DataWorks offers a flexible billing system designed for diverse business scenarios. Billing includes multiple components: software editions, resource groups, scheduling instance fees, other services, and underlying engine fees. This guide helps you choose the right configuration for your business stage so you can maximize cost-efficiency. It also provides tailored recommendations for common scenarios, including individual developers, growing teams, and enterprise-level data platforms.
Read Billing overview first to understand the billing logic.
Before you begin
Before you purchase or activate DataWorks, make sure you meet the following prerequisites:
Alibaba Cloud account: You need an Alibaba Cloud account to activate DataWorks. Activation is per region. To create an account, see Sign up for an Alibaba Cloud account.
RAM user permissions (optional): To activate DataWorks as a RAM user, grant the user the
AliyunBSSOrderAccessandAliyunDataWorksFullAccesspolicies. Grant these broad permissions with caution. For details, see Quick start: Create a RAM user and grant permissions.Region selection: DataWorks services and resource groups are activated per region. Choose your region based on where your data is located:
If your business data is in other Alibaba Cloud services, select the same region.
If your business is on-premises and requires public network access, select a region closer to your physical location to reduce latency.
Purchase options
DataWorks billing includes software, resource group, scheduling instance, and other fees. Software and resource groups offer flexible billing: you can switch between pay-as-you-go and subscription modes as needed.
Select an edition
The license fee covers platform features and determines which development, governance, and operations and maintenance (O&M) capabilities you can access.
The following table compares the four editions by recommended users, scenarios, and core features.
Edition | Recommended users | Recommended scenarios | Core features |
Basic Edition | Students, individual developers, and startup teams | - POC (Proof of Concept): Quickly verify the feasibility of data projects. | Provides capabilities such as migrating data to the cloud, basic development and scheduling, and simple data governance to meet requirements for quick verification and lightweight data processing. |
- Develop non-critical and small-scale data applications. | |||
- Start your data development journey cost-effectively. | |||
Standard Edition | Small enterprises, production service assurance departments, and pilot business departments | - Build an enterprise data quality monitoring system. | Enhanced enterprise-level data management with capabilities like data lineage analysis and tag management. Supports business continuity and stability with intelligent baseline alerting. |
- Handle core business data flows in production environments. | |||
- Collaborate on and manage enterprise data. | |||
Professional Edition | Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and high-SLA (Service Level Agreement) business departments | - Data security and compliance requirements. | Enhances data security with features like data masking and access control. Integrates business-oriented data management and improves development-side access and collaboration. |
- Manage complex business processes and multi-party collaboration. | |||
- Ensure high service level agreement (SLA) for assets. | |||
Enterprise Edition (Recommended) | Medium-to-large enterprises and corporate headquarters | - Build an enterprise-grade centralized data platform architecture. | Provides complete, systematic, and built-in best practices for full-lifecycle data governance, covering development, O&M, quality, security, and assets. Supports multi-account permission management through CloudSSO. Offers enterprise-oriented openness and customization with a full range of open APIs, event messaging, and extension mechanisms. |
- Implement unified resource control across multiple business lines. | |||
- Perform fine-grained cost and resource management. |
In addition to the four editions, a value-added feature is available:
Smart Data Modeling: An independent module for Dimensional Modeling. Use it to plan data warehouses, define standards, and manage metrics.
For a complete list of capabilities for each DataWorks edition, see Features of DataWorks editions.
For software-related fees, see Editions and billing and Intelligent data modeling billing.
Resource groups and billing
Resource groups cover computing costs for tasks like data development and integration. We recommend serverless resource groups over legacy resource groups (exclusive or shared types).
If you did not activate DataWorks in any region before June 10, 2024, you can only purchase and use serverless resource groups after activation. Legacy resource groups are not supported. If you are an existing DataWorks user and want to switch to serverless resource groups, see Switch from legacy resource groups.
Serverless resource groups support two billing options:
Billing method | How it works | Best for |
Pay-as-you-go | Billed by actual Compute Unit (CU) usage. Highly elastic. | Fluctuating workloads, testing, and exploration. |
Subscription | Pre-purchase a fixed amount of CUs at a lower unit price. | Stable and continuous computing needs. |
For a detailed comparison of serverless resource group billing methods, see Billing methods.
Additional fees
Beyond software editions and resource groups, the following fees may apply:
Other fees: Covers advanced services like Intelligent Monitoring and Data Quality. Excess usage beyond free quotas is billed.
Big data compute engine and storage fees (billed separately): DataWorks is a big data development and scheduling platform. It does not perform computing or storage itself. SQL tasks submitted via DataWorks are executed by the underlying engine (such as MaxCompute, Hologres, or E-MapReduce) and stored in the corresponding service.
