Billable items and pricing for Serverless - PolarDB

PolarDB for PostgreSQL Serverless charges for four items: compute nodes, storage space, backup storage, and SQL Explorer (optional). Charges vary depending on whether the cluster is running or paused.

Billing by cluster state

Use this table to understand which charges continue when you pause a cluster:

Billable item	Normal state	Paused state
Compute nodes	Charged	Not charged
Storage space	Charged	Charged
Backup storage	Charged (usage above free quota only)	Charged (usage above free quota only)
SQL Explorer	Charged if enabled	Charged if enabled

Billing rules

Compute nodes

Serverless compute nodes include primary nodes and read-only nodes. Compute nodes are billed per second based on PolarDB Capacity Unit (PCU) consumption. Bills are generated hourly.

What is a PCU?

One PCU equals 1 CPU core and 2 GB of memory. It is the unit used to measure the elastic capacity of a Serverless cluster. The minimum scaling granularity is 0.5 PCU.

Hourly fee formula:

Hourly fee = (Sum of actual PCUs per second / 3600) x Hourly price per PCU

Example: A primary node runs at 2 PCUs for 30 minutes, then scales down to 1 PCU for the remaining 30 minutes.

= ((2 x 1800) + (1 x 1800)) / 3600 x price per PCU
= 1.5 x price per PCU

Hourly fee range: The minimum and maximum hourly fees depend on the node count and PCU limits you configure:

Min fee = Price per PCU x (min read-only nodes + 1 RW node) x min PCUs per node
Max fee = Price per PCU x (max read-only nodes + 1 RW node) x max PCUs per node

Pay-as-you-go prices (USD/PCU/hour):USD/GB/hourUSD/hour

Region	Enterprise Edition	Standard Edition
The Chinese mainland	0.0610	0.054
China (Hong Kong)	0.1160	0.102
Japan (Tokyo)	0.0977	N/A
South Korea	0.0977	N/A
Singapore	0.1160	0.102
Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur)	0.1160	N/A
Indonesia (Jakarta)	0.1069	0.094
Germany (Frankfurt)	0.1038	0.092
US (Silicon Valley)	0.0947	N/A
US (Virginia)	0.0794	N/A

Note

Standard Edition is not available in some regions, such as South Korea and Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur). Therefore, no prices are available for these regions.

Storage space

Storage space refers to the space occupied by data files, manifest, log files (online logs and archived logs), and temporary files. Pricing and capacity management differ by storage class:

PSL4 and PSL5: No upfront capacity required. Storage scales automatically as data grows. Charged only for space actually used.
Enterprise SSD (ESSD): Specify a storage capacity at purchase. Charged based on the selected capacity. If data exceeds the purchased capacity, ESSD scales out automatically — an upfront payment is charged for the additional capacity. If your account balance is insufficient, the scale-out fails.

ESSD auto scale-out triggers

An automatic scale-out is triggered when any storage resource (space, Inode, or Blktag) falls below the following thresholds:

Current storage	Trigger condition
Less than 1 TB	Remaining resources fall below 30%
1 TB to less than 10 TB	Remaining resources fall below 20%
More than 10 TB	Remaining resources fall below 10%

Each scale-out adds 20 GB or 15% of the current storage capacity, whichever is larger.

*Example:* A 200 GB disk scales out by 30 GB (15% of 200 GB > 20 GB). A 100 GB disk scales out by 20 GB (the 20 GB minimum).

Pay-as-you-go prices (USD/GB/hour), single zone, hot standby storage cluster disabled:

Note

Storage fees can be offset by storage plans. For more information, see .

Backup storage

PolarDB Serverless supports level-1 backup, level-2 backup, and log backup. The free quota covers a portion of backup storage. Charges apply only when usage exceeds this quota.

For billing details, see .

SQL Explorer

SQL Explorer provides security audit and performance diagnostics for your database. Charges are based on audit log storage capacity and retention period, and apply only when the feature is enabled.

For information on how to enable SQL Explorer, see SQL Explorer. For billing details, see .