This document describes the billable items, billing methods, and pricing of Elastic Algorithm Service (EAS).
Billing overview
When you use EAS to deploy a service, charges may be incurred for compute resources, system disks, and dedicated gateways.
Computing resources: Includes public resources, dedicated resources, and Lingjun AI computing resources.
(Optional) System disks: EAS provides a free quota of 30 GiB for public resources and 200 GiB for dedicated resources. You are charged separately for any additional system disk usage.
(Optional) Dedicated gateways: By default, services use a shared gateway, which is free. If you require features like security isolation, access control, or custom domain names, you can purchase a dedicated gateway. You must manually configure your service to use a dedicated gateway.
EAS provides two billing methods:
Pay-as-you-go: You are charged based on the runtime of your service, not the number of service calls. This method is ideal for scenarios with uncertain or fluctuating demand.
Subscription: You pay upfront for long-term usage at a discounted rate. This method is suitable for stable, long-running workloads.
For SDWebUI and ComfyUI, EAS offers a Serverless Edition. Service deployment is free, and you are charged only for the actual inference duration during service calls.
If you use other Alibaba Cloud services such as Elastic IP Address (EIP), Object Storage Service (OSS), or Apsara File Storage NAS, you will incur charges associated with those services.
Billing period
Pay-as-you-go
For pay-as-you-go resources, understand when billing starts and stops to avoid unexpected charges. Stop idle model services promptly to avoid unnecessary costs.
Resource | Start time of billing | End time of billing |
Public resources | Billing starts when the service enters the Running state and continues even if no calls are made to the service. | When the model service is stopped (the service resources are released). Important You must stop or delete the service instance. |
Dedicated resources | Billing starts when the machine enters the Running state and continues even if no services are deployed on it. |
Important The Stopped state can only be triggered by an overdue payment. You cannot manually stop a machine to pause billing. To stop charges, you must delete the pay-as-you-go machine. |
System disk | When the system disk is purchased. |
|
Dedicated gateway | Billing starts when the dedicated gateway is created and continues even if it is not used. | When the dedicated gateway is deleted. |
Service scaling
Scale-out: Billing for new resources starts when they are added.
Scale-in: Billing stops for resources when they are released. Billing continues for the remaining resources.
Subscription
Resource | Start time of billing | End time of billing |
Dedicated resources | The next day after the purchase, at 00:00:00. | The expiration time. |
AI computing resources (Lingjun resources) | The next day after the purchase, at 00:00:00. | The expiration time. |
System disk | The time when you purchase the system disk. | The expiration time. |
Dedicated gateway | The time when you purchase the dedicated gateway. | The expiration time. |
Service inference (Serverless Edition)
Serverless Edition service deployment is free. You are charged only for the inference duration when the service is invoked.
For example, if you click Generate on the WebUI page and it takes 10 seconds to generate an image, you are billed for 10 seconds.
Currently, only SDWebUI and ComfyUI support deployment in the Serverless Edition. You can view pricing details on the Deploy Service page.
Notes
All prices in this document are for reference only. Your official bill reflects your actual costs.
Billable resources
The following table provides details about the billing methods for resources.
