Traffic fees - Object Storage Service - Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center

You are charged for the actual traffic that is generated when you access Object Storage Service (OSS) resources. Traffic includes inbound traffic, outbound traffic, origin traffic, and cross-region replication (CRR) traffic.

Unit price

This topic describes the billable items and billing methods of traffic. For more information about the unit price of traffic, see Object Storage Service pricing.

Billable items

You are not charged for the traffic that is generated by requests for which HTTP status code 4xx or 5xx is returned.

Inbound traffic

Item	Code	Description	Billed
Inbound traffic over the Internet	N/A	The traffic that is generated when you use a public endpoint or an acceleration endpoint to call upload operations, such as PutObject, to upload objects to OSS.	No
Inbound traffic over the internal network	N/A	The traffic that is generated when you use an internal endpoint to call upload operations, such as PutObject, to upload objects to OSS.	No

Outbound traffic

Item

Code

Description

Billed

Outbound traffic over the Internet

NetworkOut

The traffic that is generated when you use a public endpoint or an acceleration endpoint to call the GetObject operation to access, download, or preview objects, or to process images in OSS.

Note

You are charged transfer acceleration fees if you use an acceleration endpoint to request OSS resources.

Fees for outbound traffic over the Internet = Outbound traffic over the Internet (GB) × Unit price per GB.

Yes

Outbound traffic over the internal network

N/A

The traffic that is generated when you use an internal endpoint to call the GetObject operation to access, download, or preview objects, or to process images in OSS.

Origin traffic

Item

Code

Description

Billed

Origin traffic

CdnOut

The traffic that is generated when data is transferred from OSS to Alibaba Cloud CDN points of presence (POPs).

Origin traffic fees = CDN back-to-origin traffic (GB) × Unit price per GB.

Yes

CRR traffic

Item

Code

Description

Billed

CRR traffic

ReplicationDatasize

The outbound traffic that is generated when you use CRR to replicate objects from a source bucket to a destination bucket.

CRR traffic fees = CRR traffic (GB) × Unit price per GB.

Yes

Billing methods

Instructions on billing method selection

We recommend that you refer to the following table to learn about the features and scenarios of different billing methods. This helps you select an appropriate billing method to reduce traffic fees.

Billing method

Description

Feature

Scenario

Pay-as-you-go

By default, you are charged for all billable items based on the pay-as-you-go billing method. You are charged for the actual usage of each billable item.

The usage of outbound traffic fluctuates and is difficult to predict.

A startup is working on a new mobile application that expects the number of users and traffic to grow significantly during the rollout, but the exact rate and scale of growth are difficult to predict.

Outbound traffic plan

You can use an outbound traffic plan to offset fees only for the outbound traffic over the Internet. To offset the fees for the outbound traffic over the Internet by using resource plans, you need to purchase resource plans in advance. After you purchase an outbound traffic plan, the outbound traffic plan is a favorable billing method used to offset the fees for the outbound traffic over the Internet.

The usage of outbound traffic is stable and predictable.

A large e-commerce website has a stable and large number of page views and downloads from the Internet every day.

Billing methods supported by different billable items

The following table lists the billing methods supported for each billable item in OSS.

Item	Pay-as-you-go	Resource plan
Outbound traffic over the Internet	✓	✓ Go to the OSS Resource Plans page and select Outbound Traffic Plan.
Origin traffic	✓	×
CRR traffic	✓	×

FAQ

What do I do if the usage of outbound traffic over the Internet unexpectedly increases?

Possible cause	Risk description	Solution
The access control list (ACL) of the bucket is set to public-read or public-read-write	All users, including anonymous users, can read objects in the bucket. In this case, you are charged a large amount of outbound traffic fees.	Set the ACL of the bucket to private. For more information, see Bucket ACLs. Use temporary access credentials obtained from Security Token Service (STS) or signed URLs to temporarily authorize only specific third parties to download objects from the bucket. For more information, see Authorize third-party users to download objects.
The bucket is accessed from unknown public IP addresses	When objects in the bucket are frequently accessed from unknown public IP addresses, you are charged a large amount of outbound traffic fees.	Configure bucket policies for the bucket to restrict access to the bucket from unknown public IP addresses. For more information, see Tutorial: Use bucket policies to restrict access to OSS over the Internet.
GetObject or image processing (IMG) requests are frequently initiated by using a public endpoint or an acceleration endpoint	Frequent GetObject and IMG requests transmit a large amount of data from OSS, which increases outbound traffic over the Internet.	Initiate a request by using an internal endpoint. You can use Alibaba Cloud CDN to distribute static resources, such as images, videos, and documents in OSS, to reduce traffic costs and accelerate resource loading. For more information, see Access acceleration by using Alibaba Cloud CDN.

Can I ask requesters instead of the bucket owner to pay the fees for outbound traffic over the Internet and origin traffic generated by requests to the bucket?

If you want requesters instead of the bucket owner to pay the fees for outbound traffic over the Internet and origin traffic generated by requests to the bucket, you can enable pay-by-requester for the bucket. For more information, see Enable pay-by-requester.

Important

Outbound traffic plans cannot be used to offset the fees for outbound traffic over the Internet from a bucket for which pay-by-requester is enabled.

Why are the fees for outbound traffic over the Internet and API operation calling fees generated at the same time?

Outbound traffic is generated when data is transferred from OSS to the client over the Internet, whereas data transfer from OSS to the client is implemented by calling API operations. API operation calling fees are calculated based on the number of API requests. In most cases, when outbound traffic over the Internet is generated, API operation calling fees are generated at the same time.

References

For more information about how to query OSS hourly billing data, see Query OSS billing data generated on an hourly basis.
For more information about the billing details of the billable items, see Query bills.