Pay-as-you-go is a billing method that allows you to use resources first and pay for them afterward. Pay-as-you-go Elastic Compute Service (ECS) resources can be purchased and released on demand and provide cost savings of 30% to 80% compared with traditional hosts. This topic describes the billing and settlement rules for pay-as-you-go ECS resources.
Overview
You are billed for pay-as-you-go resources on an hourly basis. If you have a quota agreement with Alibaba Cloud, fees are deducted only when the cumulative consumption of your account exceeds the quota. You must complete the payment at least once a month.
You can change the configurations of your pay-as-you-go resources. For more information, see Change the instance type of a pay-as-you-go instance and Modify the bandwidth configurations of pay-as-you-go instances.
You can change the billing methods of your pay-as-you-go resources. For more information, see Change the billing method of an ECS instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription.
- For information about how fees are calculated, see the Billing section of this topic.
- For information about how the resource state affects the billing duration, see Billing duration section of this topic.
Note If you stop an instance but do not release its resources, you continue to be charged for these resources.
- For information about settlement, see the Settlement cycle section of this topic.
Applicable resources
- Computing resources (vCPUs and memory)
- Image
- Cloud disks
- Public bandwidth (pay-by-bandwidth)
- Snapshots
After you create a snapshot, you are immediately charged for the snapshot.

- Total indicates the total price of the following resources:
- Computing resources (vCPUs and memory)
- Cloud disks
- Public bandwidth (pay-by-bandwidth)
Note If you select pay-by-traffic as the billing method for network usage, the total price does not include the price of public bandwidth. For more information, see Public bandwidth.
- Marketplace Image Fees: If you selected a paid Alibaba Cloud Marketplace image, Marketplace Image Fees are displayed.
Billing
Resource | Billing cycle | Formula | Unit price |
---|---|---|---|
Computing resources (vCPUs and memory) | Varies based on the number of the vCPUs of the instance type.
|
Unit price of an instance type × Billing duration | For more information, see the Instance tab on the ECS Pricing page.
Note Local disks are tied to specific instance types. The prices of local disks are included
in the prices of corresponding instance types.
|
Image | 1 second | Unit price of an image × Billing duration | You can view the price on the instance buy page in the ECS console or in Alibaba Cloud Marketplace. |
Cloud disk (system disk) | Varies based on the number of the vCPUs of the instance type.
|
Unit price of a cloud disk × Disk capacity × Billing duration | For more information, see the Storage tab on the ECS Pricing page.
Note The prices for pay-as-you-go disks are displayed on the page in the unit of USD per
100 GiB-hour. You can divide the unit price by 100 to obtain the unit price per GiB.
|
Cloud disk (data disk) | 1 second | Unit price of a cloud disk × Disk capacity × Billing duration | For more information, see the Storage tab on the ECS Pricing page.
Note The prices for pay-as-you-go disks are displayed on the page in the unit of USD per
100 GiB-hour. You can divide the unit price by 100 to obtain the unit price per GiB.
|
Public bandwidth (pay-by-bandwidth) | 1 second | Unit price of bandwidth × Bandwidth value × Billing duration
For more information, see Public bandwidth. |
A tiered billing model is used for bandwidth. You can select a bandwidth value on the instance buy page to view the fee schedule. |
Snapshot | 1 hour, with a minimum of 1 hour | Unit price of a snapshot × Snapshot capacity × Billing duration
For more information, see Snapshots. |
For more information, see the Snapshot tab on the ECS Pricing page. |

Billing duration
If a pay-as-you-go instance is automatically stopped due to overdue payments, the billing of some resources suspends. The billing resumes after you complete the overdue payment and reactivate the instance.
Resource | Billing duration |
---|---|
Computing resources (vCPUs and memory) | The billing duration of computing resources (vCPUs and memory) is affected by the
network type of the instance.
You can purchase reserved instances to minimize costs. For more information, see Overview. |
Image | Billing begins when the instance is created and ends when the instance is released. |
Cloud disk (system disk) | Billing begins when the instance is created and ends when the system disk is released along with the instance. |
Cloud disk (data disk) | Billing begins when the data disk is created and ends when the data disk is released. |
Public bandwidth (pay-by-bandwidth) | Billing begins when public bandwidth (pay-by-bandwidth) is enabled and ends when public
bandwidth is disabled or when the instance is released.
For information about how to disable public bandwidth, see Modify the bandwidth configurations of pay-as-you-go instances. |
Snapshots | Billing begins when the snapshot is created and ends when the snapshot is deleted. |
To prevent unexpected charges incurred when a pay-as-you-go instance is not released in a timely manner, we recommend that you enable the automatic release feature. If automatic release is enabled, billing ends when the instance is released. The automatic release time is accurate to the second.
Settlement cycle
- If your default payment method is bank card, the quota is USD 1,000.
- If your default payment method is PayPal or Paytm (India), the quota varies based on your ECS usage.
The system attempts to deduct fees three times: on the due date (T), day T+7, and day T+14. If the fees of a pay-as-you-go instance cannot be deducted on the due date (T), payment becomes overdue for the instance and the system attempts to deduct the fees again on day T+7 and day T+14. If all three attempts to deduct the fees fail, the instance is stopped on day T+15 and its billing also stops. For more information, see the "Pay-as-you-go resources" section in Pay-as-you-go resources
Overdue payments
When you have overdue payments within your account, pay-as-you-go resources cannot be used. Your pay-as-you-go instances may be stopped and the resources may be released. To prevent the consequences of overdue payments, such as instance stop or release from affecting your business, add funds to your account to complete the overdue payments at your earliest convenience. For information about changes in resource states when payments become overdue, see Overdue payments.