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Alibaba Cloud DNS:Billing

Last Updated:Nov 11, 2025

This topic describes the billing methods and billable items for Authoritative Zone.

1. Billing methods

Alibaba Cloud DNS Authoritative Zone supports the following two billing methods:

  • Authoritative Zone (Subscription): A subscription-based plan. After you purchase a plan, you can use the global domain name resolution features of the paid edition of Authoritative DNS.

  • Alibaba Cloud DNS (Pay-as-you-go): A pay-as-you-go service. After you activate the service, you can use advanced features such as Authoritative Zone traffic analysis.

2. Billable items

1. Authoritative Zone (Subscription)

To use the paid edition of the Authoritative Zone service provided by Alibaba Cloud DNS, you must purchase Hosted Authoritative Zones (Subscription). If you are not familiar with the feature differences between the editions, see Edition comparison.

Billable item

Type

Price

Description

Authoritative Zone instance (Hosted Authoritative Zone)

Personal Edition

7 USD/domain name/year

Billing formula: Instance fee = Unit price of the instance edition × Number of primary domain names

Note

  • If a subdomain is hosted separately and bound to a paid instance, the subdomain is counted as a primary domain name.

  • The Enterprise Standard Edition is no longer available for new purchases. You can still renew or upgrade existing instances.

Enterprise Ultimate Edition

81 USD/domain name/year

DNS security protection

Basic Protection

86 USD/domain name/year

Billing formula: DNS security protection fee = Unit price of the protection edition × Number of primary domain names

Note

  • Security protection is not available for the Free Edition of DNS.

  • Basic Protection: Provides basic DNS attack protection for domain names. The defense limit for each domain name does not exceed 10 million queries per second (QPS).

  • Full Protection: Provides comprehensive DNS attack protection for domain names. The defense capacity for each domain name exceeds 100 million QPS.

  • If a subdomain is hosted separately and bound to a paid instance, the subdomain is counted as a primary domain name.

Full Protection

429 USD/domain name/year

Overall billing formula: Instance fee = Unit price of the instance edition × Number of primary domain names + Unit price of the DNS security protection edition × Number of primary domain names

Billing example:

Account A purchases a one-year Hosted Authoritative Zone instance with the following configuration: Enterprise Ultimate Edition, Basic DNS attack protection, and 15 domain names.

The total fee is: USD 2,505 = USD 81 × 15 + USD 86 × 15.

Expiration

For more information about instance expiration and renewal, see Instance expiration and renewal.

2. Authoritative Zone traffic analysis

To use Authoritative Zone traffic analysis, you must first activate Alibaba Cloud DNS (Pay-as-you-go).

Feature

Price

Description

Authoritative Zone traffic analysis

0.03 USD/10,000 entries

Authoritative Zone traffic analysis is billed based on the number of authoritative resolution log entries and is settled daily. To use this service, you must enable or disable traffic analysis for your domain names.

Billing formula: DNS traffic analysis fee = Number of authoritative log analysis entries × Unit price of traffic analysis

Billing example:

The total number of authoritative log analysis entries for the domain names in Account A on a given day is 1 million.

The total fee is: USD 3 = 1 million entries × USD 0.03/10,000 entries.

Purchase a data transfer plan for Authoritative Zone traffic analysis

If your domain names receive a high volume of DNS queries, you can purchase a data transfer plan for Authoritative Zone traffic analysis for your pay-as-you-go items. The data transfer plan takes effect immediately after purchase and is valid for one year. During the validity period, the plan is used to deduct from your pay-as-you-go bills. Unused resources in the plan automatically expire at the end of the validity period. The billing rules for the data transfer plan are as follows:

Plan size (10,000 queries)

Validity period (months)

Plan price

Unit price per 10,000 entries

1,000

12

21 USD

0.021 USD

10,000

12

182 USD

0.0182 USD

100,000

12

1,680 USD

0.0168 USD

1,000,000

12

14,000 USD

0.014 USD

Note
  • Authoritative Zone traffic analysis is billed daily. If you purchase a data transfer plan during a billing cycle, the fees for that cycle are automatically deducted from the plan's quota when the bill is generated.

  • If a bill has already been generated for the previous billing cycle, a data transfer plan purchased afterward cannot be used to offset the fees for that cycle. It can be used to offset fees only in the next billing cycle.

  • After the quota of the data transfer plan is used up, additional queries are billed on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Overdue payments

Alibaba Cloud DNS provides service suspension protection, which lets you continue to use Alibaba Cloud services within a specific credit limit or for a certain period. Your existing pay-as-you-go services, purchased resource plans, and purchased subscription resources can be used as normal. The service suspension process is initiated only when your usage exceeds the protection scope. For more information, see Pay-as-you-go service suspension protection.