Cloud Phone's pay-as-you-go billing model has been updated. The billing unit is now 4 hours instead of 1 second.
Updated billing details
Before:
Billing unit: 1 second.
Billing duration: total seconds from successful creation to release for pay-as-you-go instance groups.
After:
Billing unit: 4 hours.
Billing examples
Example 1: Instance group running for ≥ 4 hours
Scenario: A pay-as-you-go instance group is created at 09:12:00 on May 16 and released at 03:08:00 on May 17.
Billing logic: The figure below compares billing before and after the update.
Before the update: The instance group has been active for 64,560 seconds (17 hours 56 minutes), which is the total billing duration.
After the update: Billing is now calculated in 4-hour increments. In this example, the last billing cycle ends at 05:12:00 on May 17. The total billing duration from 09:12:00 on May 16 to 05:12:00 on May 17 is 72,000 seconds (20 hours).
Example 2: Instance group running for ＜ 4 hours
Scenario: A pay-as-you-go instance group is created at 09:12:00 on May 16 and released at 09:42:00 on May 16.
Billing logic: The figure below compares billing before and after the update.
Before the update: The instance group has been active for 1,800 seconds (30 minutes), which is the total billing duration.
After the update: Billing is now calculated in 4-hour increments. In this example, the last billing cycle ends at 13:12:00 on May 16. The total billing duration from 09:12:00 on May 16 to 13:12:00 on May 16 is 14,400 seconds (4 hours).
Effective From
May 6, 2025 00:00:00 (UTC+8)
Impacts
Pay-as-you-go instance groups created before the effective time will keep their original 1-second billing unit.
Starting from the effective date, new pay-as-you-go instance groups will have a fixed 4-hour billing unit.
This update does not affect the pay-as-you-go pricing (existing rates apply) or the hourly billing and deduction schedule.