File Backup Essential Edition is designed for Elastic Compute Server (ECS) file scenarios and provides basic backup and recovery functions. It is billed based on the total capacity of block storage attached to the backed‑up ECS instances, with a long‑term free quota of 100 GiB offered for each account.
Benefits
Free quota: 100 GiB of block storage backup capacity.
Region availability: The free quota is shared by an Alibaba Cloud account and its Resource Access Management (RAM) users across all regions.
How to claim: The free quota is automatically applied when you use ECS File Backup Essential Edition. No manual action is required.
Deduction rule
The free quota is applied to your usage details in the order they are generated. The specific order may vary.
Billing after the free quota is exceeded
After the free quota is used up, charges are calculated using the following formula.
Billing formula
Formula parameters | Description |
Total backed-up block storage capacity | Each day, your bill is calculated based on the total capacity of all block storage attached to the ECS instance. This capacity is measured at the time of the last successful backup completed before midnight (24:00). Billed storage types include cloud disks, local disks, and elastic ephemeral disks. |
Free quota | An Alibaba Cloud account and its RAM users share a free quota of 100 GiB across all regions. The quota is automatically applied during billing. No manual action is needed. |
Daily unit price | This service is billed daily, and usage details are generated daily. Billing starts on the day that the first backup is completed. The price is the same across all regions. For detailed pricing, see Pricing. |
Billing example
Suppose you need to back up files daily at 05:00. You perform the first backup on September 1, 2025. The target ECS instance has one 40 GiB system disk and one 20 GiB data disk. At 09:00 on September 2, 2025, you add a 70 GiB data disk. The unit price is 0.005630 USD/GiB/month.
The price in this example is for reference only. For the actual price, refer to the official Pricing page.
Backup date | Fee calculation |
September 1, 2025 |
|
September 2, 2025 |
|
September 3, 2025 |
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FAQ
How do I view my free quota?
Go to ECS console - File Backup and view your free quota usage in the All Regions view.
How do I stop billing?
To stop billing for an ECS instance, you can cancel its backup plan. When you cancel the plan, all associated backup points are deleted.
A backup point is a file backup for a partition, such as the
C:orD:drive in Windows, or the/directory in Linux. Backup points cannot be deleted manually and are retained for 30 days by default.Go to ECS console - File Backup. At the top of the page, select the region of the target instance.
Find the target instance, and in the Actions column, click Cancel Backup. In the confirmation dialog box, click OK.
ImportantAll backup points for the instance will be deleted, and the data cannot be recovered. Proceed with caution.
How do I query detailed bills?
You can view the bills and usage details for ECS File Backup Essential Edition in the Expenses and Costs center to track your spending.
Log on to the Expenses and Costs console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose .
Select the relevant tab. Set the Product filter to Cloud Backup and view the usage details for the billable item named ECS File Backup Essential Edition.
Reference
For information about how to activate and configure ECS File Backup, see File backup and recovery.