E-MapReduce (EMR) supports two billing methods: subscription and pay-as-you-go. Pay-as-you-go lets you create and release cluster resources at any time without upfront commitment — you are billed only for what you use, measured by the second.
When to use pay-as-you-go
Pay-as-you-go works best for short-lived or unpredictable workloads:
Development and testing — spin up a cluster, run your jobs, and release it when done
Temporary workloads — one-off or periodic jobs that don't justify a subscription commitment
Billing cycle
Bills are generated hourly at the top of every hour (UTC+8). Within each hourly cycle, usage is metered by the second (UTC+8).
Example 1: Pay-as-you-go cluster
You create a pay-as-you-go EMR cluster at 01:30:30 and release it at 01:55:30.
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Settlement period | 01:00:00–02:00:00 |
| Charged period | 01:30:30–01:55:30 |
| Billing duration | 1,500 seconds |
Example 2: Pay-as-you-go task node group in a subscription cluster
You add an ECS instance to a pay-as-you-go task node group at 10:59:30, then remove it at 11:50:30.
| Settlement period | Charged period | Billing duration |
|---|---|---|
| 10:00:00–11:00:00 | 10:59:30–11:00:00 | 30 seconds |
| 11:00:00–12:00:00 | 11:00:00–11:50:30 | 3,030 seconds |
Pricing
To view the price for a pay-as-you-go EMR cluster, check the order generated when you purchase the cluster in the EMR console.
Account balance requirements
Before creating a pay-as-you-go EMR cluster, make sure the available balance in your Alibaba Cloud account — including cash, vouchers, and coupons — is at least CNY 100. If the balance is insufficient, cluster creation fails.
If your account balance plus vouchers falls below the amount due, Alibaba Cloud notifies you by text message or email.
Overdue payments
For more information, see Overdue payments.
Switch billing methods
You can switch an existing pay-as-you-go EMR cluster to subscription billing.
To switch from pay-as-you-go to subscription, see Switch from pay-as-you-go to subscription.