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OpenSearch:Billing methods and billable items

Last Updated:Mar 24, 2025

This topic provides a billing overview of OpenSearch LLM-Based Conversational Search Edition.

Billing methods

Billing method

Description

Pay-as-you-go

This billing method allows for immediate use of resources with payment following based on hourly usage. Charges are deducted hourly from your Alibaba Cloud account balance, and all hourly bills are consolidated under a single purchase order.

Subscription

Subscription billing requires upfront payment upon creation of an instance. It offers cost savings compared to pay-as-you-go. However, computing resources for a Standard Edition instance are still billed on a pay-as-you-go basis. We recommend that you purchase a computing resource plan.

Billable items

Edition

Billable items

Unit

Available range

Step size

Description

Standard Edition

Storage resources

GB

[1 , 100]

1GB

Fixed storage fee based on the selected storage capacity when you purchase the instance.

Computing resources

CU

[0 , 3600]

-

Charges based on the hourly use of computing resources, with higher request volumes and queries per second (QPS) leading to increased resource consumption.

Professional Edition

Storage resources

GB

[1 , 100]

1GB

Fixed storage fee based on the selected storage capacity when you purchase the instance.

GPU rentals

Unit

[1 , 10]

1

Fixed rental fee for GPU usage, which varies based on the GPU specifications utilized.

Note

The data processing resources of a Standard Edition instance are shared with other instances. Therefore, a latency may occur when you upload data.

Billing rules

Standard Edition instance

  • Billing method: pay-as-you-go

    Billable items

    Region

    Price (USD/GB-hour)

    Billing examples

    Storage resources

    Singapore

    0.030

    For an instance with 10 GB of storage, the hourly fee is: 10 GB × USD 0.030/GB-hour = USD 0.3.

    Billable items

    Region

    Price (USD/CU-hour)

    Billing examples

    CU computing resources

    Singapore

    0.086

    For an instance with 100 CUs between 11:00:00 and 12:00:00, the fee for computing resources is: 100 CUs × USD 0.086/CU-hour = USD 8.6.

  • Billing method: subscription

    Billable items

    Region

    Price (USD/GB-month)

    Billing examples

    Storage resources

    Singapore

    15.12

    For a 2 GB instance purchased for one month, the storage fee on the buy page is USD 30.24. Computing resources continue to be billed on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Important
  • Computing resources are billed based on actual usage, which includes the resources consumed by Q&A calls in the console and API.

    If image content detection is enabled, images in the uploaded file will be automatically detected, incurring charges based on the actual computing resources used. Each image typically requires between 0.1 to 0.5 CUs.

  • On average, 1 CU of computing resources can handle 10 conversational search requests. The actual consumption may vary depending on the complexity of the conversation.

  • Each instance supports a maximum of 10 QPS for conversational search. If the QPS of an instance exceeds the limit, the Service Level Agreement (SLA) may not be guaranteed. For higher QPS requirements, apply in advance.

Billing examples

Standard Edition instance

Billing method

Scenario

Billing examples

Pay-as-you-go

User A purchases a Standard Edition instance that has a storage capacity of 2 GB in the Singapore region by using the pay-as-you-go billing method.

  • Between 06:00:00 and 07:00:00, User A does not initiate requests for conversational search, and no computing resources are consumed. The total fee within the 1 hour is calculated based on the following formula: 2 GB × USD 0.03 per GB-hour = USD 0.06.

  • Between 07:00:00 and 08:00:00, User A initiates 100 requests for conversational search, and 10 CUs of computing resources are consumed. The total fee within the 1 hour is calculated based on the following formula: 2 GB × USD 0.03 per GB-hour + 10 CUs × USD 0.086 per CU-hour = USD 0.92.

  • Between 08:00:00 and 09:00:00, User A initiates 1,000 requests for conversational search, and 100 CUs of computing resources are consumed. The total fee within the 1 hour is calculated based on the following formula: 2 GB × USD 0.03 per GB-hour + 100 CUs × USD 0.086 per CU-hour = USD 8.66.

Subscription

User A purchases a Standard Edition instance that has a storage capacity of 2 GB in the Singapore region for two months by using the subscription billing method.

  • The storage fee that User A needs to pay on the buy page is calculated based on the following formula: 2 GB × 2 months × USD 15.12 = USD 60.48.

  • Between 06:00:00 and 07:00:00, User A does not initiate requests for conversational search, and no fee is charged.

  • Between 07:00:00 and 08:00:00, User A initiates 100 requests for conversational search, and 10 CUs of computing resources are consumed. The total computing resource fee within the 1 hour is calculated based on the following formula: 10 CUs × USD 0.086 per CU-hour = USD 0.86.