Calculate costs for Machine Learning Designer algorithm components using CU-based billing formulas and examples.
Overview
Machine Learning Designer algorithm components may incur costs for PAI algorithm components, PAI-DLC, or MaxCompute. This topic covers PAI algorithm component costs. For other costs, see DLC billing and MaxCompute billing. Prices shown are for reference only.
Billable items

|
Billable item |
Billed item |
Billing method |
Stop billing |
Billing rule |
|
CU |
Component runtime |
Pay-as-you-go |
Stop component. |
Bill = Resource consumption (in billable hours) × Unit price |
Calculation
Algorithm components have different unit prices by type. Calculate costs as follows:
-
Formula: Bill = Billable hours × Unit price
Billable hours = max(CPU cores × Duration (h), Memory (GB) × Duration (h) / 4)
-
Duration: Billing starts when component starts and ends when component stops.
-
Example: A data analytics algorithm uses 2 CPU cores and 5 GB memory for 1.5 hours. Billable hours = max(2 × 1.5, 5 × 1.5 / 4) = 3. Bill = 3 × Unit price = 3 × 0.21 = 0.63 USD. Unit prices by algorithm type:
Algorithm type
Unit price (USD/billable hour)
Algorithm type description
Data pre-processing (data_manipulation)
0.16
Data pre-processing and feature engineering components.
Data analytics (data_analysis)
0.21
Statistical analysis, machine learning, time series, network analysis, and finance components. Common algorithms: binning and swing_rec_ext.
Text analytics (text_analysis)
0.27
Text analytics components.
Deep learning algorithm (deep_learning)
0.16
Deep learning components such as the CPU version of the TensorFlow framework and EasyRec series algorithms.
Note-
If MaxCompute is enabled when activating PAI, MaxCompute resources incur charges when using SQL Script, Join, Union, and Filtering and Mapping components. For details, see MaxCompute billing.
-
If Flink is enabled when activating PAI and selected as compute resource, Flink resources incur charges when using Alink components. For details, see Flink billing.
-
Billing example
An experiment typically contains multiple algorithm components, each with multiple subtasks. To calculate experiment cost, calculate subtask costs for each component and sum them.
-
Identify algorithm component category.
-
Log on to the PAI console.
-
In the upper-left corner, select a region.
-
In left navigation pane, click Workspaces. On resulting page, click target workspace name.
-
In navigation pane, choose Model Development and Training > Machine Learning Designer.
-
On Workflows page, select target workflow and click Go to Workflow.
-
In component list, find PLDA component. It belongs to text analytics category and is priced at 0.27 USD per billable hour.

-
-
View resources consumed by job.
-
On experiment canvas, right-click PLDA component.
-
From the shortcut menu, select View Log.
-
On Log-PLDA page, each blue link corresponds to a subtask. Click a link.

-
On the LogView page, click the SourceXML tab.
-
Under TaskPlan, view CPU and Memory.

-
Divide CPU value by 100 to calculate CPU cores. This job uses 1 CPU core.
-
Memory unit is MB. This job uses 1 GB memory.
-
-
On the LogView page, click the Job Details tab.
-
Click task object on AlgoTask_0_0 tab. In dialog box that appears, click Terminated tab. Latency shows runtime of each job.

This subtask has 49 jobs, and each job runs for about 26 seconds.
-
-
Calculate subtask cost.
-
Billable hours for subtask = max(CPU cores × Duration (h), Memory (GB) × Duration (h) / 4) = max(49 × 1 × (26/3600), 49 × 1 × (26/3600) / 4) ≈ 0.35 billable hours
-
Subtask cost = Billable hours for subtask × Unit price = 0.35 × 0.27 = 0.095 USD
-
-
Calculate costs of all subtasks in PLDA component and sum them to obtain total component cost.
-
Repeat preceding steps to calculate costs of all components in experiment and sum them to obtain total experiment cost.