Cloud Backup billing methods and billable items - Cloud Backup

This topic describes the billing methods, pricing, billable items for different features and data sources for Cloud Backup.

Important

Activating Cloud Backup is free of charge. However, fees are incurred when you use Cloud Backup features.

Billing methods

Cloud Backup supports both subscription and pay-as-you-go billing methods for most of its features and billable items. For more information, see the following table. The ECS Backup Essential Edition supports only the subscription billing method.

Billing method	Description
Pay-as-you-go	Pay after you use the service. Bills for standard backup features are generated hourly. Bills for ECS File Backup Essential Edition are generated daily. Fees are settled monthly. The pay-as-you-go billing method is used by default when you activate the service. To use the subscription billing method, purchase a resource plan.
Subscription (resource plan)	Pay upfront. This method is more cost-effective than pay-as-you-go. You can use multiple resource plans at the same time. Fees are deducted from your resource plan. After the plan expires, the billing method automatically changes to pay-as-you-go. Note Resource plans take effect immediately after purchase and are non-refundable. Resources that exceed the quota of your resource plan are billed on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Subscription	This billing method applies only to ECS Backup Essential Edition. Purchase a subscription instance before you use the service.

Pricing

Pricing is the same across all regions. If you can use subscription resource plans to offset fees, we recommend that you purchase the resource plans first. For more information about pricing, see Pricing.

Billable features

Overview of billable features

Cloud Backup provides different billing methods for its standard backup, ECS Backup Essential Edition, and ECS File Backup Essential Edition features. The following table describes the differences in billable items.

Billing component	Billable item	Description
Billing categories for standard backup features	Backup fees: Software usage fee and storage capacity fee Database backup fees: Vault rental fee and storage capacity fee Traffic fees: Outbound traffic fee, cross-region replication traffic fee for backup vaults, and cross-region replication traffic fee for disaster recovery	The basic billable items of Cloud Backup consist of four parts: backup storage costs, Database Backup costs and traffic costs. The specific billable items vary based on the billing component. You are charged for the billable items that are associated with the basic backup features you use.
Billing for ECS Backup Essential Edition	ECS Backup Essential Edition subscription instance	You can purchase an ECS Backup Essential Edition subscription instance in advance. ECS Backup Essential Edition uses a subscription billing method and charges you based on the number of instances. Note If you want to use ECS instance backup, you must also activate the snapshot service. The storage capacity used by the ECS instance backup feature does not count toward the total data volume limit of the protected ECS instance. Cloud Backup does not charge software usage fees or storage fees. ECS charges fees for snapshots. For more information about billing, see ECS snapshot billing overview.
Billing for ECS File Backup Essential Edition	Fees are calculated based on the total capacity of Elastic Block Storage attached to the ECS instance that is backed up. Each Alibaba Cloud account (UID) and its RAM users share a free quota of 100 GiB across all regions.	Fees are calculated based on the total capacity of Elastic Block Storage that is attached to the backed up ECS instance, regardless of the actual amount of file data on the instance. Note The total Elastic Block Storage capacity is calculated based on the latest backup that was completed before 00:00 (UTC+8).

Note

To avoid duplicate plans, select only one plan for each data source.

For ECS file backup, choose only one of the following options: ECS File Backup Essential Edition, File Backup in ECS Backup Essential Edition, or ECS File Backup in standard backup features.
For ECS database backup, choose either Database Backup in ECS Backup Essential Edition or ECS Database Backup in standard backup features.
For ECS instance backup, choose either Instance Backup in ECS Backup Essential Edition or Instance Backup in standard backup features.

Billing categories for standard backup features

The billable items for the standard backup features of Cloud Backup consist of four categories: backup storage costs, database backup fees and traffic fees.

The billable items are as follows:

Note

A one-month free trial is available for backing up each NAS file system and OSS bucket on Alibaba Cloud. The corresponding backup vault storage is also free during the trial period.

