ACK LINGJUN clusters use pay-as-you-go billing with two cluster-level charges: a flat cluster management fee and a tiered GPU-based node management fee. You are also charged separately for any associated Alibaba Cloud services you use.
Billing components
Cluster management fee
Each ACK LINGJUN cluster includes a fully managed, high-availability control plane that provides the same enterprise-grade stability, reliability, and security features as ACK Pro clusters.
| Billable item | Unit price | Billing method | Billing cycle |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cluster management fee | USD 0.09 per cluster per hour | Pay-as-you-go | Billed hourly. Usage under one hour is rounded up to one hour. |
|
Billable item |
Unit price |
Billing method |
Billing cycle |
|
Cluster management fee |
USD 0.09 per cluster per hour |
Pay-as-you-go |
Billed hourly. Usage for less than one hour is billed as one hour. |
Node management fee
ACK LINGJUN clusters manage LINGJUN compute nodes and provide GPU-aware scheduling features — including GPU sharing and topology-aware scheduling — out of the box.
Node management fees are billed daily and use a tiered pricing model based on GPU count. The system periodically reports the number of GPUs across all cluster nodes. At the end of each day, the maximum reported value is used to calculate the daily charge.
| GPU count (maximum daily value) | Unit price | Billing method | Billing cycle |
|---|---|---|---|
| First 100 GPUs | USD 1.5625 per GPU-day | Pay-as-you-go | Billed daily |
| GPUs 101–500 | USD 1.25 per GPU-day | Pay-as-you-go | Billed daily |
| GPUs 501–1,000 | USD 0.9375 per GPU-day | Pay-as-you-go | Billed daily |
| More than 1,000 GPUs | USD 0.625 per GPU-day | Pay-as-you-go | Billed daily |
Example: A cluster with a maximum daily reported value of 600 GPUs is charged as follows: (100 x 1.5625) + (400 x 1.25) + (100 x 0.9375) = USD 750.00 per day.
|
Billable item |
Unit price (tiered based on the maximum daily reported data value) |
Billing method |
Billing cycle |
|
|
Number of GPUs |
For 100 or fewer GPUs |
USD 1.5625 per GPU-day |
Pay-as-you-go Note
The system periodically reports the number of GPUs in the cluster nodes. |
Billed daily Note
The system automatically selects the maximum daily reported value for billing. |
|
For the portion of GPUs from 101 to 500 |
USD 1.25 per GPU-day |
|||
|
For the portion of GPUs from 501 to 1,000 |
USD 0.9375 per GPU-day |
|||
|
For more than 1,000 GPUs |
USD 0.625 per GPU-day |
|||
Cloud resource fees
ACK LINGJUN clusters work with other Alibaba Cloud services. Each service is billed independently according to its own pricing rules. If you don't use any additional Alibaba Cloud services, no extra cloud resource fees apply.
Currently, you can create ACK LINGJUN clusters only in the Intelligent Computing LINGJUN console. Billing support for associated cloud services depends on the information provided in that console.
The following table lists the cloud services that can be used with ACK LINGJUN clusters.
| Cloud service | Activation type | Description | Subscription supported | Resource plan supported | Billing information |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ECS | Required | Used to create nodes for ACK clusters. For more information, see What is Elastic Compute Service? | No | No | Billing overview |
| VPC | Required | Used to build the cluster network environment and routing rules. For more information, see What is a virtual private cloud (VPC)? | No | No | Product billing |
| Classic Load Balancer (CLB) | Required | Used to create load balancers for the cluster. For more information, see What is Classic Load Balancer (CLB)? |
No |
No | |
| Auto Scaling (ESS) | Required | Used to create nodes and implement automatic scaling for the cluster. For more information, see What is Auto Scaling? | No | No | Product billing |
| Container Registry (ACR) | Recommended | Used for secure hosting and lifecycle management of cloud-native assets. For more information, see What is Container Registry? | Yes. ACR Enterprise instances support subscription only. For more information, see Billing of Enterprise instances. | No | Billing |
| Elastic IP Address (EIP) | Recommended | Used for communication between cloud resources and the internet. For more information, see What is an Elastic IP Address? | No | No | Billing overview |
| Simple Log Service (SLS) | Recommended | Used for log collection and retrieval for cluster components and applications. For more information, see What is Simple Log Service? | No | Yes. For more information, see Purchase a resource plan. | Billing overview |
| Alibaba Cloud Prometheus | Recommended | Used for cluster monitoring and alerting based on Prometheus. For more information, see What is Prometheus Monitoring? | Yes | No | Pay-as-you-go |
| NAT Gateway | Optional | Used to enable internet access and pull images from the internet for the cluster. For more information, see What is a NAT gateway? | No | Yes. For more information, see NAT gateway resource plans. | NAT gateway billing |
| Object Storage Service (OSS) | Optional | Used to implement an object storage solution for cluster application data. For more information, see What is Object Storage Service? | No | Yes. For more information, see Resource plan purchase guide. | Billing overview |
Billing cycle
The cluster management fee is billed hourly. Alibaba Cloud measures usage from the previous hour, generates a bill, and deducts the amount from your account. Bills are typically generated 10–30 minutes after a billing cycle ends.
Exception: If you create a cluster less than 30 minutes before the top of the hour, that partial hour is not billed. The first billing cycle starts at the following hour.
Examples:
-
Cluster created at 10:15: the first billing cycle ends at 11:00, and the bill is generated between 11:10 and 11:30.
-
Cluster created at 10:50: the first billing cycle ends at 12:00 (not 11:00), and the bill is generated between 12:10 and 12:30.
Overdue payments
If your account balance is insufficient, the cluster enters an overdue state. In this state, you cannot access the cluster's API server, but workloads on the nodes continue to run. If the balance remains insufficient for more than 15 days, Alibaba Cloud suspends the service: nodes are removed from the cluster (but not released), and the ACK LINGJUN managed cluster along with its container instances are deleted. Container instances deleted as a result of cluster deletion cannot be recovered.
Refund policy
Pay-as-you-go billing does not support refunds.
View bills
-
Log on to the Container Service for Kubernetes console.
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In the top menu bar, click Expenses to go to the Expenses and Costs page.
If you are logged on with an Alibaba Cloud account, choose Expenses > Bills in the top menu bar.
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In the left navigation pane, choose Billing > Bill Details.
-
Click Product Name, select Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes from the product list, and then select ACK - Lingjun Node Management for Commodity Name.
In the upper-right corner of the results list, click the
icon to customize the displayed columns, or click the 
icon to export the list as a CSV file. For more information about billing details, see Billing details.