Elastic IP addresses (EIPs) support the pay-as-you-go billing method. Pay-as-you-go EIPs support the pay-by-data-transfer and pay-by-bandwidth metering methods.

Overview

The pay-as-you-go billing method allows you to use resources and pay for them afterward. Pay-as-you-go EIPs are billed based on the following rules:
  • You can release a pay-as-you-go EIP as needed. After an EIP is released, the bill of the current hour or day is generated the next hour or day, and then fees are deducted from your account balance.
  • If you associate an EIP with an Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance that is deployed in a virtual private cloud (VPC), you are not charged a configuration fee for the EIP. However, you are charged a configuration fee if you do not associate an EIP with a cloud resource or associate an EIP with a NAT gateway, a Server Load Balancer (SLB) instance, a secondary elastic network interface (ENI), or a high-availability virtual IP address (HAVIP).
Pay-as-you-go EIPs are billed based on data transfer or bandwidth. The maximum bandwidth value varies based on the metering method of an EIP. The following table describes the differences.
Item Pay-by-data-transfer EIP Pay-by-bandwidth EIP
Bandwidth guarantee The maximum bandwidth value is not a guaranteed value. It indicates the upper limit of bandwidth and is only for reference. In scenarios where requests contend for bandwidth resources, the maximum bandwidth is not guaranteed. The maximum bandwidth value is a guaranteed value. In scenarios where requests contend for bandwidth resources, the maximum bandwidth is guaranteed.
Sum of maximum bandwidth values For each Alibaba Cloud account, the sum of maximum bandwidth values of all pay-by-data-transfer EIPs in a region cannot exceed 5 Gbit/s. If your business requires guaranteed bandwidth or larger bandwidth, you must purchase pay-by-bandwidth EIPs. For each Alibaba Cloud account, the sum of the maximum bandwidth values of all pay-by-bandwidth EIPs in each region cannot exceed 50 Gbit/s. If your business requires larger bandwidth, contact your sales manager.

Pay-by-data-transfer

Total fees of a pay-by-data-transfer EIP = Configuration fee + Data transfer fee. The billing cycle is one hour. Fees are calculated and bills are generated on an hourly basis. If you use an EIP for less than 1 hour, you are charged for one hour.

Descriptions of the fees:
  • Configuration fee = Instance unit price (USD/hour) × Usage duration (hours)

    Usage duration refers to the time period from when the EIP is created to when it is released.

  • Data transfer fee = Unit price of data transfer (USD/GB) × Amount of data transfer (GB)

    The amount of data transfer refers to the cumulative outbound traffic of an EIP. You are not charged for inbound traffic. Outbound traffic refers to the traffic that is transmitted from Alibaba Cloud to the Internet.

Note We recommend that you set the maximum bandwidth value based on your business requirements to prevent unexpected data transfer charges caused by malicious requests or program errors.
EIPs support BGP (Multi-ISP) and BGP (Multi-ISP) Pro. If you use EIPs of different line types, you are charged at different instance unit prices and different data transfer unit prices.
Note If the information about the regions and prices in the following table is different from that on the buy page in the console, the buy page shall prevail.
Table 1. Instance unit prices and data transfer unit prices for EIPs of BGP (Multi-ISP)
Region Instance unit price (USD/hour) Data transfer unit price (USD/GB)
China (Hangzhou), China (Shanghai), China (Beijing), China (Zhangjiakou), China (Hohhot), China (Shenzhen), China (Heyuan), and China (Chengdu) 0.003 0.123
China (Qingdao) 0.003 0.110
China (Hong Kong) 0.009 0.153
Singapore (Singapore) 0.006 0.081
Japan (Tokyo) 0.005 0.087
US (Virginia) 0.005 0.076
US (Silicon Valley) 0.005 0.077
Germany (Frankfurt) and UK (London) 0.006 0.070
UAE (Dubai) 0.009 0.153
Australia (Sydney) 0.006 0.096
Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) 0.003 0.077
Indonesia (Jakarta) and India (Mumbai) 0.006 0.090
Table 2. Instance unit prices and data transfer unit prices for EIPs of BGP (Multi-ISP) Pro
Region Instance unit price (USD/hour) Data transfer unit price (USD/GB)
China (Hong Kong) 0.009 0.452

Pay-by-bandwidth

Total fees of a pay-by-bandwidth EIP = Configuration fee + Bandwidth fee. The configuration fee and bandwidth fee are billed on an hourly basis. If you use an EIP for less than 1 hour, you are charged for 1 hour. The billing cycle is one day. Fees are calculated and bills are generated on a daily basis.

Descriptions of the fees:
  • Configuration fee = Instance unit price (USD/day) × [Usage duration (hours)/24] (days)

    Usage duration refers to the time period from when the EIP is created to when it is released.

  • Bandwidth fee
    • The bandwidth fee of an EIP of BGP (Multi-ISP) is calculated by based on a tiered pricing model with 5 Mbit/s as the threshold. The following formulas show how to calculate the bandwidth fee in different scenarios:
      • 1 Mbit/s ≤ Maximum bandwidth value ≤ 5 Mbit/s: Bandwidth fee = Unit price for bandwidth that is between 1 Mbit/s to 5 Mbit/s (USD/day per Mbit/s) × [Usage duration (hours)/24] (days) × Maximum bandwidth value
      • Maximum bandwidth value > 5 Mbit/s: Bandwidth fee = Unit price for bandwidth that is between 1 Mbit/s to 5 Mbit/s (USD/day per Mbit/s) × [Usage duration (hours)/24] (days) × 5 + Unit price for bandwidth that is higher than 5 Mbit/s (USD/day per Mbit/s) × [Usage duration (hours)/24] (days) × (n - 5)

        In the preceding formula, n represents the maximum bandwidth value.