Backup fees

Billable item		Billing method	Description
Software usage fee	File Backup software usage fee	Subscription, pay-as-you-go	Fees are charged based on the number of servers or ECS instances on which the backup client is installed. If a client is activated but no backup is performed, no File Backup software usage fee is charged. If a client is uninstalled but backup data is retained, the File Backup software usage fee is still charged. Billing stops only after all backup data generated by the client is deleted or automatically purged upon expiration.
	SAP HANA backup software usage fee	Subscription, pay-as-you-go	Fees are charged based on the number of instances on which the backup client is installed.
	ECS instance backup software usage fee	Subscription, pay-as-you-go	Fees are charged based on the number of ECS instances for which an instance backup plan is configured. The ECS service also charges for the snapshot size created by this feature, the archive snapshot size after automatic archiving is enabled, and fees for archive-tier capacity retained for less than the specified duration (if any). If you enable cross-region backup replication, you are also charged for the snapshot size in the destination region, cross-region traffic, cross-region archive snapshot size (if any), and fees for archive-tier capacity retained for less than the specified duration (if any).
	OSS/NAS/Tablestore backup software	Subscription, pay-as-you-go	Free.
	Backup point virus detection fee	Subscription, pay-as-you-go	You can scan local files, ECS files, OSS, and NAS backup points for viruses. Both automatic scans based on backup policies and manual scans are charged based on the number of scanned files. No fees are charged for files that fail to be scanned.
	VMware backup software usage fee	Subscription, pay-as-you-go	Fees are charged based on the allocated disk space of the virtual machine.
	ECS disaster recovery software usage fee	Subscription, pay-as-you-go	Free for the first 30 days. Fees are charged based on the number of ECS instances. During ECS disaster recovery, fees for ECS instances, EBS disks, and ECS snapshots are also incurred. Only the pay-as-you-go billing method is supported.
	VM migration to cloud service usage fee	Subscription, pay-as-you-go	Fees are charged based on the number of successfully migrated virtual machines. A bill is generated after the migration is complete. Only the pay-as-you-go billing method is supported.
	SQL Server backup software usage fee (old version)	Subscription, pay-as-you-go	Fees are charged based on the number of instances on which the backup client is installed.
Storage capacity fee	Backup storage capacity fee	Subscription, pay-as-you-go	Fees are charged for the post-deduplication and post-compression capacity, not the raw data capacity. OSS backup is free for the first 30 days for each bucket. NAS backup is free for the first 30 days for each file system.
	Backup vault archive-tier storage capacity fee	Pay-as-you-go	Fees are charged for automatic data archiving in a backup vault. The fee is calculated based on the size of the backup source data when the backup is archived. The archive tier has a minimum billable size. Objects or files smaller than 64 KB are billed as 64 KB. Objects or files that are 64 KB or larger are billed based on their actual size.
	Backup vault archive-tier data restoration capacity	Pay-as-you-go	A fee is charged for restoring data from an archive-tier backup recovery point. The fee is based on the actual size of the restored data. The archive tier has a minimum billable size for data restoration. Objects or files smaller than 64 KB are billed as 64 KB. Objects or files that are 64 KB or larger are billed based on their actual size. Note A replication destination backup vault is a type of backup vault. The storage fees for a replication destination backup vault are the same as those for a standard backup vault.

Database backup fees

Billable item		Billing method	Billing items
Vault rental fee	Database backup vault rental fee	Pay-as-you-go	Free for the first 30 days. Includes a free quota of 100 GB for each backup vault per month.
Storage capacity fee	Database backup storage capacity fee	Subscription, pay-as-you-go	Free for the first 30 days. Tiered pricing applies afterward.

Traffic fees

Billable item	Billing method	Description
Outbound traffic fee over the Internet	Pay-as-you-go	The traffic generated when you restore (download) data from Cloud Backup to a local device over the Internet. Restoring (downloading) data from Cloud Backup to an ECS server over the Alibaba Cloud internal network is free. No traffic fees are charged for data backup (upload).
Cross-region replication traffic fee for backup vaults	Pay-as-you-go	The traffic fee incurred when you copy backup data from a backup vault to a replication destination backup vault.
Cross-region replication traffic fee for disaster recovery	Pay-as-you-go	The traffic fee incurred when you copy ECS disk data to a disaster recovery site.

Differences in billable items for different data sources in standard backup

The billable items for standard backup features vary based on the data source.

On-premises data includes on-premises databases such as MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server, local files, on-premises NAS, on-premises VMware, VMware disaster recovery, VMware migration, and archived data.
Cloud data includes ECS files, ECS instances, OSS, NAS, CPFS, Tablestore, self-managed databases such as MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server, SAP HANA, Alibaba Cloud VMware Service, ECS disaster recovery, and containers.

