Billing methods
Private Zone uses a pay-as-you-go billing method. You incur charges for the following features: Authoritative Zone, Cache, Forward Zone, Inbound Endpoint, and Traffic Analysis. Bills are generated daily. Charges for the previous day are available on the current day.
Billable items
1. Authoritative Zone
Billable item | Pricing | Billing cycle | Billing trigger | Description |
Number of User Defined Zones (converted for billing) | USD 0.015 per zone/day | Daily | A User Defined Zones is added to Authoritative Zone. | You are charged for the total number of Authoritative Zone under your account. The actual number of billable zones is determined by the number of DNS records. The conversion logic is as follows:
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DNS queries for User Defined Zones | USD 0.004 per 10,000 queries | Daily | A DNS query is received for a domain in Authoritative Zone. |
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2. Cache
Billable item | Pricing | Billing cycle | Billing Triggers | Description |
Number of Domain Name | USD 0.015 per domain/day | Daily | A Domain Name is added. | You are charged for the total number of Domain Name under your account. The cache persistence feature works on an exact domain match basis. |
Number of Clear Cache operations | USD 15 per operation | Daily | You manually trigger Clear Cache for an added Domain Name. | You are charged for the total number of times the Clear Cache feature is used under your account. |
3. Forward Zone
Billable item | Pricing | Billing cycle | Billing trigger | Description |
Number of Source IP Addresses of Outbound Traffic | USD 0.15 per IP/hour | Hourly | An Outbound Endpoint is added. | You are charged for the total number of Source IP Addresses of Outbound Traffic under your account. |
Number of DNS queries forwarded by Outbound Endpoint | USD 0.004 per 10,000 queries | Daily | DNS queries are forwarded to external DNS systems through an Outbound Endpoint. | You are charged for the total number of DNS queries forwarded by all Outbound Endpoint under your account. |
4. Inbound Endpoint
Billable item | Pricing | Billing cycle | Billing trigger | Description |
Number of Inbound service IP addresses | USD 0.15 per IP/hour | Hourly | An Inbound Endpoint is added. | You are charged for the total number of Inbound service IP addresses under your account. |
Number of DNS queries received by Inbound Endpoint | USD 0.004 per 10,000 queries | Daily | DNS queries are received by an Inbound Endpoint. | You are charged for the total number of DNS queries received by all Inbound Endpoint under your account. |
5. Traffic Analysis
Billable item | Pricing | Billing cycle | Billing trigger | Description |
Private Zone stores and analyzes logs | USD 0.015 per 10,000 entries | Daily | Private Zone Traffic Analysis Enabled and set to Private Zone stores and analyzes logs. | After the traffic analysis feature is enabled, the system collects request and response logs generated during internal DNS resolution and analyzes the data. Total number of DNS log entries = |
Deliver to Log Service only | USD 0.0015 per 10,000 entries | Daily | Private Zone Traffic Analysis Enabled and set to Deliver to Log Service only. |
Other charges: Subsequent storage fees are charged directly by Log Service SLS. For more information, see Log Service SLS pricing. |
Private Zone stores, analyzes, and delivers to Log Service | USD 0.0165 per 10,000 entries | Daily | Private Zone Traffic Analysis Enabled and set to Private Zone stores, analyzes, and delivers to Log Service. |
Other charges: Subsequent storage fees are charged directly by Log Service SLS. For more information, see Log Service SLS pricing. |
Global traffic queries: The number of DNS queries directly initiated by all clients, such as ECS instances and containers, in your internal network. This number is doubled to account for both the request and response log for each query.
Private Zone traffic queries: DNS queries that are processed by and receive a response from the Private Zone module (including acceleration and regular regions).
Cache traffic queries: DNS queries that are answered by the cache.
Forward zone traffic queries: The number of DNS queries that are processed by the forwarding module and receive a response. This number is doubled to account for response logs from both the forwarding module and the external DNS system.
Recursive traffic queries: The number of DNS queries that are processed by the recursive module and receive a response.
