You are charged for messaging with IoT Platform. The charges are included into your IoT Platform bills. Messaging fees are calculated based on the number of messages.

Billable items

The following table describes specific billable items. For information about billable operations, see Appendix: Billable operations.

Item Description
Messaging fees

(devices)

 Messages that are sent when devices call the Pub operation.
Requests that are sent when devices call the RPC operation.
Revert-RPC (RRPC) responses that are sent from devices to servers.
Messages that are received when devices call the Sub operation.
Messages that are sent or received when devices call TSL-related operations.
Messaging fees

(servers)

 Messages that are sent when servers call the Pub and PubBroadcast operations.
Messages that are pushed from IoT Platform to servers by using Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) server-side subscriptions.
RPC responses that are sent from servers to devices.
Messages that are sent when servers call the RRPC operation.
Messages that are generated when servers call sub-device-related operations.
Messages that are generated when servers call device shadow-related operations.
Messages that are generated when servers call TSL-related operations.
Free messages
  • Connect
  • Connect ACK
  • Disconnect
  • PingReq
  • PingResp
  • Publish ACK
  • Subscribe
  • Subscribe ACK
  • Unsubscribe
  • Unsubscribe ACK
  • Messages that are forwarded by using the data forwarding feature of the rules engine
    Note You can use the data forwarding feature to forward messages free of charge. However, you are charged when you forward data to other Alibaba Cloud services.

Billing methods

Tiered pricing is used.

Number of messages (N) per month Unit price (USD per million messages)
N ≤ 0.1 billion 0.5
0.1 billion < N ≤ 1 billion 0.4
1 billion < N 0.3
Note IoT Platform provides a free monthly quota of 1 million messages for the first two months after you activate IoT Platform. When IoT Platform calculates monthly device access fees in the first two months, 1 million messages are deducted from the actual number of messages that are generated.

Billing units:

  • Fees are calculated based on the number of messages. For information about billable items, see the preceding table.
  • If the number of messages is less than 1 million, fees are calculated based on the actual number of messages.

Number of messages:

  • If a message is at most 512 bytes in size, the message is counted as one billable message.
  • If a message is more than 512 bytes in size, the message is counted as two or more billable messages.
  • To calculate the number of billable messages, divide the message size into bytes by 512, and round the result up to the nearest integer.

Billing cycles:

  • Messaging fees are calculated on a daily basis.
  • The fees that are displayed in bills are accurate to two decimal places.
Note This topic is for reference only. To obtain actual device access fees, view your bills.

Appendix: Billable operations

Table 1. Billable operations (devices)
Operation Description
IOT_CMP_OTA_Start You are charged when you call the operations to send messages over Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT).
IOT_CMP_OTA_Get_Config
IOT_CMP_OTA_Request_Image
IOT_CMP_Send
IOT_MQTT_Publish
IOT_OTA_ReportVersion
IOT_OTA_RequestImage
IOT_OTA_ReportProgress
IOT_OTA_GetConfig
IOT_Shadow_Construct
IOT_Shadow_RegisterAttribute
IOT_Shadow_Push
IOT_Shadow_Push_Async
IOT_Shadow_Pull
IOT_Subdevice_Register
IOT_Subdevice_Unregister
IOT_Subdevice_Login
IOT_Subdevice_Logout
IOT_Gateway_Get_TOPO
IOT_Gateway_Get_Config
IOT_Gateway_Publish_Found_List
IOT_Gateway_Publish
IOT_Gateway_RRPC_Response
linkkit_answer_service
linkkit_invoke_raw_service
linkkit_trigger_event
linkkit_invoke_fota_service
linkkit_invoke_cota_get_config
linkkit_invoke_cota_service
IOT_CoAP_SendMessage You are charged when you call the operation to send messages over Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP).
IOT_HTTP_SendMessage You are charged when you call the operation to send messages over HTTP.
IOT_CMP_Register You can call the operations free of charge. However, you may be charged for receiving messages.
IOT_MQTT_Subscribe
IOT_Gateway_Subscribe
IOT_Gateway_RRPC_Register
Table 2. Billable operations (servers)
Operation Description
Pub Publishes a message to a specified topic.
PubBroadcast Broadcasts a message.
RRpc Sends an RRPC message.
DeleteDevice Sends a message to the /sys/{productKey}/{deviceName}/thing/delete topic when you delete a sub-device.
DisableThing Sends a message to the /sys/${productKey}/${deviceName}/thing/disable topic when you disable a sub-device.
EnableThing Sends a message to the /sys/${productKey}/${deviceName}/thing/enable topic when you enable a sub-device.
NotifyAddThingTopo Sends a message to the /sys/${productKey}/${deviceName}/thing/topo/add/notify topic when you add a topological relationship.
UpdateDeviceShadow Modifies a device shadow.
InvokeThingService Sends a message to the /sys/${productKey}/${deviceName}/thing/service/${tsl.service.identitier} topic when you invoke a device service.
InvokeThingsService Sends a message to the /sys/${productKey}/${deviceName}/thing/service/${tsl.service.identitier} topic when you invoke multiple device services at a time.
SetDeviceProperty Sends a message to the /sys/${productKey}/${deviceName}/thing/service/property/set topic when you configure a device property.
SetDevicesProperty Sends a message to the /sys/${productKey}/${deviceName}/thing/service/property/set topic when you configure multiple device properties at a time.