Managed Service for OpenTelemetry charges for trace reporting, trace storage, and metric storage on a pay-as-you-go basis. Bills are generated daily.
The following prices are for reference only. For actual prices, see the or the Managed Service for OpenTelemetry pricing page.
Concepts
Trace: The end-to-end execution path of a transaction or process across a distributed system. All spans that share the same trace ID within an Alibaba Cloud account form one trace.
Span: A single operation within a trace. Each span has a name, a start time, and a duration. A trace contains at most 10 spans. Each span is capped at 2 KB; data beyond this limit is discarded.
Metric: Aggregated statistical data derived from traces, such as response time, queries per second (QPS), and exception counts for applications, APIs, or databases. One metric is generated for each reported trace.
For more details, see Terms.
Billable items and pricing
Managed Service for OpenTelemetry bills three items separately:
| Billable item | What it measures | Free quota |
|---|---|---|
| Trace reporting | Number of traces ingested per day | 100,000 traces/day |
| Trace storage | Number of traces stored per day x retention period (days) | 100,000 traces/day |
| Metric storage | Number of metrics stored per day x retention period (days) | 1,000,000 metrics/day |
Regional pricing
| Billable item | The Chinese mainland | China (Hong Kong) | Regions outside China |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trace reporting | USD 0.13 per million traces | USD 0.182 per million traces | USD 0.182 per million traces |
| Trace storage | USD 0.03 per million traces x days | USD 0.042 per million traces x days | USD 0.042 per million traces x days |
| Metric storage | USD 0.0015 per million metrics x days | USD 0.0021 per million metrics x days | USD 0.0021 per million metrics x days |
How the free quota works
Each billable item has a daily free quota. If your daily usage stays below the free quota, no charges apply. If your daily usage meets or exceeds the free quota, you are billed for all traces and metrics that day -- not just the portion above the quota.
The free quota is an all-or-nothing threshold, not a deduction. For example, if the free quota for trace reporting is 100,000 traces/day and you report 100,001 traces, you are charged for all 100,001 traces.
How each fee is calculated
Trace reporting fee: Based on the number of spans in reported traces. These traces are aggregated to produce metrics such as elapsed time, QPS, and exception counts.
Trace storage fee: Number of traces stored per day multiplied by the retention period in days.
Metric storage fee: Number of metrics stored per day multiplied by the retention period in days.
Adjust the retention period on the Cluster Configurations tab of the Cluster Configurations page in the Managed Service for OpenTelemetry console.
Billing cycle
Bills are generated daily at 00:00 for the previous day's usage. Fees are deducted from your Alibaba Cloud account balance.
Activate the service
To activate Managed Service for OpenTelemetry on a pay-as-you-go basis, go to the buy page.
Billing examples
All examples use the Chinese mainland pricing. Adjust the unit prices for other regions.
Example 1: high-volume workload
Scenario: 400 million traces and 400 million metrics reported per day.
Option A: 30-day retention for traces and metrics
| Billable item | Quantity | Unit price | Formula | Daily cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trace reporting | 400 million traces | USD 0.13 per million | 400 x USD 0.13 | USD 52.00 |
| Trace storage | 400 million traces x 30 days | USD 0.03 per million x days | 400 x 30 x USD 0.03 | USD 360.00 |
| Metric storage | 400 million metrics x 30 days | USD 0.0015 per million x days | 400 x 30 x USD 0.0015 | USD 18.00 |
| Total | USD 430.00/day |
Option B: 7-day trace retention, 30-day metric retention
| Billable item | Quantity | Unit price | Formula | Daily cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trace reporting | 400 million traces | USD 0.13 per million | 400 x USD 0.13 | USD 52.00 |
| Trace storage | 400 million traces x 7 days | USD 0.03 per million x days | 400 x 7 x USD 0.03 | USD 84.00 |
| Metric storage | 400 million metrics x 30 days | USD 0.0015 per million x days | 400 x 30 x USD 0.0015 | USD 18.00 |
| Total | USD 154.00/day |
Reducing trace retention from 30 to 7 days cuts the daily cost by 64%.
Example 2: medium workload
Scenario: 10 million traces and 10 million metrics reported per day. Traces stored for 7 days, metrics stored for 30 days.
| Billable item | Quantity | Unit price | Formula | Daily cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trace reporting | 10 million traces | USD 0.13 per million | 10 x USD 0.13 | USD 1.30 |
| Trace storage | 10 million traces x 7 days | USD 0.03 per million x days | 10 x 7 x USD 0.03 | USD 2.10 |
| Metric storage | 10 million metrics x 30 days | USD 0.0015 per million x days | 10 x 30 x USD 0.0015 | USD 0.45 |
| Total | USD 3.85/day |
Example 3: estimate from request volume
If your application handles 2,000 requests per second with an average of 5 spans per request:
Traces per day = 2,000 x 86,400 = 172,800,000 (approximately 173 million)
Using the Chinese mainland pricing with 7-day trace retention and 30-day metric retention:
| Billable item | Quantity | Unit price | Formula | Daily cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trace reporting | 173 million traces | USD 0.13 per million | 173 x USD 0.13 | USD 22.49 |
| Trace storage | 173 million traces x 7 days | USD 0.03 per million x days | 173 x 7 x USD 0.03 | USD 36.33 |
| Metric storage | 173 million metrics x 30 days | USD 0.0015 per million x days | 173 x 30 x USD 0.0015 | USD 7.79 |
| Total | USD 66.61/day |
Cost comparison with self-managed alternatives
Compared with self-managed open source services, Managed Service for OpenTelemetry is continuously optimized for higher cost-effectiveness. It removes the need to provision and maintain Elasticsearch clusters, Collector servers, and related infrastructure. The default retention period is 30 days, compared to 7 days for most open source application performance management (APM) systems.
The following comparison assumes open source agents in both setups. Alibaba Cloud handles infrastructure maintenance for the managed service.
| Customer size | Nodes | Requests/day | Spans/request | Self-managed infrastructure | Self-managed cost (USD/month) | Managed service cost (USD/month) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 80 | 20 million | 5 | 4 Elasticsearch servers (4 vCPU, 16 GB, 1 TB SSD) + 4 Collector servers (4 vCPU, 8 GB) | 864.52 | 113.29 |
| Medium | 300 | 300 million | 7 | 8 Elasticsearch servers (8 vCPU, 16 GB, 6 TB SSD) + 8 Collector servers (4 vCPU, 8 GB) | 3,330.07 | 2,379.79 |
| Large | 1,000 | 1 billion | 8 | 12 Elasticsearch servers (16 vCPU, 64 GB, 21 TB SSD) + 16 Collector servers (4 vCPU, 8 GB) | 9,641.81 | 9,599.15 |
Assumptions:
Nodes refer to Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances or Docker containers.
Request volume is based on Apache documentation. Each trace reports approximately 10 KB of data.
Self-managed configurations assume 15-day statistical data retention and 7-day full-detail data retention.
Total stored requests = requests per day x retention period.
Reduce costs
Managed Service for OpenTelemetry uses a billing model that separately charges the computing fee and storage fee, allowing you to customize the retention period for cost optimization. Storage fees scale linearly with the retention period. Two strategies to lower your daily bill:
Shorten trace retention: Reducing trace retention from 30 to 7 days cuts trace storage costs by over 75%. In Example 1, this reduces the daily total from USD 430 to USD 154 -- a 64% reduction.
Set different retention periods for traces and metrics: Keep longer metric retention for trend analysis while shortening trace retention. Traces and metrics have independent retention settings on the Cluster Configurations page.