All Products
Search

This Product

    ApsaraDB RDS:Billing FAQs

    Document Center

    ApsaraDB RDS:Billing FAQs

    Last Updated:Jun 21, 2026

    This topic answers frequently asked questions about ApsaraDB RDS billing.

    Cost savings

    Daily charges for subscription instances

    The subscription fee covers only the instance specification and storage space. You incur extra charges if you use features such as read-only instances, SQL audit, or paid performance monitoring, or if your backup storage usage exceeds the free quota. For more information, see Billable items.

    Log on to the Alibaba Cloud Management Console. In the Fee > Expenses and Costs console, choose Bills >Bill Details to view your billable items.

    You can use the following methods to avoid or reduce pay-as-you-go costs:

    • Backup usage exceeds the free quota: For more information, see Reduce backup size and costs.

    • Database Proxy: The database proxy feature implements automatic read/write splitting and is charged on a pay-as-you-go basis. Evaluate if you need this feature. For more information, see What is a database proxy?

    • Read-only Instance, Clone Instance: These instance types support the subscription billing method. We recommend that you selectSubscription .

    • Performance Monitoring: Use the free monitoring frequencies, which collect data every 60 seconds or 300 seconds.

    Higher than expected bills

    A subscription fee covers only the instance specification and storage space for that specific instance. If you have other pay-as-you-go ApsaraDB RDS instances under the same account, they are billed hourly for both their specifications and storage. This may cause your total bill to be much higher than the subscription price.

    To troubleshoot this issue, go to the Bill Details page in Billing Management and view the billing method and cost details for each instance to check if any pay-as-you-go instances are incurring extra charges.

    If you no longer need a pay-as-you-go instance, release it to stop billing. If you still need the instance, convert its billing method to subscription to reduce long-term costs.

    Charges for idle pay-as-you-go instances

    Yes. A pay-as-you-go instance reserves compute and storage resources even when idle, so it continues to incur hourly charges. If you do not plan to use an instance for a long time, back up its data and then release it.

    Billing for configuration changes

    For more information, see Change instance specifications.

    Charges for public endpoints

    Currently, inbound and outbound internet traffic for both pay-as-you-go and subscription instances is free, and bandwidth is not limited.

    Check for backup charges

    • You can check whether you are incurring backup fees in the Usage Statistics section on the Basic Information page of the instance. If your backup usage exceeds the free quota, backup fees are incurred. In the Backup Usage section of the instance, you can view the current usage of data backups and log backups and the free quota (for example, backups are free of charge if the total size is 81920 MB or less). Click View Details to view a detailed breakdown of your backup usage.

    • To check for past backup costs, go to the Bill Details page and check for bills where the Billable Item is instance backup.Instance backup

    Reduce backup size and costs

    Release an instance

    For more information, see Release an ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL instance.

    Impact of releasing read-only instances

    Yes, releasing a read-only instance affects your services. Before releasing it, set its read weight to 0.

    Note

    Cached connections will still be routed to this read-only instance. You must re-establish the connections to route requests to other read-only instances.

    Check feature activation time

    • On the Orders page, check the Paid/Activated At time for the feature.

    • You can use ActionTrail to view the operation history of an instance. You can also find the feature activation time on the View Event Details page in the ActionTrail console. The event details include fields such as Event Time (for example, 2023-04-10 16:15:18), Event Name (for example, CreateDBInstance), Event Source (for example, rds-inc-share.aliyuncs.com), Region, Operator (Alibaba Cloud account), and Source IP Address. The Related Resources section contains the resource type and resource name. The Event Time field indicates when the feature was created or enabled.

    Instance purchasing and billing

    Instance not appearing after creation

    This issue may occur for the following two reasons:

    • Incorrect region

      The region displayed on the page may be different from the region that you selected when you created the instance. You can switch regions in the upper-left corner of the page.

    • Insufficient resources in the zone

      Zone resources are dynamically allocated. An instance may fail to be created if the resources in the selected zone are insufficient after you place an order. As a result, the instance does not appear in the instance list. We recommend that you select a different zone and try again. A refund is issued for the failed creation. You can view the details in the Order List.

    Performance differences: entry-level vs. enterprise-level

    This is because entry-level instances belong to the shared/general-purpose instance family, whereas enterprise-level instances belong to the dedicated instance family. In practice, enterprise-level instances are more stable because they use dedicated CPU and memory resources. For more information about the differences, see Instance families.

    Switch billing methods

    Yes, you can convert the billing method between subscription and pay-as-you-go.

    Storage price differences: Cluster vs. Basic Edition

    1. The Cluster Edition and Basic Edition have different billing methods for storage resources.

    The Basic Edition uses a single-node architecture with no secondary nodes, and its data reliability depends on the multi-replica mechanism of the underlying cloud disk. The Cluster Edition uses a primary-secondary node architecture that enhances data reliability and system availability by using a high-availability architecture on top of the multi-replica mechanism of high-performance cloud disks. This means that secondary nodes in the Cluster Edition also have one or more sets of cloud disks. This architectural difference leads to different resource scheduling and cost allocation between the editions. Specifically, storage costs are calculated as follows:

    Storage cost for a Basic Edition instance = Unit price of instance storage × Storage capacity of the instance × Duration

    Storage cost for a Cluster Edition instance = Unit price of single-node storage × Storage capacity of a single node × Number of nodes × Duration

    2. Alibaba Cloud's storage pricing for different product series takes into account factors such as features, availability, and O&M costs.

