ACK Serverless clusters come in two types — Pro and Basic — with different billing components. This page explains what you are charged for and how each charge is calculated.
Cluster types and billing at a glance
| Cluster type | When to use | Billing components |
|---|---|---|
| ACK Serverless Pro cluster | Production workloads that require enterprise-grade cluster management | Cluster management fee (currently free) + cloud service fees |
| ACK Serverless Basic cluster | Development, testing, or lightweight workloads | Cloud service fees only |
Both cluster types use a two-layer cost model:
-
Cluster management fee (fixed): covers the cluster control plane. For Pro clusters, this fee is currently free during public preview.
-
Resource consumption fees (variable): based on the cloud services your workloads use. If your cluster does not use any cloud services, no resource consumption fees are charged.
In practice, all your costs come from the cloud services your workloads consume.
Billing rules of ACK Serverless Pro clusters
Billable items
Cluster management fee
The cluster management feature is in public preview and free of charge.
Cloud service fees
Cloud service fees are based on the services your cluster uses, billed according to each service's own rules.
| Cloud service | Activation | Description | Subscription | Resource plan | Billing rule |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elastic Container Instance (ECI) | Required | Hosts workloads in ACK Serverless clusters. For more information, see What is Elastic Container Instance?. | Not supported | Not supported | Billing overview |
| Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) | Required | Builds networks and creates routing rules for clusters. For more information, see What is a VPC?. | Not supported | Not supported | Billing |
| Server Load Balancer (SLB) | Required | Enables load balancing for clusters (Classic Load Balancer and Application Load Balancer). For more information, see What is CLB? and What is ALB?. |
|
CLB: not supported; ALB: supported |
|
| Container Registry | Recommended | Manages the lifecycle of cloud-native applications fully managed on the cloud. Container Registry Enterprise Edition instances support subscription billing only. For more information, see What is Container Registry?. | Supported | Not supported | Billing rules |
| Log Service | Recommended | Collects and queries log data for cluster components and applications. For more information, see What is Log Service?. | Not supported | Supported | Billing overview; Purchase a resource plan |
| Elastic IP Address (EIP) | Optional | Enables internet access for cloud resources. For more information, see Elastic IP Address. | Not supported | Not supported | Billing overview |
| NAT Gateway | Optional | Enables clusters to communicate with the internet and pull images over the internet. For more information, see What is NAT Gateway?. | Not supported | Supported | Billing of Internet NAT gateways; NAT resource plans |
| File Storage NAS (NAS) | Optional | Stores application data in NAS file systems. For more information, see What is NAS?. | Not supported | Supported | Billing of General-purpose NAS file systems; Billing of Extreme NAS file systems; Purchase resource plans |
| Object Storage Service (OSS) | Optional | Stores application data in OSS buckets. For more information, see What is OSS?. | Not supported | Supported | Billing overview |
| Key Management Service (KMS) | Optional | Manages application Secrets and encrypts Secrets for ACK Serverless Pro clusters. For more information, see What is Key Management Service?. | Not supported | Not supported | Billing of KMS |
| Alibaba Cloud DNS PrivateZone | Optional | Provides DNS resolution for private domain names within VPCs. For more information, see What is PrivateZone?. | Not supported | Not supported | Billing |
Billing rules of ACK Serverless Basic clusters
ACK Serverless Basic clusters charge only for the cloud services they use. For billing rules of each service, see Cloud service fees.