PolarDB provides two billing methods for compute nodes: pay-as-you-go and subscription. Each billing method has its own pricing scheme. You can use storage plans together with one of the two billing methods.
Billing methods
The following table describes the differences between the two billing methods.
Billing method | Description | Benefit | Scenario |
Pay-as-you-go | You are charged based on your actual computing capacity usage. Fees are deducted from your account on an hourly basis. | Flexible | Scenarios in which workloads are light, infrequently change, and have small fluctuations. |
Subscription | You must pay for the computing capacity in advance when you create a cluster. | Cost-effective | Scenarios in which workloads are heavy, infrequently change, and have small fluctuations. |
If you do not purchase a storage plan when you use the two billing methods, you are charged based on the amount of storage space consumed by your cluster data and the retention period of the data. To reduce the costs of storing a large amount of data, we recommend that you purchase storage plans. For more information, see the "Combination with storage plans" section of the Billing method 1: pay-as-you-go topic.