    • The bandwidth fee of an EIP of BGP (Multi-ISP) Pro is calculated by using the following formula:

      Bandwidth fee = Bandwidth unit price (USD/day per Mbit/s) × [Usage duration (hours)/24] (days) × Maximum bandwidth value

    You can modify the maximum bandwidth value of an EIP as needed. If you change the maximum bandwidth value of an EIP, the bandwidth fee for the day is calculated based on the highest maximum bandwidth value on that day.

EIPs support BGP (Multi-ISP) and BGP (Multi-ISP) Pro. If you use EIPs of different line types, you are charged at different instance unit prices and different bandwidth unit prices.
Note If the information in the following tables is different from that on the buy page in the console, the information on the buy page shall prevail.
Table 3. Instance unit prices for EIPs of BGP (Multi-ISP)
Region Instance unit price (USD/day)
China (Hangzhou), China (Shanghai), China (Beijing), China (Zhangjiakou), China (Hohhot), China (Shenzhen), China (Heyuan), China (Chengdu), and China (Qingdao) 0.074
China (Hong Kong) 0.211
Singapore (Singapore) 0.151
Japan (Tokyo), US (Virginia), and US (Silicon Valley) 0.113
Germany (Frankfurt), UK (London), Australia (Sydney), and Indonesia (Jakarta) 0.151
Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) 0.074
Table 4. Bandwidth unit prices for EIPs of BGP (Multi-ISP)
Region Bandwidth unit price (USD/day per Mbit/s)
1 Mbps 2 Mbps 3 Mbps 4 Mbps 5 Mbps 6 Mbit/s and higher (n represents the bandwidth value).
China (Hangzhou), China (Shanghai), China (Beijing), China (Zhangjiakou), China (Hohhot), China (Shenzhen), China (Heyuan), China (Chengdu), Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), China (Hong Kong), Singapore (Singapore), Indonesia (Jakarta), US (Virginia), US (Silicon Valley), Germany (Frankfurt), UK (London), and Australia (Sydney) 0.14 0.28 0.43 0.57 0.71 0.71+(n-5)× 0.5
China (Qingdao) 0.11 0.21 0.32 0.43 0.53 0.53+(n-5)× 0.46
Japan (Tokyo) 0.17 0.34 0.51 0.68 0.85 0.85+(n-5)× 0.57
Table 5. Instance unit prices and bandwidth unit prices for EIPs of BGP (Multi-ISP) Pro
Region Instance unit price (USD/day) Bandwidth unit price (USD/day per Mbit/s)
China (Hong Kong) 0.211 1.430

Example

For example, you create an EIP in the China (Hangzhou) region at 09:30 (UTC+8) and set the maximum bandwidth value to 10 Mbit/s. Then, you associate the EIP with a NAT gateway and start your services. In this case, you are charged a data transfer fee. You have modified the maximum bandwidth value twice on the same day:
  • At 17:00 (UTC+8), you change the maximum bandwidth value from 10 Mbit/s to 20 Mbit/s.
  • At 23:00 (UTC+8), you change the maximum bandwidth value from 20 Mbit/s to 15 Mbit/s.
Example

The following table describes how fees are calculated based on the pay-by-data-transfer or pay-by-bandwidth metering method.

Billing method Configuration fee Data transfer fee or bandwidth fee Total
Pay-by-data-transfer
  • Instance unit price: In this example, the instance unit price of the EIP in the China (Hangzhou) region is USD 0.003 per hour.
  • Usage duration: In this example, the EIP is used for 14.5 hours on that day. The usage duration is rounded up to 15 hours.
  • Configuration fee of the EIP on that day = Instance unit price (USD/hour) × Usage duration (hours) × Number of EIPs = 0.003 (USD/hour) × 15 (hours) × 1 = USD 0.045.
  • Unit price of data transfer: In this example, the unit price of data transfer in the China (Hangzhou) region is USD 0.123 per GB.
  • Amount of data transfer: In this example, 60 GB of data is used on that day.
  • Data transfer fee of the EIP on that day = Unit price of data transfer (USD/GB) × Amount of data transfer (GB) = 0.123 (USD/GB) × 60 (GB) = USD 7.38.
Total fees = Configuration fee (USD) + Data transfer fee (USD) = USD 0.045 + USD 7.38 = USD 7.425.
Pay-by-bandwidth
  • Instance unit price: In this example, the instance unit price of the EIP in the China (Hangzhou) region is USD 0.074 per day.
  • Usage duration: In this example, the EIP is used for 14.5 hours on that day. The usage duration is rounded up to 15 hours.
  • Configuration fee of the EIP on that day = Instance unit price (USD/day) × Usage duration (days) × Number of EIPs = 0.074 (USD/day) × [15 (hours)/24 (hours)] (days) × 1 = USD 0.04625.
  • Maximum bandwidth value: The bandwidth fee is calculated based on the highest maximum bandwidth value on that day. In this example, the highest maximum bandwidth value is 20 Mbit/s.
  • Bandwidth unit price: USD 0.14 per day [unit price for bandwidth that is between 1 Mbit/s to 5 Mbit/s in China (Hangzhou)] × 5 + USD 0.5 per day (unit price for bandwidth that is higher than 5 Mbit/s) × (20 - 5) = USD 8.2 per day.
  • Usage duration: In this example, the EIP is used for 14.5 hours on that day. The usage duration is rounded up to 15 hours.
  • Bandwidth fee of the EIP on that day = 8.2 (USD/day) × [15 (hours)/24 (hours)] (days) = USD 5.125.
Total fees = Configuration fee + Bandwidth fee = USD 0.04625 + USD 5.125 = USD 5.17125.