On-premises data

Data source	Billable items	References
On-premises databases (MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server)	Database backup vault rental fee: Charged based on the number of backup vaults. Database backup storage capacity fee: Tiered pricing.	Quick Start - Back up local databases
Local files	File Backup software usage fee: Charged based on the number of clients. Backup vault storage capacity: Charged based on the post-deduplication and post-compression capacity. Outbound traffic for data restoration: Charged when you restore data over the Internet. Cross-region replication traffic fee for backup vaults: Charged when you use cross-region replication for backup vaults.	Quick Start - Back up local files
On-premises NAS	Backup vault storage capacity: Charged based on the post-deduplication and post-compression capacity. Outbound traffic for data restoration: Charged when you restore data over the Internet. Cross-region replication traffic fee for backup vaults: Charged when you use cross-region replication for backup vaults.	Quick Start - Back up on-premises NAS
On-premises VMware	VMware backup software usage fee: Charged based on the backup source data volume. Backup vault storage capacity: Charged based on the post-deduplication and post-compression capacity. Outbound traffic for data restoration: Charged when you restore data over the Internet.	Quick Start - Back up and restore VMware services
VMware disaster recovery	VMware backup software usage fee: Charged based on the backup source data volume. Backup vault storage capacity: Charged based on the post-deduplication and post-compression capacity. ECS fees, ECS disk fees, and ECS snapshot fees: Charged for new resources that are created during ECS disaster recovery.	Quick Start - Back up and restore VMware services
VMware migration	VMware migration to cloud service usage fee: Charged based on the number of VMs that are migrated to the cloud. ECS image fees: Charged when you perform incremental migration. ECS fees, ECS disk fees, and ECS snapshot fees: Charged for new resources that are created during ECS disaster recovery.	Quick Start - Migrate VMware virtual machines
Archiving	Vault rental fee: Charged based on the number of archive vaults. Storage capacity fee: Charged based on the storage capacity of the archive vault. Fee for storage duration less than the minimum requirement: Charged based on the storage capacity if the archive duration is less than the minimum requirement. Recovery fee: Charged based on the restoration capacity.	Quick Start - Data archiving

Cloud data

Data source	Billable items	References
ECS files	File Backup software usage fee: Charged based on the number of clients. Backup vault storage capacity: Charged based on the post-deduplication and post-compression capacity. Cross-region replication traffic fee for backup vaults: Charged when you use cross-region replication for backup vaults.	Quick Start - ECS file backup
ECS instances	ECS instance backup software usage fee. The snapshot service charges for the snapshot size that is created by this feature. If cross-region backup replication is enabled, the snapshot service also charges for the snapshot size in the destination region and the cross-region traffic.	Quick Start - ECS instance backup
OSS	Backup vault storage capacity: Charged based on the post-deduplication and post-compression capacity. Cross-region replication traffic fee for backup vaults: Charged when you use cross-region replication for backup vaults. OSS request fees generated by the backup service: Charged by the OSS service.	Quick Start - OSS backup
NAS, CPFS, Tablestore	Backup vault storage capacity: Charged based on the post-deduplication and post-compression capacity. Cross-region replication traffic fee for backup vaults: Charged when you use cross-region replication for backup vaults.	Quick Start - Alibaba Cloud NAS backup Quick Start - CPFS backup Quick Start - Tablestore backup
Self-managed databases (MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server)	Database backup vault rental fee: Charged based on the number of backup vaults. Database backup storage capacity fee: Tiered pricing.	Quick Start - ECS database backup
SAP HANA	SAP HANA backup software usage fee: Charged based on the number of instances. Backup vault storage capacity: Charged based on the post-deduplication and post-compression capacity. Cross-region replication traffic fee for backup vaults: Charged when you use cross-region replication for backup vaults.	Quick Start - SAP HANA backup
Alibaba Cloud VMware Service	VMware backup software usage fee: Charged based on the backup source data volume. Backup vault storage capacity: Charged based on the post-deduplication and post-compression capacity. Outbound traffic for data restoration: Charged when you restore data over the Internet.	Quick Start - Back up and restore VMware services
ECS disaster recovery	Continuous replication Disaster recovery software usage fee: Charged based on the number of ECS instances. ECS fees, ECS disk fees, and ECS snapshot fees: Charged for new resources that are created during ECS disaster recovery. Cross-region replication traffic fee. Async replication Disaster recovery software usage fee: Charged based on the number of ECS instances. ECS charges for pay-as-you-go ECS instances and disks that are created at the disaster recovery site. Cross-region replication traffic fee: Charged by ECS on a pay-as-you-go basis.	Quick Start - ECS disaster recovery
Containers	Backup vault storage capacity: Charged based on the storage capacity of the container backup vault.	Back up ACK

Billing examples

Cloud Backup provides billing examples for typical use cases. For more information, see Billing examples.