The following table lists the retention policies of RDS instances and data when a Subscription instance expires or when a Pay-As-You-Go instance has overdue payment.

Warning Important The system may send you notifications that you have overdue payments. When this occurs, please clear all overdue payments to avoid instances being released. Please note that your instances may be released at a system-selected time after the payment due date.
Instance Type Instance status What to do
Subscription
  • If automatic renewal is enabled:
    • (15 days) During days 1 to 15 after expiration, the instance runs properly.
    • (15 days) During days 16 to 30 after expiration, the instance is locked.
    • (8 days) During days 31 to 38 after expiration, the instance is released and data backup is retained.
    • On day 39 after expiration, data is no longer retained.
  • If automatic renewal is disabled:
    • (15 days) During days 1 to 15 after expiration, the instance is locked.
    • (8 days) During days 16 to 23 after expiration, the instance is released and data backup is retained.
    • On day 24 after expiration, data is no longer retained.
  • Before the instance is released, manually renew the instance.
  • When data backup is retained, you can use the recycle bin to rebuild the instance by restoring data to a new instance.
  • After data is released, data cannot be reovered.
Pay-As-You-Go If your Alibaba Cloud account fails to pay bills (for example, the associated credit card exceeds the credit limit), all the instances under this account will be in the status of overdue payment.
  • (15 days) During days 1 to 15 of overdue payment, the instance runs properly.
  • (15 days) During days 16 to 30 of overdue payment, the instance is locked.
  • On day 31 of overdue payment, data is no longer retained.
  • Before data is released, check the payment method of your Alibaba Cloud account.
  • After data is released ,data cannot be recovered.
Note When the RDS instance is locked, applications cannot access the instance and you cannot do any operation to the instance. We recommend that you enable automatic renewal and make sure not to exceed your credit limit to avoid impact on your business.