This topic describes the billable items, billing methods, and billing cycles of ApsaraVideo Live.
You can use the ApsaraVideo Live Pricing Calculator to estimate your costs. Choose the billing items and payment models that fit your business requirements to get a cost projection.
Billable items
Acceleration fees
Standard streaming or Real-Time Streaming (RTS) fees: These fees are incurred when your live content is delivered to viewers. The total charge is calculated based on the volume of downstream data transferred.
Stream relay fees: Fees are incurred when you use the live center to relay streams to third-party services after media processing. This feature is disabled by default and incurs charges only when used.
Media processing fees
This category includes fees for live stream transcoding, recording, time shifting, snapshots, automated review, stream delay, and DRM encryption. These features are disabled by default and incur charges only when used.
ARTC fees
When you use ApsaraVideo Real-time Communication (ARTC), you may incur audio and video call fees and stream mixing and relay fees. These features are disabled by default and incur charges only when used.
Live + service fees
ApsaraVideo Live provides other features, such as production studios and live monitoring. These features are disabled by default and incur charges only when used.
SDK fees
Alibaba Cloud provides various client SDKs for live streaming, including Push SDK, ApsaraVideo Player SDK, and Queen SDK.
Billing methods
ApsaraVideo Live supports two billing methods:
Pay-as-you-go: Pay for resources after consumption, based on actual usage.
Resource plan: Purchase a prepaid resource plan for specific billable items at a discount. During bill settlement, the system first deducts usage from your resource plan. To purchase a plan, go to the resource plan buy page.
Resource plans are more cost-effective than the pay-as-you-go method.
Any usage exceeding your resource plan's quota is billed on a pay-as-you-go basis. Purchase a resource plan that meets your business needs.
Billing cycles
The following table describes the billing cycles for ApsaraVideo Live services.
Billing cycle | Billing and settlement time | Applicable billable items |
Daily | The system generates and settles bills for the previous day after 00:00 daily. The exact bill generation time may vary. | |
Monthly | The system typically generates and settles the bills for a month after 00:00 on the first day of the following month. The exact bill generation time may vary. | |
Yearly | This is a prepaid annual subscription. |