Billed based on data usage. Unit price: USD 0.015/GB.
Note No outbound network traffic fee is charged until December 1, 2020.
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The following table lists different resource occupation fees incurred by different port specifications.
Billing item | Port specification | Subscription (USD/month) |
---|---|---|
Resource occupation fee (mainland China) | 1 GB or less | 85 |
10 GB | 720 | |
40 GB | 2,450 | |
100 GB | 5,200 | |
Resource occupation fee (outside China) | 1 GB or less | 210 |
10 GB | 1,600 | |
40 GB | 5,500 | |
100 GB | 11,700 |
Billing items of shared physical connections
The following figure and table show the billing items of shared physical connections.

Charged by | Billing item | Description | Payment method |
---|---|---|---|
Third-party service provider | Optical fiber installation fee Indoor cable rental fee |
A leased line rental fee is charged by the leased line provider. This provider is also an Alibaba Cloud partner. You must contact the provider yourself to obtain a price quote. | One-time charge. |
Alibaba Cloud | Outbound network traffic fee | An outbound network traffic fee is charged for the network traffic from the Alibaba Cloud data center to the on-premises data center. Fees are calculated on an hourly basis. Bills are generated on an hourly basis. A billing period less than an hour is calculated as an hour. |
Billed based on data usage. Unit price: USD 0.015/GB
Note No outbound network traffic fee is charged until December 1, 2020.
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Billing example
Take an on-premises data center in Beijing as an example. You own this data center. The data center is operated by China Unicom. You want to connect the data center to an Alibaba Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network in the China (Beijing) region by using a leased line and access the Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances in the VPC network.
Related fees are calculated based on the following rules:
- If you want to establish an exclusive physical connection, you must contact the service provider yourself. In this case, you must contact China Unicom and require China Unicom to connect your on-premises data center to an access point of Alibaba Cloud in Beijing through a leased line. China Unicom performs a site survey on resources of the Alibaba Cloud access point and provides you with a price quote. Alibaba Cloud assists China Unicom in the site survey. After you confirm the physical connection interface, Alibaba Cloud charges a one-time initial installation fee and helps complete the installation of cables. After the physical connection is established, Alibaba Cloud charges you a resource occupation fee.
- If you want to establish a shared physical connection, you must contact the service provider yourself. In this case, you must contact China Unicom and require China Unicom to connect your on-premises data center to Alibaba Cloud through a leased line. The access points of China Unicom have been connected to the access points of Alibaba Cloud. Therefore, you must connect your on-premises data center to the access point of China Unicom nearest to your on-premises data center. China Unicom performs an end-to-end site survey on the lines between your on-premises data center and the data center of China Unicom. After the survey, China Unicom provides you with a price quote of all related service charges. During this process, Alibaba Cloud does not charge you any initial installation fee or resource occupation fee.
- After you connect the on-premises data center to Alibaba Cloud, you must purchase and configure a Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN) instance, and add the VPC and Virtual Border Router (VBR) to the CEN instance. This enables interconnections between ECS instances in the VPC and servers on the premises.
Overdue payments
To avoid possible service interruptions, we recommend that you renew your physical connection instances or add funds to your account at the earliest opportunity.
If a physical connection instance uses the pay-as-you-go billing method, fees are not automatically deducted when the instance expires. You must set automatic renewal to avoid overdue payments and prevent the instance from being released due to overdue payments. For more information, see Renew an exclusive physical connection.
Billing method | Expiration/Overdue payment | Renewal |
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Subscription | You will receive SMS or email notifications 168 hours, 72 hours, and 24 hours before a physical connection instance expires.
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You can renew a physical connection instance during the subscription period or before the instance is released. |