SAE supports pay-as-you-go billing and prepaid resource plans. A free trial is available for new users.
Cost calculation
Single application
Follow these steps to calculate the costs for a single application in SAE:
Calculate the raw resource usage, which includes vCPU usage, memory usage, and disk usage. When calculating resource usage duration, any duration less than 1 second is rounded up to 1 second.
Calculate the CU Usage. SAE converts raw resource usage (including vCPU usage, memory usage, and disk usage) into CU Usage (Cost Unit) for billing. The formula is
CU Usage = raw resource usage × CU conversion coefficient. The CU conversion coefficient varies by application version (Lightweight, Standard, or Professional), raw resource type, and server type (default server or Hygon server).If you use a resource plan (subscription), the CU Usage is deducted from your plan. If you use the pay-as-you-go method, the CU unit price is shown in the table below. These prices are for reference only and are subject to your commercial offer.
Multiple applications
To calculate costs for multiple applications in SAE, follow these steps:
Applications of the same version are billed together, while applications of different versions are billed separately.
For example, if you run both Lightweight and Professional applications, the costs for each version are calculated and billed separately.
Calculate the raw resource usage, which includes vCPU usage, memory usage, and disk usage. When calculating resource usage duration, any duration less than 1 second is rounded up to 1 second.
vCPU usage = Σ(Number of instances × vCPU cores per instance × Runtime in seconds)memory usage = Σ(Number of instances × Memory per instance in GB × Runtime in seconds)disk usage = Σ(Number of instances × (Disk size per instance in GiB - 20 GiB free disk size) × Runtime in seconds)
Calculate the CU Usage.
CU Usage = Σ(Usage of each resource type × Corresponding CU conversion coefficient)
If you use a resource plan (subscription), the CU Usage is deducted from your plan. If you use the pay-as-you-go method, the cost is calculated based on the CU unit price.
Total cost = CU Usage × unit price
Billing
To use the service and enable billing, activate SAE. SAE supports two billing methods: pay-as-you-go and resource plan (subscription).
Additional billable items
If your SAE application integrates with other Alibaba Cloud services, you will be billed for other services such as networking, storage, databases, middleware, logging, and observability.
When you delete an SAE application , SAE stops billing for that resource.
If your SAE application depends on other services such as Classic Load Balancer (CLB), those services continue to incur costs.
To avoid unnecessary charges, stop or delete services that are no longer needed and verify that billing has stopped.
Service type | Requirements and scenarios | Implementation method | Billing reference |
Networking | Your SAE application must be accessible from the internet (inbound traffic). | Access your application by using SAE Ingress (gateway routing): | |
Access your application by using an SAE Service: | |||
Your SAE application must access the internet (outbound traffic). | Configure an Internet NAT gateway for the application's VPC. | ||
Use a registry to enable communication between microservice applications. | Implement service registration and discovery with a registry, such as Nacos. | SAE's built-in Nacos registry is free of charge. | |
Enable internal network communication between applications. | Access your application by using SAE Ingress (gateway routing): | ||
Access your application by using an SAE Service: | |||
Storage | Enable persistent storage for your SAE application . | ||
Database | Your SAE application connects to an Alibaba Cloud database service. | Refer to the billing documentation for the specific database service. | |
Middleware | Your SAE Standard and Professional Edition applications integrate with MSE's microservice governance capabilities. | Professional Edition: Microservice governance is free of charge. Standard Edition: Microservice governance requires separate activation and is billed. | |
Logging | Centrally collect and analyze logs from your SAE application . | ||
Observability | Your SAE Standard and Professional Edition applications integrate with ARMS advanced monitoring capabilities. | Professional Edition: ARMS advanced monitoring is free of charge. Standard Edition: ARMS advanced monitoring requires separate activation and is billed. |
View bills
Billing details
Log on to Expenses and Costs and go to the Monthly Billing Overview page to view your monthly consumption. You can switch accounts to view the summarized consumption for associated RAM users.
