This topic describes the billing methods, billable items, and pricing of Alibaba Cloud CDN.
CDN bills by your account UID.
Unless otherwise specified, the pay-by-data-transfer, pay-by-peak-bandwidth metering methods measure the outbound traffic and bandwidth generated on the L1 points of presence (POPs) of CDN.
Domain names that are added in the CDN console with the Business Type set to DCDN are billed based on DCDN pricing. Go to the DCDN console to view and use these domain names.
Bills for CDN are generated 3 to 4 hours after a billing cycle ends.
Select a billing method
CDN supports two billing methods: pay-as-you-go (default) and resource plans (for frequently used paid services). Select a billing method based on traffic characteristics:
Is your service traffic stable? | Billing method | Benefits | Description | Pricing details |
Volatile, with significant peaks and troughs, or unpredictable | Pay-as-you-go (post-paid) | Pay for what you use. This method provides the flexibility to accommodate fluctuating business demands. | Fees are settled based on the actual usage of each billable item. You use the service first and pay later. | For the pricing of each billable item of Alibaba Cloud CDN, see CDN pricing details. |
Relatively stable, with predictable monthly usage | Resource Plans (prepaid) | More cost-effective than pay-as-you-go. Suitable for businesses that require cost control. |
| For the pricing of resource plans, see Resource plan pricing. |
Billable items
Alibaba Cloud CDN billing consists of basic service fees (required) and value-added service fees (optional). The following figure shows the billable items:
Basic service fees (required): These are the core fees for CDN acceleration. For basic services, you must select one of the following metering methods: pay-by-data-transfer, pay-by-peak-bandwidth. The default method is pay-by-data-transfer.
Value-added service fees (optional, billed separately): If you use advanced features such as HTTPS requests for static content or real-time log delivery, you will incur additional fees.
Core concepts
Outbound traffic and back-to-origin traffic
Outbound traffic (billable): The traffic generated when users download data from CDN POPs through browsers or clients. This is the main billable item for CDN basic services.
Back-to-origin traffic (not billable): The traffic generated when CDN POPs pull data from the origin server, such as an ECS instance or an OSS bucket, because the data is not cached or the cache has expired. This traffic is not billed by CDN, but your origin server may incur outbound traffic fees.
Billing regions
The system determines a user's region based on their IP address and applies the unit price of that region.
Alibaba Cloud CDN has deployed POPs in all billing regions worldwide to ensure accurate billing based on the regions of visitors' IP addresses. For more information about the countries and regions covered by each billing region, see POP distribution.
Billing region | Abbreviation | Covered regions |
Chinese mainland | CN | Chinese mainland (Billed as a single region) |
North America | NA | United States |
Europe | EU | Ukraine, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Spain |
Asia Pacific 1 | AP1 | China (Hong Kong), Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia |
Asia Pacific 2 | AP2 | Indonesia, India, South Korea, Pakistan |
Asia Pacific 3 | AP3 | Australia |
Middle East/Africa | MEAA | Türkiye, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Nigeria, South Africa |
South America | SA | Brazil |
Billing cycles
The billing cycles for Alibaba Cloud CDN are as follows:
Billing cycle | Fee deduction and bill generation time | Applicable billable items | |
Hour | Fees are settled on an hourly basis. Bills are typically generated about 3 to 4 hours after the current billing cycle ends. The actual bill generation time is subject to the system. | Basic services | |
Value-added services | |||
Daily | Fees are settled on a daily basis. The bill for the previous day is generated and fees are deducted at around 04:00 every day. The actual bill generation time is subject to the system. | Basic services | |
References
Select a metering method for acceleration services | |
Resource plans | |
More references about billing |