Common engine billing links: MaxCompute billing, Hologres billing, E-MapReduce billing.
Recommended configurations
Use the following scenario-based recommendations to find the right combination of edition and resource group for your needs.
Scenario 1: Individual developers and new users
Recommended configuration: Basic Edition software + pay-as-you-go serverless resource group
Why this configuration works:
Get started for free: Basic Edition is free, allowing you to learn and use core features at no cost.
Controllable costs: Pay-as-you-go resource groups incur no fees when not in use. Costs are low during small-scale testing and development, which is ideal for the learning and exploration phase.
Scenario 2: SMEs and rapid business growth
Recommended configuration: Standard/Professional Edition software + pay-as-you-go serverless resource group (consider switching to subscription as workloads stabilize)
Why this configuration works:
End-to-end development and governance capabilities: Standard Edition adds SLA guarantees (baseline alerting) and field-level lineage to Basic features, standardizing team collaboration. The Professional Edition builds on the reliable O&M of the Standard Edition to help you achieve automatic masking of sensitive data and proactive risk monitoring, establishing a systematic enterprise-level data security and governance framework.
Balancing elasticity and cost: Task volumes may fluctuate during business growth, making pay-as-you-go resource groups a safe starting choice. Once the running time and resource consumption of core ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tasks stabilize, you can switch to the subscription mode to lock in lower long-term operational costs.
Scenario 3: Large enterprises and enterprise data platform development
Recommended configuration: Enterprise Edition software + Data Modeling (value-added module) + Hybrid resource groups (primarily subscription, supplemented by pay-as-you-go)
Why this configuration works:
Building an enterprise-level system: The Enterprise Edition provides comprehensive data governance centers, advanced security controls, and open platform capabilities. It serves as the foundation for a standardized, secure, and scalable enterprise data platform. Combined with Smart Data Modeling, it implements data standards to ensure the long-term value of data assets.
Optimized cost structure: For stable core ETL pipelines in enterprises, using subscription resource groups maximizes cost savings. Meanwhile, retaining a pay-as-you-go resource group for temporary, bursty analysis queries or test tasks achieves the best balance of performance, elasticity, and cost.
Activate the service
This topic uses the Singapore region as an example to describe how to activate DataWorks.
First-time activation in a region automatically activates MaxCompute pay-as-you-go (free if unused) and creates the service-linked roles AliyunServiceRoleForDataWorksEngine and AliyunServiceRoleForDataWorksOnEmr.
DataWorks services and resource groups are activated per region. To use the service in multiple regions, you must activate the service and resources in each region.
Log on to the DataWorks console and select Singapore to check activation status.
For first-time activation, you can visit the DataWorks buy page to purchase a combination of products.
New user
If DataWorks is inactive in the region, click Purchase Product Portfolio for Free.
Enter the purchase console, configure the parameters for the combination purchase, and click Confirm Order and Pay to complete the payment.
Parameter | Description | Example |
Region | Select the region where you want to activate DataWorks. | Singapore |
DataWorks Edition | Select the DataWorks edition to purchase. | Basic Edition |
Activated but expired
If your edition in Singapore has expired, click Purchase Edition.
Enter the purchase console, configure the parameters, and click Buy Now to complete the payment.
Parameter | Description | Example |
Edition | Select the DataWorks edition to purchase. | Basic Edition |
Region | Select the region where you want to activate DataWorks. | Singapore |
If you cannot find the relevant DataWorks edition after purchase:
Wait a few minutes and refresh the page. System updates may have a delay.
Check if the region matches the region where you purchased the DataWorks edition.
Next steps
After you activate DataWorks, you can get started with the following tasks:
Try the getting started tutorial: The platform creates a default workspace upon first activation. Explore the Getting Started Case to learn how DataWorks works.
Set up your development environment: Create a custom workspace and configure computing resources:
Create a workspace: A workspace is the basic unit for DataWorks to manage members and develop tasks. All development work in DataWorks is done within a specific workspace. To create a workspace, see Create a workspace.
Add computing resources: Task development in DataWorks requires engines. You can create relevant engines as computing resources for the workspace or register them as clusters for the workspace. For details, see Computing resource management.
Support
For professional pre-sales guidance, scan the QR code below with DingTalk to join the DataWorks DingTalk group for consultation.
References
You can View bill details to monitor DataWorks fees.
A serverless resource group is a general-purpose resource group that runs data synchronization, data calculation, task scheduling, and data service tasks. See Use serverless resource groups.