Billing

Billable items

• Cluster management: The cluster management fee varies based on the cluster type. ACK clusters are integrated with the virtualization, storage, networking, and security capabilities of Alibaba Cloud. These capabilities facilitate the management of high-performance and scalable applications that are deployed in ACK clusters. These capabilities also simplify the operations that are required to create or scale clusters. This way, you can focus on the development and management of containerized applications. For more information, see Billing of cluster management.
• Cloud services: You are charged for the Alibaba Cloud services that are used by your ACK cluster. For more information, see Billing of cloud services.

Billing of cluster management

Billing of cloud services

Billing of ACK Pro clusters

• Bills

  The billing cycle of an ACK Pro cluster is 1 hour. You can view the billing details of the previous hour in the ACK console. The service fee is automatically deducted from your Alibaba Cloud account after bills are issued. A bill is issued within 10 to 30 minutes after the current billing cycle ends. After a bill is issued, the fee is automatically deducted from your Alibaba Cloud account if your account balance is sufficient.

  If you create a cluster less than 30 minutes before the end of a billing cycle, the cluster is not billed during the current billing cycle. Example:

  • You create an ACK Pro cluster at 10:15:00. The cluster is billed during the billing cycle that ends at 11:00:00. The first bill is issued between 11:10:00 and 11:30:00.
  • You create an ACK Pro cluster at 10:50:00. The cluster is not billed during the billing cycle that ends at 11:00:00. Instead, the cluster is billed during the next billing cycle that ends at 12:00:00. The first bill is issued between 12:10:00 and 12:30:00.
• Overdue payments

  If your account balance is insufficient, the payment for your ACK Pro cluster becomes overdue. In this case, you cannot access the API server of the cluster. However, pods can still run on cluster nodes. Your ACK Pro cluster is suspended if you do not top up your account within 15 days after a payment becomes overdue. In this case, the nodes are removed from your cluster, and the cluster and pods are deleted, but the nodes are not released. The containers that are released due to cluster deletion cannot be restored.

• View billing details
  1. Log on to the ACK console.
  2. In the top navigation bar, choose Expenses > User Center.
     Note If you log on to the console by using your Alibaba Cloud account, you can choose Expenses > Bills in the top navigation bar.
  3. In the left-side navigation pane, click Spending Summary to view bills.
     1. On the Bills page, click the Bills tab.

        You can set Billing Cycle, enter an order number or bill number in the Order/Bill No. field, and then click Search. The system displays all bills that match the search conditions. You can select Container Service for Kubernetes from the Product Name drop-down list to filter the bills. You can also select other filters from the Subscription Type and Item drop-down lists.

     2. On the Bills page, click the Details tab.

        You can set Billing Cycle, enter an instance name or an instance ID in the Instance Name or Instance ID field, and then click Search. The system displays all bills that match the search conditions. You can set Statistic Item and Statistic Period to filter the bills. You can select Container Service for Kubernetes from the Product Name drop-down list to filter the bills. You can also select Instance and Billing Period to filter the bills.

  4. On the Bills and Details tabs, you can customize columns and export billing details to a comma-separated values (CSV) file.
     • On the right side of the page, click Customize Column Options. In the Customize Column Options dialog box, select the columns that you want to use and click OK.
     • To export billing details into a CSV file, click Export Billing Overview (CSV), select the content that you want to export, enter the verification code, and then click OK. After the bill details are exported, click Download to download the CSV file.