How are ECI resources billed - Elastic Container Instance

This topic describes the billable items of Elastic Container Instance (ECI) and their billing methods.

Billable items

When you use ECI, you are charged for the following resources:

ECI计费-新.png

Resource	Billing description	References
ECI instance (computing resource)	The billing of an ECI instance varies based on how the instance is created. Two billing modes are supported: By vCPU and memory By ECS instance type	ECI instance billing
Image cache	Create an image cache: If you manually create an image cache, you are charged for temporary resources and snapshots. Automatic creation is free of charge. Use an image cache: You may be charged for disks or temporary storage space based on the type and size of the image cache.	Image cache billing
Data cache	Create a data cache: You are charged for temporary resources and snapshots. Use a data cache: You are charged for disks.	Data cache billing
Temporary storage space	When you create an ECI instance, you are charged for the increased temporary storage space.	Temporary storage space billing
Virtual node (VNode)	You can connect self-managed clusters to ECI through VNodes. VNodes themselves incur ECI instance fees. Each VNode has a resident node, which is equivalent to an ECI instance with 2 vCPUs and 8 GiB of memory.	VNode billing

Note

When you view your bills, note that ECI instance fees and temporary storage space fees are included in the bills for Elastic Container Instance. Disk fees and snapshot fees are included in the bills for Elastic Block Storage. For more information about how to query bills, see Query bills.

You may also need to use other Alibaba Cloud services, such as network and storage services. The following table describes these services:

Resource	Billing description	References
Network	If your ECI instance requires Internet access, you must configure an Elastic IP Address (EIP) or a NAT Gateway and pay the corresponding network fees. Note During the creation of image caches and data caches, you must also configure an EIP or a NAT Gateway if you want to pull images and data from the Internet.	EIP billing NAT Gateway billing
Storage	If your ECI instance requires persistent storage, you can attach storage media such as Alibaba Cloud disks and NAS file systems. You are charged for the storage resources that you use.	Disk billing General-purpose NAS file system billing OSS billing

Billing methods

By default, billable items of ECI, such as instances, image caches, data caches, and temporary storage space, use the pay-as-you-go billing method. You are charged only for the resources that you use.

Note

You can also use other billing methods to optimize costs. For example:

You can use savings plans, reserved instances, and spot instances to reduce ECI instance fees.
You can use OSS storage plans and Storage Capacity Units (SCUs) to offset snapshot fees.

The following rules apply to the pay-as-you-go billing method:

Billing cycle: You are billed per second. The per-second price of each resource is calculated by dividing the hourly price by 3,600.
Settlement cycle: Bills are generated and settled hourly.

For example, you create an ECI instance with 2 vCPUs and 4 GiB of memory without using an image cache. The instance enters the Pending state at 10:49:30 and is released at 11:20:05. Two bills are generated for the instance:

Bill 1: The settlement cycle is from 10:00 to 11:00. The instance is billed for the period from 10:49:30 to 11:00:00. The billing duration is 630 seconds.
Bill 2: The settlement cycle is from 11:00 to 12:00. The instance is billed for the period from 11:00:00 to 11:20:05. The billing duration is 1,205 seconds.

Overdue payments

If your available credit (including your Alibaba Cloud account balance and vouchers) is insufficient when a bill is settled, your account will have an overdue payment. An overdue payment causes your ECI instances to be released. To prevent business interruptions, ensure that you have sufficient credit to avoid resource releases.