This topic describes the billable items, billing methods, billing cycles, billing formulas, and pricing of common cloud-native gateways in Microservices Engine (MSE). Cloud-native gateways provide Standard Edition and Professional Edition.
Billable items
Common instances (Standard Edition) of cloud-native gateways: Billable items refer to the fees of managed common gateway instances. For each common gateway instance that uses Standard Edition, an Alibaba Cloud Server Load Balancer (SLB) instance is used as an traffic ingress. Multiple Internet-facing or internal-facing SLB instances can be associated with a gateway instance to adapt to different network environments. When you create a gateway, MSE automatically purchases an SLB instance based on specifications. SLB instances are separately billed and fees are directly deducted from your account. MSE does not charge fees for SLB instances.
Common instances (Professional Edition) of cloud-native gateways: Billable items refer to the fees of managed common gateway instances. When you create a gateway, the gateway fees include the fees of the purchased SLB instance. No additional charges are incurred. You are separately billed for Loadbalancer Capacity Units (LCUs) and Internet data transfers.
Compared with Standard Edition, Professional Edition provides more advanced features. For example, Professional Edition is deeply integrated with SLB and implements GZIP decompression based on hardware acceleration. If CPU utilization is extremely low, the fees for network bandwidths can be reduced by about 40%. This feature is applicable to the nodes whose specifications are
8 cores and 16 GiB of memoryor16 cores and 32 GiB of memory.
You are charged for common cloud-native gateways managed by MSE. Cloud-native gateways use Alibaba Cloud Server Load Balancer (SLB) instances as Ingresses to meet requirements for different gateway environments. You can associate one or more Internet-facing or internal-facing SLB instances with a cloud-native gateway based on your business requirements.
After the cloud-native gateways are commercialized, if you purchase an SLB instance based on the selected specifications for a new common cloud-native gateway, the fees of the purchased SLB instance is automatically deducted from the balance of your Alibaba Cloud account. The fees of the SLB instance are not included in MSE fees.
Billing methods and cycles
Pay-as-you-go: If you use the pay-as-you-go billing method, you must select the instance specifications and number of nodes based on your business requirements. The billing duration is measured in hours. If a gateway runs for less than one hour, the usage duration is considered one hour. Fees are calculated every hour and a bill is generated at an interval of 24 hours. Fees are automatically deducted from the balance of your Alibaba Cloud account. The time when bills are generated is determined by the system.
Subscription: If you use the subscription billing method, you must select the instance specifications and the number of nodes based on your business requirements. The billing duration is measured in months. If the duration that you select is 1 year, the total fees are fees for 1 month multiplied by 12. Fees are automatically deducted from the balance of your Alibaba Cloud account. The time when bills are generated is determined by the system.
Billing formulas
The unit price for common gateway instance specifications is provided for a single gateway node. If you configure multiple nodes for a gateway, the total fees are determined based on the number of nodes.
Pay-as-you-go: Total fees = Unit price of instance specifications × Number of hours × Number of nodes. For example, if you select a region in the Chinese mainland, select the specifications (2 CPU cores and 4 GiB of memory), configure 3 nodes for a gateway, and select a duration of 5 hours, the total fees are USD 2.04, which is obtained by using the following formula: 0.136 × 5 × 3.
Subscription: Total fees = Unit price of instance specifications × Number of months × Number of nodes. For example, if you select a region in the Chinese mainland, select the specifications (2 CPU cores and 4 GiB of memory), configure 3 nodes for a gateway, and select a duration of 1 year, the total fees are USD 2,484, which is obtained by using the following formula: 69 × 12 × 3.
For example, you purchase a subscription cloud-native gateway that is deployed in a region in the Chinese mainland. The specifications of the gateway are 2 CPU cores and 4 GiB of memory, and three nodes are configured for the gateway. The system automatically triggers scale-out and adds one elastic node to run during the period from 20:00 to 22:00 every day. In this case, additional fees are generated for one elastic node with 2 CPU cores and 4 GiB of memory that runs for 2 hours every day in a 30-day month. The total monthly fees for the gateway are USD 227.46, which is obtained by using the following formula: (69 × 3 × 1) + (0.341 × 1 × 2 × 30).
SLB fees (Standard Edition)
For each common gateway instance that uses Standard Edition, the purchased SLB instance is separately billed. For the billing details of SLB instances, see NLB billing or CLB billing. To replace an SLB instance, perform operations in the MSE console.
For each common gateway instance that uses Professional Edition, the gateway fees include the fees of the purchased SLB instance. No additional charges are incurred.
Gateway fees
The prices described in this topic are for reference only. For the actual prices, refer to the MSE buy page.
Common gateway instances support two types of billing methods: pay-as-you-go and subscription. The billable items include the instance specifications (CPU cores and memory) and number of nodes.
Common gateway instances support auto scaling. You can specify the automatic scale-out period to handle traffic bursts in peak hours. The elastic nodes that are added after a scale-out are separately billed by the system. The unit price of elastic nodes are higher than those of common nodes. In bill details, Product Details is Cloud-native Gateway (Elastic Node).
Region | Number of CPU cores | Memory | Unit price for pay-as-you-go gateways (USD per hour) | Unit price for subscription gateways (USD per month) | Unit price for elastic nodes (USD per hour) |
Regions in the Chinese mainland (excluding the China (Hong Kong), China (Macau), and China (Taiwan) regions) | 2 cores | 4 GiB | 0.136 | 69 | 0.341 |
4 cores | 8 GiB | 0.273 | 137 | 0.681 | |
8 cores | 16 GiB | 0.544 | 274 | 1.357 | |
16 cores | 32 GiB | 1.088 | 548 | 2.716 | |
| 2 cores | 4 GiB | 0.205 | 103 | 0.511 |
4 cores | 8 GiB | 0.409 | 206 | 1.022 | |
8 cores | 16 GiB | 0.816 | 411 | 2.038 | |
16 cores | 32 GiB | 1.632 | 822 | 4.074 | |
| 2 cores | 4 GiB | 0.188 | 95 | 0.471 |
4 cores | 8 GiB | 0.376 | 189 | 0.941 | |
8 cores | 16 GiB | 0.751 | 378 | 1.873 | |
16 cores | 32 GiB | 1.501 | 757 | 3.750 | |
| 2 cores | 4 GiB | 0.164 | 82 | 0.410 |
4 cores | 8 GiB | 0.327 | 164 | 0.819 | |
8 cores | 16 GiB | 0.653 | 329 | 1.630 | |
16 cores | 32 GiB | 1.306 | 658 | 3.260 | |
Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) | 2 cores | 4 GiB | 0.175 | 88 | 0.438 |
4 cores | 8 GiB | 0.352 | 177 | 0.879 | |
6 cores | 16 GiB | 0.702 | 354 | 1.751 | |
8 cores | 32 GiB | 1.404 | 708 | 3.503 |
Fees for Internet data transfers (Professional Edition)
If you use Professional Edition common instances of cloud-native gateway, you are charged and billed for Internet data transfers based on Cloud Data Transfer (CDT). For more information, see Internet data transfers.
LCU fees (Professional Edition)
For more information, see NLB billing rules.
References
If the cloud-native gateways that you purchased are no longer used, you can unsubscribe from resources to prevent unexpected charges on your bill. For more information, see Refund policy.