Go to the Billing Details page, click the corresponding tab, then view your consumption.
Consumption by Bill: View the consumption records of your account for each hourly billing cycle. For example, if you use SAE continuously from 00:00 to 24:00 on August 1, 24 consumption records are displayed, one for each hour.
ImportantSAE bill generation is delayed by approximately 2 hours. For example, you can query the SAE consumption record for the 13:00 to 14:00 period around 16:00 in the Expenses and Costs console.
Billing Details: You can filter billing details by different Statistic Item and Statistic Period values. The details include product details, consumption type, billable item, price, and deduction information.
ImportantThe Instance ID in the billing details corresponds to your Application ID (① and ② in the figure) or Task Template ID. You can view and copy the ID from the application details page or task template details page. Then, on the Billing Details tab, you can search for the bill for a single application or task template by Instance ID (③ in the figure).
The Billing Item (④ in the figure) specifies the billable items for the application or task template. You can use the billable item type to reconcile your resource usage.
View Usage Details: Follow the instructions on the page to download the usage information in CSV format.
Resource plan usage details
Log on to Expenses and Costs. Go to the Usage Details page for resource plans, enter the specific resource instance name, and view the detailed deduction records for the resource plan.
SAE resource plans have a fixed capacity that is consumed over time. During the validity period, usage is deducted from the resource plan until its capacity is fully used or the plan expires. The remaining capacity is the previous balance minus the deducted amount. The deducted amount is the resource usage of the instance during a specific time period.
You can also view the usage of your purchased CU resource plans on the right side of the Overview page, within the Resource Plan area.
Reconciliation FAQ
How to reconcile SAE resource bills
To reconcile your bills, use View billing details and View resource plan usage details.
Why am I charged after stopping SAE?
Assume that you used SAE resources from 13:00 to 14:00, stopped using them at 14:00, and immediately checked the Consumption by Bill and Billing Details tabs. You may find that SAE still has consumption records after 14:00.
This is normal because SAE bill generation is delayed by approximately 2 hours. Therefore, after you stop using SAE resources at 14:00, you can view the bill details on the Consumption by Bill tab around 16:00. You can also export detailed data from the View Usage Details tab if needed.
Deduction order
Credit limit for enterprise users.
Valid coupons in your Alibaba Cloud account.
Valid prepaid cards in your Alibaba Cloud account.
Cash balance in your Alibaba Cloud account.
Balance of your linked Alipay account.
The bank card specified for your linked Alipay account.
Other bank cards linked to your Alipay account for express payments.
Yu'e Bao balance of your linked Alipay account (if the Yu'e Bao auto-debit feature is enabled in Alipay).
The credit limit for enterprise users, valid coupons, and cash balance cannot be used simultaneously.
Overdue payments and renewals
If your available balance (account balance and coupons combined) cannot cover outstanding bills, your account immediately becomes overdue.
If you no longer need SAE, release its resources to avoid further charges:
To delete an SAE application: Delete an application.
If your application integrates with other Alibaba Cloud services, you will incur additional fees for services such as networking, storage, databases, middleware, logging, and observability. Before you delete these resources, make sure to back up any necessary data.
Overdue payments
Overdue duration | Description |
Overdue for less than 7 days | If your account has been overdue for less than 7 days (168 hours), your application instances in SAE continue to use cloud resources and incur fees, unless they are deleted or stopped. The following limits apply to SAE:
|
Overdue for more than 7 days | If you fail to pay all outstanding bills within 7 days (168 hours) after your account becomes overdue, SAE will stop your services. The application instances that you created in SAE are then released, and their data is permanently deleted. To avoid service disruptions, pay your outstanding bills promptly. |
Consumption overview
Log on to Expenses and Costs.
On the Account Overview page, view the consumption overview.
Renewals
Log on to Expenses and Costs.
In the left-side navigation pane, click Payment Details. On the Payment Details page, select the Unpaid tab and click Make a Payment in the Action column and follow the on-screen instructions to pay the overdue amount.