This topic describes the billing methods, billable items, and pricing of Serverless App Engine (SAE). This topic also describes the additional fees that may be generated and the priorities of different payment methods.

Billing methods

SAE supports the pay-as-you-go billing method.

Pay-as-you-go

Applications are billed based on application instances. The billing cycle of an application starts when container images are downloaded or pulled and ends when application instances are deleted. Per-minute billing is used for applications. Partial minutes are charged by the minute. Bills for an application are generated and fees are deducted on an hourly basis.

Basic billable items

Pay-as-you-go

Fees are generated for SAE based on two billable items. The fee for each billable item is settled based on the statistical results and calculation method. Bills are generated and fees are deducted on an hourly basis. The resources that are used by each application are calculated based on the following formulas:
  • CPU resource usage of an application = ∑CPU specification of each instance in the application × Running duration in minutes
  • Memory resource usage of an application = ∑Memory specification of each instance in the application × Running duration in minutes

The statistics are accurate to seconds. Partial minutes for applications are billed by the minute.

The following table describes the prices for the pay-as-you-go billing method. For more information, see Pay-as-you-go.

Important You can contact your account manager to obtain the actual prices.
Table 1. Applications
RegionBillable itemListed price
Japan (Tokyo)CPUUSD 0.0007055 per core-minute
Japan (Tokyo)MemoryUSD 0.0001764 per GiB-minute
SingaporeCPUUSD 0.0006414 per core-minute
SingaporeMemoryUSD 0.0001603 per GiB-minute

Additional fees

If your application uses other Alibaba Cloud services or resources to transmit data, you are charged for using the services. For example, you are charged for networking, logging, and storage services.

Warning After all application instances are deleted, SAE stops billing. If your SAE application depends on other cloud services during runtime, such as Server Load Balancer (SLB) and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), you are still charged for using the services after the application instances are deleted. If you no longer need to use the services, the billing is stopped only after you release the related resources. For information about how to stop the billing of a cloud service, see the corresponding topic of the cloud service.

Networking

  • Access to the Internet

    By default, SAE applications that reside in VPCs cannot access the Internet. For more information about how to access the Internet, see Configure a NAT gateway for an SAE application to enable Internet access. SAE applications can access the Internet by using NAT gateways and elastic IP addresses (EIPs). For information about the billing of NAT gateways and EIPs, see Billing of Internet NAT gateways and EIP billing.

  • Access from VPCs and the Internet

    After you deploy an application on SAE, you can bind an Internet-facing SLB instance to the application to enable Internet access. You can also bind an internal-facing SLB instance to the application to enable communication with other applications in the VPC in which your application resides. For more information about the billing of SLB, see SLB billing.

Logging

SAE allows you to use Log Service to aggregate and analyze application file logs. For more information about the billing of Log Service, see Log Service billing.

Storage

SAE allows you to use Apsara File Storage NAS to persistently store data. For more information about the billing of NAS, see NAS billing.

Priorities of payment methods

The priorities of payment methods decrease based on the following sequence:
  1. Credits for an enterprise.
  2. Available coupons in an Alibaba Cloud account.
  3. Valid stored-value cards in an Alibaba Cloud account.
  4. Available balance in an Alibaba Cloud account.
  5. Available balance of an authorized Alipay account.
  6. Available bank accounts that you specified for your authorized Alipay account.
  7. Other bank accounts that are bound to an authorized Alipay account and support express payment.
  8. Available Yu'E Bao balance of an authorized Alipay account. To use this payment method, you must enable the payment of Yu'E Bao for an authorized Alipay account.
You cannot use more than one of the following payment methods at the same time to pay fees: credits, available coupons, and available balance of an Alibaba Cloud account.