This topic provides a complete list of regions and zones of Alibaba Cloud.

Region

A region is a geographic location where Alibaba Cloud data centers are deployed. After a resource is created, you cannot change the region of the resource. The following table describes the information about all regions of Alibaba Cloud, including the region IDs and the cities where the regions reside.
Note Available regions vary with services. You must consider regions available for different services.
  • Regions in the Chinese mainland
    Region City Region ID Number of zones
    China (Qingdao) Qingdao cn-qingdao 2
    China (Beijing) Beijing cn-beijing 12
    China (Zhangjiakou) Zhangjiakou cn-zhangjiakou 3
    China (Hohhot) Hohhot cn-huhehaote 2
    China (Ulanqab) Ulanqab cn-wulanchabu 3
    China (Hangzhou) Hangzhou cn-hangzhou 8
    China (Shanghai) Shanghai cn-shanghai 11
    China (Shenzhen) Shenzhen cn-shenzhen 6
    China (Heyuan) Heyuan cn-heyuan 2
    China (Guangzhou) Guangzhou cn-guangzhou 2
    China (Chengdu) Chengdu cn-chengdu 2
    China (Nanjing) Nanjing(China (Nanjing) is one of the local regions and is in invitational preview.) cn-nanjing 1
  • Regions outside the Chinese mainland
    Country City Region ID Number of zones
    China China (Hong Kong) cn-hongkong 3
    Singapore Singapore (Singapore) ap-southeast-1 3
    Australia Australia (Sydney) ap-southeast-2 2
    Malaysia Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) ap-southeast-3 2
    Indonesia Indonesia (Jakarta) ap-southeast-5 3
    Philippines Philippines (Manila) ap-southeast-6 1
    Thailand Thailand (Bangkok) ap-southeast-7 1
    India India (Mumbai) ap-south-1 2
    Japan Japan (Tokyo) ap-northeast-1 2
    South Korea South Korea (Seoul) ap-northeast-2 1
    US US (Silicon Valley) us-west-1 2
    US US (Virginia) us-east-1 2
    Germany Germany (Frankfurt) eu-central-1 2
    UK UK (London) eu-west-1 2
    UAE UAE (Dubai) me-east-1 1
When you select a region, you must consider the following factors:
  • Geographical locations
    Select a region based on the geographical location of you and your users.
    • Regions in the Chinese mainland

      In the Chinese mainland, we recommend that you select a region that is the closest to the geographical location of your users to speed up access. However, in terms of network infrastructures, Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) network quality, quality of service (QoS), and usage of and configurations on Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances, Alibaba Cloud regions in the Chinese mainland are almost the same. BGP networks ensure fast access to all regions in the Chinese mainland.

    • Regions outside the Chinese mainland

      Bandwidths provided in regions outside the Chinese mainland are applicable to users in those regions. If you are located in the Chinese mainland, we recommend that you do not select regions outside the Chinese mainland because you may experience high latency if you select those regions.

  • Connection between Alibaba Cloud services
    If you use multiple Alibaba Cloud services together, take note of the following items:
    • ECS instances, ApsaraDB RDS instances, and Object Service Storage (OSS) buckets that are created in different regions cannot communicate with each other over internal networks.
    • Server Load Balancer (SLB) cannot balance requests from ECS instances deployed in different regions. ECS instances that you purchased in different regions cannot be deployed on the same SLB instance.
  • Resource price

    The prices of resources may vary with regions. For more information, see the Pricing page.

  • ICP license filing

    When you select a region, you must consider the special requirements of some regions. For example, if you purchase an ECS instance in a region in the Chinese mainland and use the instance as a web server, you must apply for an ICP license.

    If you want to apply for an ICP license, take note of the following items:
    • If you want to apply for an ICP license for services in Beijing, select the China (Beijing) region.
    • If you want to apply for an ICP license for services in Guangdong, select the China (Shenzhen) region.
    Note The approval requirements for ICP licenses vary from province to province. For information about the latest requirements, visit the ICP license application website of the local communications administration.

Zone

A zone is a physical area within a region that has its own independent power grids and networks. The network latency between instances within the same zone is lower than that between different zones.

Zones within the same region can access each other over the internal network. When a zone is down, other zones are not affected. We recommend that you choose a deployment method based on your business requirements for disaster recovery and network latency.
  • If your application requires high disaster recovery capabilities, we recommend that you deploy instances in different zones within the same region.
  • If your application requires low latency, we recommend that you deploy instances within the same zone.