Artificial Intelligence Recommendation:Billing methods and pricing

Billable items of AIRec

The price of an Artificial Intelligence Recommendation (AIRec) instance is determined by the queries per second (QPS) of recommendation requests, the number of users, and the number of items.

• Number of users and items

Note: The fees for the number of users and items are included in the fees of online storage. If you use MaxCompute for offline storage, you may be charged additional fees for using MaxCompute.

The number of users is the number of users that are stored in the user table. AIRec calculates the number of users who perform operations, such as browsing, clicking, or adding likes, on recommendation results. The billing unit for the number of users is one million. Each one million users is charged USD 80 per month.

The number of items is the number of items that are stored in the item table. The number of items indicates the amount of recommendation content that users can access. The recommendation content includes commodities in the e-commerce industry, blogs and videos in the content industry, and news in the news industry. The billing unit for the number of items is one million. Each one million items are charged USD 50 per month.

• QPS

The recommendation request QPS is the number of recommendation requests that can be sent to AIRec per second. A recommendation request is identified by a unique user ID and the scene that the user wants to request. You are charged for each QPS that is processed. For an AIRec instance of Standard Edition, the fee for one QPS is USD 200 per month.

Evaluation of QPS

If you have 100 thousand daily active users (DAU), you may need 10 QPSs. You can use this value to determine the QPS quota that you need. If you cannot determine the QPS quota that you need, submit a ticket to Alibaba Cloud AIRec technical support engineers for assistance.

Billing methods of AIRec

The fees of AIRec consist of fixed fees and flexible fees. Flexible fees are optional.

Fixed fees: You are charged for an AIRec instance that is commercially available. The billing method supports the monthly or yearly subscription. The purchased instance has fixed quotas of users, items, and QPS. You can request a quota increase. After the quota is increased, the subscription price is changed.

Flexible fees: After you enable the elastic QPS feature, if the QPS of concurrent requests exceeds the quota that you specified for your subscribed AIRec instance, you can still obtain recommendation results within a specified QPS range. You are charged based on the actual amount of recommendation request QPS.

QPS billing

Alibaba Cloud AIRec supports two billing methods for QPS: throttling billing and elastic billing.

The throttling billing method applies only to requests whose traffic does not exceed the recommendation request QPS quota that you specified for your subscribed AIRec instance. If the QPS of concurrent requests exceeds the quota, the system will return a message that the quota is exceeded, and no recommendation results will be returned.

The elastic billing method provides elastic QPS for your recommendation request QPS quota that you specified for your subscribed AIRec instance. This billing method provides extra QPS and allows your users to obtain recommendation results even if the QPS of concurrent requests exceeds the quota.

The range of elastic QPS for AIRec instances of Industry Operation Edition is from 0 to 30. You can adjust the elastic QPS quota within the range.

By default, the elastic QPS quota is equal to the recommendation request QPS quota that you specified for an AIRec instance of Algorithm Configuration Edition. If you want to modify the elastic QPS quota, log on to the AIRec console and go to the Basic Information page of the instance to perform the operation. For example, you set the recommendation request QPS quota to 60. In this case, the default elastic QPS quota is also 60. This indicates that a maximum of 120 concurrent requests are allowed per second. You can also adjust the elastic QPS quota to a value less than 60 based on the step of 5.

If you provide a special type of business and want to increase the quota of your elastic QPS, submit a ticket.

Evaluation and billable items of elastic QPS

If you enable the elastic billing method, the fee you need to pay each month consists of the following parts:

1. The fee for your subscribed AIRec instance: If you purchase an instance whose specifications are 1 million users, 1 million items, and 10 QPS, you are charged USD 3,380 per month.

2. The fee for the elastic QPS: If the recommendation request QPS quota of your instance is 10, the default elastic QPS quota is also 10, and the total QPS quota is 20. If the number of concurrent requests within an hour is greater than 10 but less than 20, the elastic QPS is charged by hour. If your instance is deployed in the China (Beijing), China (Hangzhou), or China (Shenzhen) region, the unit price of elastic QPS is 0.56 USD/unit/hour. If your instance is deployed in the Singapore or US (Virginia) region, the unit price of elastic QPS is 0.90 USD/unit/hour.

The following table provides an example. For example, the instance is deployed in the China (Beijing) region.

The maximum elastic QPS is calculated by using the following formula: Maximum QPS of actual concurrent requests - Recommendation request QPS quota that you specified for your subscribed AIRec instance. If the maximum QPS of actual concurrent requests exceeds the supported value, the system charges the elastic QPS based on the maximum elastic QPS. You can refer to the fourth row (2020.09.01 10:00-11:00) in the preceding table.

Note: If the maximum QPS of actual concurrent requests exceeds the supported value, we recommend that you upgrade your AIRec instance.

Methods for modifying a quota

To modify the recommendation request QPS quota of your subscribed AIRec instance, log on to the AIRec console and click Upgrade or Downgrade Quota on the Basic Information page of your instance.

To modify the elastic QPS quota of your instance, log on to the AIRec console, go to the Basic Information page of your instance, and then click Modify next to the QPS value. Modifying the elastic QPS quota causes major changes. Therefore, you can modify this quota only every 10 minutes.

Note: The elastic QPS used within an hour is charged based on the maximum elastic QPS in this hour. We recommend that you do not frequently modify your QPS quota.

Enable or disable elastic QPS

When you purchase an AIRec instance for the first time, you can enable elastic QPS. If you have purchased an AIRec instance, you can upgrade or downgrade your instance to modify the elastic QPS quota. If you want to disable your elastic QPS, log on to the AIRec console, go to the Basic Information page of your instance, and then click Modify to adjust the elastic QPS quota to 0.

Cost reduction in the test phase

You can complete the questionnaire on the homepage of the AIRec official website to apply for a free trial in the first month. If you want to use your AIRec instance to provide services, you can upgrade the instance to the official commercial version. If your data is prepared, we recommend that you directly use an AIRec instance that is commercially available.