If economical mode is enabled and an Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance is stopped under the trigger conditions described in this topic, some resources of the instance are recycled to reduce instance costs and no longer incur charges.
Conditions for enabling economical mode
ECS instances that meet the following conditions support economical mode:
- The instances reside in virtual private clouds (VPCs).
You can migrate ECS instances from the classic network to VPCs. For more information, see Migrate ECS instances from the classic network to a VPC.
- The instances are pay-as-you-go or preemptible instances.
You can change the billing method of ECS instances from subscription to pay-as-you-go. For more information, see Change the billing method of an instance from subscription to pay-as-you-go.
- The instance families are not equipped with local storage.
Instance families that are equipped with local storage do not support economical mode, such as big data and local SSD instance families. For more information, see the Local storage (GiB) column in Instance family.
- The instance families are not equipped with persistent memory.
Instance families that are equipped with persistent memory do not support economical mode, such as re6p and re6p-redis instance families. For more information, see the Persistent memory (GiB) column in Instance family.
You can enable or disable economical mode. For more information, see Enable economical mode globally in your account and Disable economical mode globally in your account.
Resources
- When ECS instances are stopped in economical mode, their resources that support economical
mode are recycled and no longer incur charges. ECS resources that support economical
mode include the following ones:
- Computing resources including vCPUs and memory. The GPUs, FPGAs and NPUs of heterogeneous computing instances also support economical mode and can be recycled when the instances are stopped.
- Public IP addresses and public bandwidth.
- When ECS instances are stopped in economical mode, their resources that do not support
economical mode are retained and continue to be billed on a pay-as-you-go basis in
the same manner as before. ECS resources that do not support economical mode include
but are not limited to the following ones:
- System disks
- Data disks attached to instances
- Elastic IP addresses (EIPs) and EIP bandwidth
- Images
- Snapshots
Conditions for triggering economical mode
- Operations in the ECS console. For more information, see Stop an instance.
- API requests initiated by Alibaba Cloud CLI or SDKs. For more information, see StopInstance.
- Overdue payments.
- If you stop an instance from within its operating system, economical mode cannot be triggered.
- When an instance starts for the first time and is transitioning from the Stopped state to the Running state, economical mode cannot be triggered. For more information, see Instance lifecycle.
Risks
If economical mode is triggered while an instance is stopped, the computing resources (vCPUs and memory) and public IP address of the instance are recycled and no longer incur charges. However, the following risks exist:
- After the computing resources (vCPUs and memory) are recycled, the instance may fail
to start due to insufficient resources. If this occurs, you can try again later or
change the instance to another instance type. For more information, see Change the instance type of a pay-as-you-go instance.
Note Before you stop an instance in economical mode, we recommend that you restart the instance to ensure that sufficient resources are available for the instance to start. This prevents service interruptions caused by instance startup failures.
- After the public IP address is recycled, a new public IP address is assigned when
the instance is started again and may be different from the previous recycled address.
The private IP address remains unchanged.
Note If your application depends on a specific public IP address, we recommend that you disable economical mode or convert the public IP address into an EIP. For more information, see Disable economical mode globally in your account or Convert the public IP address of a VPC-type instance to an EIP.
- If the instance is a burstable instance, the instance stops earning CPU credits and its current CPU credit balance is cleared. When you start the instance, the instance starts to earn CPU credits again. For more information about CPU credits of burstable instances, see CPU credits.
- If economical mode is enabled, it is triggered while the instance is stopped due to an overdue payment. The computing resources (vCPUs and memory) and public IP address of the instance are automatically released. The instance may have a different public IP address when you reactivate it.
- If economical mode is disabled, the billing of the instance stops when the instance is stopped due to an overdue payment. The public IP address is retained and remains unchanged when you reactivate the instance.
Enable economical mode globally in your account
This section describes how to enable economical mode for all instances within all regions in your account. After you enable economical mode globally in your account, you must still set the stop mode for instances when you stop them. For more information, see the Set the stop mode for a single instance section of this topic.
Disable economical mode globally in your account
This section describes how to disable economical mode for all instances within all regions in your account. After you disable economical mode globally in your account, you must still set the stop mode for instances when you stop them. For more information, see the Set the stop mode for a single instance section of this topic.
If economical mode is triggered while an instance is stopped, the computing resources (vCPUs and memory) and public IP address of the instance are recycled. Even if you disable economical mode, no computing resources incur charges for the instance. The instance are re-allocated computing resources and may have a different public IP address when it is started.
Set the stop mode for a single instance
After you enable or disable economical mode globally in your account, you must still set the stop mode for an instance when you stop the instance. For more information, see Stop an instance.

View the stop mode

- Standard Mode indicates that economical mode is not triggered.
- Economical Mode indicates that economical mode is triggered.

FAQ
- Can I retain the compute and network resources of a stopped pay-as-you-go instance after I enable the economical mode?
- Can the economical mode be triggered for ECS instances that are stopped from within their operating systems?
- Do instances that are equipped with local storage support the economical mode?
- When I called the StartInstance operation to start an instance in economical mode, an OperationDenied.NoStock error was reported. Why?
- When I stopped an instance, I set Stop Mode to Economical Mode (Formerly Known as No Fees for Stopped Instances Mode). Then, the instance was stopped in economical mode. When I started the instance again, its public IP address changed. How do I prevent the IP address from changing?
References
You can use the scheduled startup and shutdown feature of Operation Orchestration Service (OOS) to manage the startup and shutdown time of multiple ECS instances. You can use this feature together with economical mode to reduce costs. For more information, see Scheduled startup and shutdown.