Managed Service for OpenTelemetry charges for trace reporting, trace storage, and metric storage on a pay-as-you-go basis. Bills are generated daily.
Prices listed here are for reference only. For the latest prices, see the Managed Service for OpenTelemetry pricing page.
Key concepts
Traces, spans, and metrics are the billable units.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Trace | The end-to-end execution path of a transaction or process across a distributed system. |
| Span | A single operation within a trace. Each span is a named, timed segment representing one call request. |
| Metric | Statistical data such as request data, response time, and number of exceptions for applications, APIs, or databases. |
Relationships between traces, spans, and metrics:
All spans with the same trace ID within an Alibaba Cloud account form one trace.
A trace contains at most 10 spans. Each span has a maximum size of 2 KB. Excess data is discarded.
One metric is generated per reported trace.
For details, see Terms.
Pricing
Managed Service for OpenTelemetry provides daily free quotas. If your daily usage stays below the free quota, no charges apply. If your daily usage meets or exceeds the free quota, you are charged for all usage that day, not just the portion above the quota.
The free quota is a threshold, not a deduction. Once daily usage reaches the quota, you are billed for the full day's consumption.
Unit prices
| Billable item | Free quota | Chinese mainland | China (Hong Kong) | Regions outside China |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trace reporting | 100,000 traces/day | USD 0.13 per million traces | USD 0.182 per million traces | USD 0.182 per million traces |
| Trace storage | 100,000 traces/day | USD 0.03 per million traces x retention days | USD 0.042 per million traces x retention days | USD 0.042 per million traces x retention days |
| Metric storage | 1,000,000 metrics/day | USD 0.0015 per million metrics x retention days | USD 0.0021 per million metrics x retention days | USD 0.0021 per million metrics x retention days |
Fee calculation details
| Fee type | Calculation basis | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Trace reporting | Number of spans in reported traces | Traces are aggregated into statistical metrics: elapsed time, queries per second (QPS), and number of exceptions. |
| Trace storage | Traces stored per day x retention period | Default retention: 30 days. |
| Metric storage | Metrics stored per day x retention period | Default retention: 30 days. |
To change the retention period, go to the Cluster Configurations tab on the Cluster Configurations page in the Managed Service for OpenTelemetry console.
Calculation examples
The following examples use Chinese mainland pricing.
Trace reporting -- 1 million traces reported per day:
1 x USD 0.13 = USD 0.13/day
Trace storage -- 1 million traces stored for 15 days (15 million traces accumulated):
15 x USD 0.03 = USD 0.45/day
Metric storage -- 1 million metrics generated per day, stored for 15 days (15 million metrics accumulated):
15 x USD 0.0015 = USD 0.0225/day
Billing cycle
Bills are generated daily at 00:00 for the previous day's usage and deducted from your Alibaba Cloud account balance.
Activate the service
Billing examples
The following examples show daily costs for different usage levels in the Chinese mainland. Use these to estimate costs and evaluate the impact of adjusting trace retention periods.
Example 1: 400 million traces/day, 400 million metrics/day
Option A: Store traces and metrics for 30 days
| Billable item | Quantity (millions) | Retention (days) | Unit price (USD) | Formula | Daily cost (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trace reporting | 400 | - | 0.13 per million | 400 x 0.13 | 52.00 |
| Trace storage | 400 | 30 | 0.03 per million | 400 x 30 x 0.03 | 360.00 |
| Metric storage | 400 | 30 | 0.0015 per million | 400 x 30 x 0.0015 | 18.00 |
| Total | 430.00 |
Option B: Store traces for 7 days, metrics for 30 days
| Billable item | Quantity (millions) | Retention (days) | Unit price (USD) | Formula | Daily cost (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trace reporting | 400 | - | 0.13 per million | 400 x 0.13 | 52.00 |
| Trace storage | 400 | 7 | 0.03 per million | 400 x 7 x 0.03 | 84.00 |
| Metric storage | 400 | 30 | 0.0015 per million | 400 x 30 x 0.0015 | 18.00 |
| Total | 154.00 |
Reducing trace retention from 30 to 7 days saves USD 276/day (64% reduction) while retaining the same metric history.
Example 2: 10 million traces/day, 10 million metrics/day
Traces stored for 7 days, metrics stored for 30 days:
| Billable item | Quantity (millions) | Retention (days) | Unit price (USD) | Formula | Daily cost (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trace reporting | 10 | - | 0.13 per million | 10 x 0.13 | 1.30 |
| Trace storage | 10 | 7 | 0.03 per million | 10 x 7 x 0.03 | 2.10 |
| Metric storage | 10 | 30 | 0.0015 per million | 10 x 30 x 0.0015 | 0.45 |
| Total | 3.85 |
Cost comparison: managed vs. self-hosted
Most open source APM systems retain data for only 7 days. Managed Service for OpenTelemetry retains data for 30 days by default. Separate computing and storage fees let you independently adjust the retention period to balance cost and data availability.
| Customer size | Nodes | Requests/day | Spans/request | Self-hosted infrastructure | Self-hosted cost (USD/month) | Managed Service cost (USD/month) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 80 | 20 million | 5 | 4 Elasticsearch servers (4 CPU cores, 16 GB memory, 1 TB SSD) + 4 Collector servers (4 CPU cores, 8 GB memory) | 864.52 | 113.29 |
| Medium | 300 | 300 million | 7 | 8 Elasticsearch servers (8 CPU cores, 16 GB memory, 6 TB SSD) + 8 Collector servers (4 CPU cores, 8 GB memory) | 3,330.07 | 2,379.79 |
| Large | 1,000 | 1 billion | 8 | 12 Elasticsearch servers (16 CPU cores, 64 GB memory, 21 TB SSD) + 16 Collector servers (4 CPU cores, 8 GB memory) | 9,641.81 | 9,599.15 |
Nodes refers to the number of Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances or Docker containers.
Request volumes are based on Apache documentation. Each trace can report up to 10 KB of data.
Self-hosted infrastructure assumes statistical data is stored for 15 days and full detail data for 7 days.
Total requests = requests per day x data retention period. Open source agents are used; other components are maintained by Alibaba Cloud.