Billable item | Billing method | Fee calculation | Unit price | Usage notes |
Public resources | Pay-as-you-go (specific resources required by the instance) | Billable amount per model service = Number of instances × (Number of CPU cores × (Unit price / 60) + Memory size × (Unit price / 60)) × Duration (in minutes) | Fees are calculated per minute on a pay-as-you-go basis and rounded down to the minute. For more information about the hourly prices of vCPU and memory resources, see Resource-based configuration. To calculate the unit prices per minute, divide the prices listed in Table 1 by 60. |
|
Pay-as-you-go (specific instance type) |
| Pricing varies by region and instance type. The price on the console prevails. For information about the instance types supported by the public resource group, see Appendix: Public resource group instance types. |
| |
Dedicated resources | Pay-as-you-go |
| For pay-as-you-go pricing, go to the EAS post-payment for dedicated machine buy page. |
|
Subscription |
| For information about the unit prices of subscription instances, go to the EAS pre-payment for dedicated machine buy page. | Some machine resources may be temporarily unavailable in certain regions. | |
AI computing resources (Lingjun resources) | Subscription | You can prepay for Lingjun AI computing resources and use the corresponding resource quota to deploy EAS services. For more information, see Billing of AI computing resources. | ||
System disk | Pay-as-you-go |
| To view the unit prices of system disks, go to the product overview page of Elastic Compute Service (ECS), click the Pricing tab, and then click Storage. The pricing information of Enterprise SSD (ESSD) PL1 is displayed in the System Cloud Disk Fee section. | N/A. |
Subscription |
| To view the unit prices of system disks, go to the product overview page of ECS, click the Pricing tab, and then click Storage. The pricing information of ESSD PL1 is displayed in the System Cloud Disk Fee section. | N/A. | |
Dedicated gateway | Pay-as-you-go |
| To view the unit prices of dedicated gateways, go to the EAS Dedicated Gateway Postpay buy page. | N/A. |
Subscription |
| To view the unit prices of subscription dedicated gateways, go to the EAS dedicated gateway prepay buy page. | N/A. | |
Service inference (Serverless Edition) | Pay by actual inference duration when service is called |
| Only Stable Diffusion web UI and ComfyUI support the deployment of Serverless Edition services. You can view the pricing details on the deployment page. | N/A. |
Table 1 Resource-based configuration
The pricing information below is for reference only. Your actual costs are based on the price displayed on the console or purchase page of the cloud service.
Resource | Pricing |
CPU | USD 0.03 per vCPU-hour |
Memory | USD 0.004 per GB-hour |
Billing examples
The following examples are for reference only. Your actual costs are based on the prices shown on the console or the product purchase page of the cloud service.
Public resource group billing example
Pay-as-you-go example
Scenario description:
You deploy a model service using the Specified resources option in a Public Resource Group in the China (Hangzhou) region.
At 09:00:00 on June 3, 2019, the service enters the running state, initially using 2 CPU cores and 8 GiB of memory.
At 10:00:00 on June 3, 2019, the service is scaled in to 1 CPU core and 4 GiB of memory.
At 11:00:00 on June 3, 2019, the service is scaled out to 4 CPU cores and 16 GiB of memory.
At 12:00:00 on June 3, 2019, the service is stopped.
Cost calculation:
Bill amount = 2 × 0.03 + 8 × 0.004 + 1 × 0.03 + 4 × 0.004 + 4 × 0.03 + 16 × 0.004 = USD 0.322
Dedicated resource group billing example
Subscription example
Scenario description:
You purchase two 4-core CPU, 15 GiB GPU (T4) machines in the China (Hangzhou) region with a three-month subscription. The price is 570 USD/month. The actual price is shown on the product purchase page.
Cost calculation:
Bill amount = 2 × 570 × 3 = USD 3,420
Pay-as-you-go example
Scenario description:
You purchase two
ecs.g6.6xlarge(24-core CPU, 96 GiB) machines in the China (Hangzhou) region using the pay-as-you-go method. You use them for 45 minutes. The price is 1.02 USD/hour. The actual price is shown on the product purchase page.Cost calculation:
Bill amount = 2 × (1.02/60) × 45 = USD 1.53
System disk billing example
Subscription example
Scenario description:
You purchase two dedicated machines in the China (Hangzhou) region with a three-month subscription. Each machine is configured with a 300 GiB system disk.
Cost calculation:
Bill amount = 2 × (300 - 200) × 0.153 × 3 = USD 91.8
Pay-as-you-go example
Dedicated resource group
Scenario description:
You purchase two dedicated machines in the China (Hangzhou) region using the pay-as-you-go method. Each machine is configured with a 300 GiB system disk and is used for 5 hours.
Cost calculation:
Bill amount = 2 × (300 - 200) × 0.000319 × 5 = USD 0.319
Public resource group
Scenario description:
You purchase two instances in a Public Resource Group in the China (Hangzhou) region using the pay-as-you-go method. Each instance is configured with a 300 GiB system disk and is used for 5 hours.
Cost calculation:
Bill amount = 2 × (300 - 30) × 0.000319 × 5 = USD 0.8613