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Object Storage Service:Billing items for vector buckets

Last Updated:Mar 20, 2026

Vector buckets use pay-as-you-go billing. Three billing items apply: storage fees based on the amount of vector data stored, data retrieval fees based on the amount of data scanned per query, and API request fees based on the number of API calls.

Vector buckets are currently in invitational preview and are free of charge. The billing information below is for reference only. Final billing rules will be announced at the commercial launch.

Storage fees

Billable itemBilling conditionBilling ruleBilling cycleBilling method
Storage feesStoring vector data in a vector bucketBilled based on the size of data writtenHourlyPay-as-you-go (USD/GB/month)

Billing rules

Total storage is the sum of three components:

Total storage size = Size of vector primary keys + Size of vector data + Size of metadata

ComponentCalculation
Size of vector primary keysTotal size of all vector primary key strings (UTF-8 encoding)
Size of vector data(Vector dimensions ÷ 1024) × 4 bytes × Number of vectors
Size of metadataTotal size of all metadata key and value strings (UTF-8 encoding)

Example: calculating storage size

Assume a vector bucket for document retrieval with the following configuration:

ParameterValue
Vector dimensions1024
Number of vectors100,000
Data typefloat32 (4 bytes per dimension)
Average vector primary key length20 bytes
Average metadata size200 bytes/vector

Calculation:

  1. Size of vector primary keys: 100,000 × 20 bytes = 2,000,000 bytes ≈ 1.91 MB

  2. Size of vector data: (1024 ÷ 1024) × 4 bytes × 100,000 = 400,000 bytes ≈ 0.38 MB

  3. Size of metadata: 100,000 × 200 bytes = 20,000,000 bytes ≈ 19.07 MB

Total storage size = 1.91 MB + 0.38 MB + 19.07 MB = 21.36 MB

Quick reference: storage size by scale

The following table shows estimated vector data sizes for common configurations. Primary key size and metadata size are not included and vary by use case.

VectorsDimensionsData typeVector data size
100,000128float320.05 MB
100,000768float320.29 MB
100,0001024float320.38 MB
1,000,000768float322.86 MB
1,000,0001536float325.72 MB
The values above cover vector data only. Add the size of your primary keys and metadata to get the total billable storage size.

Data retrieval fees

Billable itemBilling conditionBilling ruleBilling cycleBilling method
Data retrieval feesInitiating a query to retrieve vector dataBilled based on the index data size for each retrieval operationHourlyPay-as-you-go (USD/TB)

Billing rules

Each vector search query is billed based on the total number of vectors in the index, regardless of how many results are returned.

Retrieved data size per query = Number of vectors in the index × (Size of vector primary key + Size of vector data + Size of filterable metadata)

Where Size of vector data per vector = Vector dimensions ÷ 1024 × 4 bytes

The number of vectors in the index is the total count of indexed vectors, not the number of results returned by a query. Parameters such as top_k do not affect the retrieval fee.

Example: calculating retrieved data size

Assume a vector search with the following parameters:

ParameterValue
Vector dimensions1024
Number of vectors in the index100,000
Average vector primary key length20 bytes
Average filterable metadata size100 bytes/vector

Calculation:

  1. Size per row: 20 bytes + (1024 ÷ 1024 × 4 bytes) + 100 bytes = 124 bytes

  2. Total retrieved data size: 100,000 × 124 bytes = 12,400,000 bytes ≈ 11.83 MB

Quick reference: retrieved data size per query

The following table shows estimated retrieved data sizes for common index configurations, assuming 20-byte primary keys and 100-byte filterable metadata per vector.

Vectors in indexDimensionsSize per rowSize per query
100,000128120.5 bytes11.49 MB
100,000768123 bytes11.73 MB
100,0001024124 bytes11.83 MB
1,000,000768123 bytes117.3 MB
1,000,0001536126 bytes120.2 MB
Retrieved data size per query is dominated by primary key size and filterable metadata size. Vector dimensions have a smaller effect because the formula normalizes to a 1024-dimension baseline.

API request fees

API requests are classified as PUT or GET requests:

Request typeOperations
PUT requestsPutVectorBucket, PutVectorIndex, PutVectors, DeleteVectorBucket, DeleteVectorIndex, DeleteVectors, ListVectorBuckets, ListVectorIndexes, ListVectors
GET requestsGetVectorBucket, GetVectorIndex, GetVectors, QueryVectors