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Managed Service for Prometheus:Billing examples

Last Updated:Mar 11, 2026

Estimate your monthly costs for Managed Service for Prometheus based on scrape configuration, data volume, and retention settings. All examples use a Prometheus instance in the Singapore region.

Pricing reference

The following unit prices apply to all examples in this document.

Billing item

Unit price

Data ingestion (remote-write volume)

USD 0.087 per GB

Data ingestion (metric sample count)

USD 0.176 per million samples

Data retention

USD 0.00022 per GB per day

Container monitoring (per OCU)

USD 0.033 per hour

Basic metrics ingestion

Free

Custom metrics ingestion free quota (remote-write)

50 GB per month

Note

Scraping interval directly affects cost. A shorter interval produces more samples and more ingested data per day. All examples below use a 15-second interval.

Prometheus instance examples

Both examples below share the same instance configuration but use different billing models: remote-write data volume (Example 1) and metric sample count (Example 2).

Instance configuration

Parameter

Value

Region

Singapore

Basic metrics

1 scrape job, 1 target, 200 metrics per target

Custom metrics

1 scrape job, 2 targets, 500 metrics per target

Sample size

0.5 KB

Scraping interval

15 seconds

Retention

90 days (hot storage) + 90 days (archival storage)

Note

Archival storage costs accumulate over time. The retention fee formulas below use a 90-day retention period within the total 180-day retention window.

Example 1: Billed by remote-write data volume

Data ingestion fee

Formula:

Daily ingested volume = Scrape jobs x Targets per job x Metrics per target x (86,400 / Scraping interval) x Sample size

Basic metrics:

1 x 1 x 200 x (86,400 / 15) x 0.5 KB = 576,000 KB = 0.5 GB per day

Monthly fee: USD 0 (basic metrics are free)

Custom metrics:

1 x 2 x 500 x (86,400 / 15) x 0.5 KB = 2,880,000 KB = 2.7 GB per day

Monthly fee: (2.7 GB/day x 30 days - 50 GB free quota) x USD 0.087/GB = USD 2.697

Monthly ingestion total: USD 0 + USD 2.697 = USD 2.697

Data retention fee

The retention fee covers all data stored during the retention period, including both basic and custom metrics.

(0.5 GB + 2.7 GB) x 90 retention days x USD 0.00022/GB x 30 days = USD 1.9008

Monthly cost

Fee component

Amount

Data ingestion

USD 2.697

Data retention

USD 1.9008

Total

USD 4.5978

Example 2: Billed by metric sample count

Data ingestion fee

Formula:

Daily ingested samples = Scrape jobs x Targets per job x Metrics per target x (86,400 / Scraping interval)

Basic metrics:

1 x 1 x 200 x (86,400 / 15) = 1,152,000 samples per day

Monthly fee: USD 0 (basic metrics are free)

Custom metrics:

1 x 2 x 500 x (86,400 / 15) = 5,760,000 samples per day

Daily samples in millions: 5,760,000 / 1,000,000 = 6 (rounded to the nearest integer)

Monthly fee: 6 x USD 0.176 x 30 days = USD 31.68

Monthly ingestion total: USD 0 + USD 31.68 = USD 31.68

Data retention fee

The retention fee is calculated from the total stored volume, derived from sample count and sample size.

Daily retained volume:

(1,152,000 + 5,760,000) x 0.5 KB x 90 retention days = 311,040,000 KB = 296.6 GB

Monthly retention fee: 296.6 GB x USD 0.00022/GB x 30 days = USD 1.95756

Monthly cost

Fee component

Amount

Data ingestion

USD 31.68

Data retention

USD 1.95756

Total

USD 33.63756

Billing model comparison

Billing model

Monthly ingestion

Monthly retention

Monthly total

By remote-write data volume

USD 2.697

USD 1.9008

USD 4.5978

By metric sample count

USD 31.68

USD 1.95756

USD 33.63756

For the same instance configuration, billing by remote-write data volume is significantly lower because the 50 GB free quota absorbs most of the ingested volume.

Container monitoring example

The following example calculates the total monthly cost when running container monitoring alongside a Prometheus instance for a Kubernetes cluster.

Configuration

Parameter

Value

Region

Singapore

ACK cluster

1 cluster, 50 nodes, Container Monitoring Pro Edition

Basic metrics

Default metrics for the ACK cluster

Custom metrics

1 scrape job, 2 targets, 500 metrics per target

Sample size

0.5 KB

Scraping interval

15 seconds

Retention

90 days (hot storage)

Cluster scale fee

Formula:

Nodes / 10 x Unit price per Observability Capacity Unit (OCU) x Hours per month

Calculation:

50 / 10 x USD 0.033 x 24 x 30 = USD 118.8

Prometheus instance fee

Billed by remote-write data volume. The data retention fee is USD 0 because this configuration uses 90-day hot storage only, with no archival storage.

Fee component

Amount

Data ingestion

USD 2.697

Data retention

USD 0

Instance total

USD 2.697

Monthly cost

Fee component

Amount

Cluster scale fee

USD 118.8

Prometheus instance fee

USD 2.697

Total

USD 121.497