    Take high-performance cloud disks as an example. The Cluster Edition may have a lower unit price due to bulk purchasing or resource pool optimization. In contrast, the storage cost for a single-node Basic Edition instance is relatively higher, leading to a difference in the storage unit price.

    Expired and overdue instances

    • Causes and impacts of expiration or overdue payments

      Impact of expiration or overdue payments

      For more information, see Overdue payments and Renewal.

      Serverless instance billing and expiration

      For information about how serverless ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL instances are billed, see ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL Serverless pricing. Serverless instances are billed on a pay-as-you-go basis and do not have an expiration date.

      Handling expired subscription instances

      No. After a subscription instance expires, it enters the following states. If you no longer use it, no action is required and no additional charges are generated.

      • For 1 to 7 days after expiration, the instance is locked and cannot be accessed.

      • For 8 to 15 days after expiration, the compute resources of the instance are released, but its data backups are retained.

      • On the 16th day after expiration, the data of the instance is released.

      Charges during instance lock period

      No other charges are generated while the instance is locked. For more information about the impacts of overdue payments, see Overdue payments.

      Data recovery for released instances

      No. On the 16th day after expiration, the instance data is permanently deleted and cannot be recovered. To continue using the service, you must purchase a new instance and redeploy your data.

      Impact of overdue payments on instances

      An overdue account payment will cause all pay-as-you-go instances under the account to become overdue. For more information, see Overdue payments.

      What does the RDS instance error The MySQL server is running with the LOCK_WRITE option so it cannot execute this statement mean?

      This error message indicates that the instance is locked. For information about how to unlock the instance, see What do I do if the status of an ApsaraDB RDS instance is Locked?

    • Operations for expired or overdue instances

      Configuration changes for locked instances

      No. You must unlock the instance before you can change its configuration. For instructions, see Overdue payments and Renewal.

      Instance still locked after renewal

      Unlocking an instance after renewal takes some time, typically up to 5 minutes.

      Renewal discounts

      The renewal price displayed in the console prevails.

      Backups for locked instances

      No. You cannot back up a locked instance or export its backup files. The instance must be in the Running state. We recommend that you first top up your account balance or renew the instance to unlock it, and then perform the backup and export.

      Instance recovery after renewal

      For 1 to 7 days after expiration, the instance is locked and cannot be accessed. If you manually renew the instance during this period, it immediately returns to a normal state. No other operations are required.

      Data consistency after rebuilding from recycle bin

      The data is identical to the data in the original instance, but the new instance will have a different connection endpoint and instance ID.

      Cost of rebuilding from the recycle bin

      After an instance is released, you can use the recycle bin to create a new instance and restore the original instance's data to it. When you rebuild an instance from the recycle bin, you cannot select instance specifications, database engine versions, or storage types that are discontinued. Any changes to these parameters for the new instance will affect its price. The price displayed in the console is final.

      RAM user permissions for renewal

      You must grant the RAM user the following permissions in the Billing Management console: AliyunBSSFullAccess, AliyunBSSReadOnlyAccess, AliyunBSSOrderAccess, AliyunBSSRenewFullAccess, and AliyunBSSRenewReadOnlyAccess. You must also grant the RAM user the AliyunRDSFullAccess permission for ApsaraDB RDS.

      DTS migration from locked instances

      You cannot use Data Transmission Service (DTS) to migrate data from a locked instance. You must unlock the instance before starting the migration. For information about how to unlock an instance, see What do I do if the status of an ApsaraDB RDS instance is Locked?

      Restore an expired subscription instance

      The method to restore an expired subscription instance varies based on the time that has elapsed since expiration:

      • For 1 to 7 days after expiration, the instance is locked and cannot be accessed. You can unlock it by renewing it. For more information, see Renewal.

      • For 8 to 15 days after expiration, the compute resources of the instance are released, but its data backups are retained. You can restore the instance from these backups. For more information, see Rebuild an instance.

      • On the 16th day after expiration, the data of the instance is released and cannot be recovered. If you still need to use the service, you must purchase a new instance and deploy your data.

      Downgrade and renew an instance

      You cannot downgrade the configuration while you renew the instance. You must first downgrade the configuration and then renew the instance.

      Cannot write to a locked instance

      You cannot write data to a locked instance. You must first unlock the instance. For information about how to unlock an instance, see What do I do if the status of an ApsaraDB RDS instance is Locked?

      Switch to pay-as-you-go after renewal

      After you renew the instance, you must wait until its status changes to Running. Then, you can change its billing method. For more information, see Change the billing method of an ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL instance from subscription to pay-as-you-go.

      View expiring instances

      At the top of the ApsaraDB RDS console, select Fee > Renewal Management, where you can view products that are about to expire and renew your instances.

      Apply for a contract before renewal

      Contact your account manager.

    • Billing for deleted instances

      My RDS MySQL instance has been released. Why am I still being charged for backups?

      The RDS MySQL instance has been released. However, if you enabled the backup retention policy upon instance release before the instance was released, these backup files will continue to be stored on the Backups page of the RDS console. According to the feature rules, backup storage is free for 7 days after the instance is released. After 7 days, charges will apply.

      Therefore, backup fees may occur because your backup retention period exceeded the 7-day free window. Fees are based on actual storage usage and region. For pricing details, see Billing details. If you no longer need the backups, change the retention policy for the target instance to None on the Backup for Deleted Instances tab to avoid backup storage fees.