Billing examples
Scenario 1: Authoritative Zone
Account A has two User Defined Zones: example.com and example.aliyundoc.com. example.com is an acceleration region zone and has 5,050 DNS records. example.aliyundoc.com is a regular region zone and has 105,000 DNS records.
In one day, the domain example.aliyundoc.com has 100,000 origin queries, and the domain example.com receives 200,000 DNS queries from clients.
example.com is an acceleration region zone, so its 5,050 DNS records are converted to 6 billable zones. example.aliyundoc.com is a regular region zone, so its 105,000 DNS records are converted to 2 billable zones. Therefore, Account A is billed for a total of 8 zones.
The daily fee for Account A is the sum of the User Defined Zone fee, the regular region origin query fee, and the acceleration region query fee:
USD 0.24 = USD 0.12 (8 × USD 0.015/zone) + USD 0.04 (10 × USD 0.004/10,000 queries) + USD 0.08 (20 × USD 0.004/10,000 queries).
acceleration region (default):
You are charged based on the number of DNS queries initiated by clients, such as ECS instances and containers. This billing is not affected by the TTL value. We recommend that you enable NSCD for your ECS instances to reduce the number of DNS queries caused by the absence of a local cache.
regular region:
You are charged based on the actual number of User Defined Zones.
For example, if the TTL for the domain www.example.com is set to 30 seconds, all queries from an internal client within 30 seconds will theoretically hit the cache. After the 30-second TTL expires, DNS makes one origin query. Therefore, in 10 minutes, the number of origin queries for this domain is 10 × 60 / 30 = 20. You can view the number of origin queries on the request analysis page in the console.
A longer TTL reduces the frequency of origin queries and lowers charges, but domain changes take longer to take effect.
A shorter TTL increases the frequency of origin queries and raises charges, but domain changes take effect faster.
Private Zone uses a server cluster, distributing DNS queries across multiple servers. A 100% cache hit rate requires every server in the cluster to have a cached response. Consequently, it is normal for the number of origin queries shown in the console to be higher than the theoretical value, especially at low query volumes.
Scenario 2: Cache
Account B has three Domain Name: www.example.com, test.example.com, and api.example.com. Due to an urgent business adjustment, you update their DNS records. To make the updated records for the Domain Name take effect immediately, you perform a Clear Cache operation for www.example.com and test.example.com.
One Clear Cache operation on www.example.com and another on test.example.com count as two Clear Cache operations.
The daily fee for Account B is the sum of the Domain Name fee and the Clear Cache fee: USD 30.045 = USD 0.045 (3 × USD 0.015/domain) + USD 30 (2 × USD 15/operation).
Scenario 3: Forward Zone
Account C adds a forwarding rule for the domain example.top, configures 2 Source IP Addresses of Outbound Traffic, and forwards 1 million DNS queries through the Outbound Endpoint in one day.
The daily fee for Account C is the sum of the fee for Source IP Addresses of Outbound Traffic and the fee for DNS queries forwarded by the Outbound Endpoint: USD 7.6 = USD 7.2 (2 × 24 hours × USD 0.15/IP/hour) + USD 0.4 (100 × USD 0.004/10,000 queries).
Scenario 4: Inbound Endpoint
Account D adds 2 Inbound service IP addresses. In one day, the Inbound Endpoint receives 1 million DNS queries.
The daily fee for Account D is the sum of the fee for Inbound service IP addresses and the fee for DNS queries received by the Inbound Endpoint: USD 7.6 = USD 7.2 (2 × 24 hours × USD 0.15/IP/hour) + USD 0.4 (100 × USD 0.004/10,000 queries).
Scenario 5: Traffic Analysis
Account E enables Traffic Analysis and generates 1 million DNS log entries in one day.
The daily fee for Account E is the DNS log fee: USD 1.5 = 100 × USD 0.015/10,000 entries.
Overdue payments
Alibaba Cloud DNS provides a grace period for overdue payments. During this period, you can continue to use your existing pay-as-you-go services, resource plans, and subscription resources. Service is suspended only after the grace period ends. For more information, see Overdue payment and service suspension.