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    Elastic Compute Service:Change the billing method from subscription to pay-as-you-go

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    Elastic Compute Service:Change the billing method from subscription to pay-as-you-go

    Last Updated:May 08, 2025

    After you create a subscription Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance, you can change its billing method to pay-as-you-go to recover some costs and use the instance in a more flexible manner. After the billing method of the instance is changed from subscription to pay-as-you-go, make sure that your account balance is sufficient. Otherwise, overdue payments occur and services provided by the instance are affected.

    Prerequisites

    The instance whose billing method you want to change is in the Running or Stopped state.

    The billing method of the following instances cannot be changed from subscription to pay-as-you-go:

    • Instances in the Expired state.

    • Instances that use Red Hat or SUSE public images or Alibaba Cloud Marketplace images.

    Procedure

    Alibaba Cloud determines whether you can change the billing method of an instance based on your ECS usage. Check whether an entry point for changing the billing method of your instance exists in the ECS console. If no such entry point exists, the billing method of your instance cannot be changed.

    1. Go to ECS console - Instance.

    2. In the top navigation bar, select the region and resource group of the resource that you want to manage. 地域

    3. Find the instance that you want to manage and click its ID to go to the instance details page. In the upper-right corner of the page, choose All Actions > Fees > Switch to Pay-As-You-Go.

      Note

      Alibaba Cloud allows you to perform a batch operation on the Instance page to batch change the billing method for up to 20 instances.

    4. Read the precautions, read and select ECS Terms of Service, and then click Confirm.

    5. (Optional) Go to the ECS console to view the instance information.

      • On the Instance page, the Billing Method value of the instance is changed to Pay-as-you-go.

      • Click the instance ID to go to the instance details page, and then click the Block Storage tab. The Billing Method values of the system disk and subscription data disks (if any) attached to the instance are changed to Pay-as-you-go.

    Impact of the change

    When you change the billing method of an instance from subscription to pay-as-you-go, the following impacts occur.

    Important

    If economical mode is enabled and the subscription instance is in the Stopped state before the change, economical mode is not automatically triggered after the change. To trigger economical mode, start and then stop the pay-as-you-go instance.

    • The billing methods of the instance and its system disk and subscription data disks (if any) are changed to pay-as-you-go. The billing method for network usage remains unchanged.

      Note

      To change the billing method of subscription data disks attached to a subscription instance to pay-as-you-go, see Change the billing method of a cloud disk.

    • The subscription duration that was provided for reasons, such as Internet Content Provider (ICP) filing, system failures, or migration from data centers, automatically becomes invalid.

    Refund rules

    The following refund policies apply when you change the billing method of an ECS instance from subscription to pay-as-you-go:

    • The generated refund counts against the monthly refund quota, which is displayed on the Switch to Pay-as-you-go page. If the refund quota for a month is exhausted, you cannot request new refunds in the month. The remaining refund quota for a month is not carried over to the next month. A new refund quota is available on the first day of the next month.

      When you change the billing method of the instance, the refund quota used by the instance is calculated based on the number of vCPUs and the remaining hours in the current billing cycle. Example: 1 refund unit = 1 vCPU × 1 hour.

      For example, you purchased a six-month subscription instance with four vCPUs and four months later, you changed its billing method to pay-as-you-go. The refund quota used by the instance is calculated based on the following formula: 4 vCPUs × 60 days × 24 hours/day = 5,760.

    • If you have renewal or upgrade orders that have not taken effect for the instance, full refunds are made for the orders. If you have orders that have already taken effect for the instance, partial refunds are made for the orders.