How am I billed for ACK managed clusters and dedicated clusters - Container Service for Kubernetes

This topic describes the billing rules of ACK managed clusters and ACK dedicated clusters, including the billable items and billing methods.

Overview

The billable items of ACK managed clusters and ACK dedicated clusters include fees for cluster management, Lingjun node management, and cloud resources. The following table describes the billable items of different cluster types:

Cluster type	Cluster management fees	Lingjun node management fees	Cloud resource fees
ACK managed Pro cluster		Note Lingjun node management fees are incurred only when Lingjun nodes exist in the Lingjun node pool.
ACK managed Basic cluster		Not applicable
ACK dedicated cluster		Not applicable

Billing example

After you configure the settings of the cluster, nodes, and components in the ACK console, you can view the billing configurations of the cluster. The following figure is an example.

Note

The prices in the following figures are for reference only. The actual prices displayed in the console shall prevail. Alternatively, you can use the price calculator to create a cost estimate by selecting your desired products and configurations.

Product	Description
ACK Cluster	Only ACK managed Pro clusters incur cluster management fees.
ECS Instance - Worker	ECS instances serve as the worker nodes for your cluster. You are charged for these instances based on their configurations, including instance type, system disk type, and capacity. For details, see Billing overview.
SLB Instance - API Server	The Kubernetes API server is exposed via Classic Load Balancer (CLB) instances. Billing for CLB instances consists of: Instance fee Charges for Load Balancer Capacity Units (LCUs), which are based on actual traffic usage. For billing details, see CLB billing. Note Use the CLB LCU Estimator to estimate your LCU consumption.
NAT Gateway	NAT Gateways provide Internet access for clusters. Billing includes: Instance fees Capacity Unit (CU) fees, which are based on actual traffic. For billing details, see Billing of Internet NAT gateways. Note Use the NAT CU Estimator to estimate your CU consumption.
EIP	Elastic IP addresses (EIPs) provide resources with public-facing internet access. For billing details, see Billing overview. In this example, two EIPs are used: One is associated with the API server's CLB. One is associated with the NAT gateway.
ACK Cluster Monitoring Pro Edition	Cluster monitoring is provided by Managed Service for Prometheus. For billing details, see Container Monitoring billing.

Billing method switching

By default, you are charged a cluster management fee for ACK managed Pro clusters on a pay-as-you-go basis. You cannot change the billing method of the cluster management fee to subscription.

You can change the billing methods of other cloud resources in the corresponding consoles. You can read the documentation of a cloud service to check whether the service supports billing method switching. For more information about how to switch the billing method of an Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance, see Change the billing method from subscription to pay-as-you-go and Change the billing method from pay-as-you-go to subscription.

Important

When you change the billing method of an ECS instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription, do not select Switch to Subscription in the Data Disk section. Otherwise, workloads on the instance cannot be restarted. As a result, workloads on the instance may be affected. For more information, see Why do applications fail to restart after I change the billing method of a data disk mounted to an ECS instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription?
When the system scales out a node pool, newly added ECS instances use the billing method of the node pool. If you want to change the billing method of a node pool, see Modify a node pool.

Cluster renewal

By default, ACK Pro clusters charge you a cluster management fee on a pay-as-you-go basis. Renewal is not required for ACK Pro clusters.

If your cluster uses a subscription resource, we recommend that you renew the resource in the console before the subscription period ends. This helps prevent your business from being affected by resource expiration. For more information about how to renew an ECS instance, see Renew a subscription instance.

View billing details

You can view the bills of cluster management fees and cloud resource fees on the Expenses and Costs page. For more information, see Query bills.

Overdue payments

If the sum of the balance and vouchers in your Alibaba Cloud account is less than the payable amount on a bill, an overdue payment is generated. Overdue payments may affect your business. We recommend that you top up your account and complete overdue payments at the earliest opportunity. For more information, see Overdue payments.

Unsubscribing and refunds

If you no longer need to use an ACK cluster, delete the cluster, release the cloud resources used by the cluster, and make sure that the billing of the cluster and cloud resources is stopped.

The cluster management fee is not refunded because it is charged on a pay-as-you-go basis.
For more information about the refund policies of other cloud services, refer to the billing documentation of the cloud services.

For more information, see Unsubscription and refund policies.

References

For more information about the billing FAQ, see Billing FAQs.
To optimize cluster costs, see ACK cluster cost management for best practices.
ACK provides the cost management suite, which offers a cloud cost governance solution to help you control IT spending based on FinOps. This solution allows you to allocate the costs of resources, improve resource utilization, and reduce resource costs to meet the business requirements in different scenarios. For more information, see Cost suite.