Alibaba Cloud billing consists of two main parts: billing items and billing methods. Billing items determine what you pay for, and billing methods determine how you pay.
The total cost of a cloud product is calculated as follows: Resource usage for each billing item × Unit price. You can choose the appropriate billing method to effectively control your cloud costs.
Billing Methods
Alibaba Cloud offers two billing methods: pay-as-you-go and subscription. The subscription method includes specific forms such as subscription instances, Savings Plans, and resource plans.
Billing Method | Definition | Features | |
Pay-as-you-go | Use resources first, then pay. Pay hourly or by the second. | Flexible to use, release anytime. | |
Subscription | Subscription | Prepaid, get stable service for a fixed period. | Exclusive resources, more cost-effective than pay-as-you-go. |
Savings Plan | You receive a greater discount compared to pay-as-you-go pricing by making a spending commitment for a fixed term. | Offset costs for different instances under the same product. | |
Resource plan | Pre-purchase a fixed amount of usage to offset pay-as-you-go resource usage (such as storage capacity, network traffic). | Directly offset resource usage. | |
Pay-as-you-go
Pay-as-you-go is a post-paid billing method. You are charged based on resource runtime, data processed, or request count. Resources are available on demand without prior planning, but they have a relatively higher unit price.
Pay-as-you-go resources are billed per second, and billing details are generated hourly or daily. The monthly bill is issued on the 3rd of the following month.
Note the following when you use the pay-as-you-go method:
Hourly billing data may be subject to some delay.
Billing stops when you release the resources.
When you release a primary instance, check whether associated resources, such as Elastic IP Addresses or snapshots, are also released to avoid extra costs. You can enable cost alerts and monitor expenses using budget management tools.
Subscription Instances
Subscription instances offer lower unit prices when you prepay for a fixed duration. Longer subscription durations provide greater discounts. After purchase, resources are immediately available for your exclusive use. The unit price is lower than the pay-as-you-go price, and costs are predictable.
Note the following when you use subscription instances:
Service for the resources stops and data is deleted upon expiration. You can enable auto-renewal to avoid service interruptions.
When you request a refund for subscription instance resources, the refundable amount is calculated based on rules that consider factors such as the duration of use and any applicable discounts.
Savings Plan
A Savings Plan is a discount benefit that lets you receive discounted prices for pay-as-you-go resources. You commit to a minimum hourly spending amount for a future period, such as 1, 3, or 5 years, to offset pay-as-you-go bills for applicable resources.
When you use a Savings Plan with pay-as-you-go resources, you can benefit from significant discounts while maintaining flexibility and elasticity.
Note the following when you use a Savings Plan:
Savings Plans do not support refunds. You should confirm the offset scope before you make a purchase.
You are charged based on the committed amount, regardless of whether the usage is offset.
Any consumption that exceeds the committed amount is billed at the standard pay-as-you-go price.
Resource Plans
A resource plan is a prepaid billing method where usage is automatically offset. The unit price is lower than the pay-as-you-go price.
Resource plans are generally divided into two types:
Total volume type: You define the total usage at the time of purchase. The usage allowance decreases within the validity period and resets to zero upon expiration.
Periodic usage type: The usage allowance is constant within a unit period, such as hourly, daily, or monthly. Unused portions do not carry over to the next period.
Note the following when you use resource plans:
The usage allowance of a resource plan resets to zero upon expiration and cannot be carried over or extended.
Resource plans only offset specific products and billing items. You should confirm the offset scope before you make a purchase.
Some resource plans become effective only when specific conditions are met.
Whether cancellation is supported depends on the rules of the specific product.
What are the differences between Savings Plans and resource plans?
A Savings Plan, which is based on a committed spending amount, focuses on how much you spend per hour. It applies to compute resources, such as ECS, ECI, and ApsaraDB RDS, is flexible, and does not limit you to specific instance types.
A resource plan, which is based on a committed usage quantity, focuses on how much of a resource you use. It applies to storage and network resources, such as OSS storage plans and CDN data transfer plans, for which you purchase a specific number of gigabytes or offset counts.
Introduction to Billing Items
A billing item is the smallest metering unit that a cloud service provider uses to bill you for the resources and services you use. Each billing item corresponds to a type of resource consumption that can be independently metered and priced, and has clear metering metrics, billing cycles, and unit prices.
Billing items are typically divided into two categories:
Basic billing items: These are charges based on compute, storage, and network usage. Examples include instance type fees (such as for ECS instances), storage fees (such as for disks and OSS storage), data transfer fees (such as for outbound Internet traffic and CDN data transfer), request fees (such as for API call counts), and compute fees (such as for CPU and memory usage duration).
Value-added billing items: These are fees that you incur when you use advanced capabilities of cloud products, such as image processing, transfer acceleration, and software subscriptions.
Billing items are combined with billing methods to calculate usage and duration, which generates your bills. The final cost is calculated based on the usage of each billing item and its corresponding unit price.
Choose a Billing Method
The key to choosing a billing method is understanding your business's resource usage patterns.
Stable operations are well-suited for prepaid methods to lock in costs. Fluctuating operations are better suited for the pay-as-you-go method to maintain elasticity. For scenarios that fall in between, you can combine methods to balance cost and flexibility.
Stable Operations: Lock in Costs, Prefer Subscription Instances
This method applies to systems with fixed configurations that operate long-term and have infrequent changes, such as enterprise websites and core databases. Purchases for more than one year receive higher discounts and ensure high availability.
Elastic Operations: Flexible Cost Reduction, Recommend Savings Plans
This method applies to scenarios that require frequent configuration adjustments, such as rapidly iterating Internet applications or continuously growing SaaS services. It balances discount benefits with the flexibility to upgrade or downgrade, which helps you avoid refund losses.
Fluctuating Operations: Elastic Response, Layered Cost Reduction
This method applies to scenarios with periodic load fluctuations, such as daytime peaks and nighttime lows, or busy weekdays and idle weekends:
Base load: Use a Savings Plan to lock in costs.
Fluctuating portion: Use the pay-as-you-go method for on-demand scaling.
This approach balances cost optimization and resource efficiency. It helps you avoid long-term payments for peak loads or paying for idle resources during off-peak periods.
Burst Operations: Start and Stop on Demand, Zero Idle Costs
This method applies to unpredictable traffic surges, such as those from sales promotions, marketing campaigns, or hot spot events. Use the pay-as-you-go method to scale out quickly before an event and release resources immediately afterward. This approach requires no prior planning, incurs no idle costs, and provides maximum elasticity.
Exploratory Operations: Flexible Experimentation, Pay on Demand
This method applies to early-stage projects with uncertain usage, such as Minimum Viable Product (MVP) validation, technology selection, or Proof of Concept (POC) testing:
Use the pay-as-you-go method. You can start resources as needed, release them when you are finished, and pay only for the actual duration of use.
After successful validation, you can migrate to subscription instances or a Savings Plan for a seamless transition to the most cost-effective model.
Storage and Data Transfer: Batch Purchase, Automatic Offset
This method applies to scenarios with stable and predictable usage, such as log storage, data backup, and CDN data transfer. You can estimate your average monthly usage based on historical consumption and purchase the corresponding resource plan. The automatic offset requires no manual operation and is more cost-effective than the pay-as-you-go method.
Combination Usage Suggestions
In practice, operations often require a combination of multiple billing methods. Typical combination strategies include the following:
Core stable load: Use subscription instances or a Savings Plan to lock in base costs.
Elastic scaling portion: Use the pay-as-you-go method to handle peak demands.
Storage and data transfer: Use resource plans for bulk purchases to get discounts.