Serverless App Engine (SAE) supports pay-as-you-go and resource plan billing methods. This topic describes billing methods, billable items, and payment methods.
Terms
CU: Cost Unit, abbreviated as CU, is a billing unit introduced by Alibaba Cloud. The resource usage for all billable items can be converted into CU usage.
Billing methods
Pay-as-you-go
SAE supports the pay-as-you-go billing method. You are charged based on the actual resource usage. Bills are automatically generated based on the resources that you use in each billing cycle. The corresponding fees are deducted from the balance of your Alibaba Cloud account.
Resource usage for each billable item is converted into CU usage, and you are charged based on the CU price. For more information, see Pay-As-You-Go.
Resource plan
Fees are generated for SAE based on two billable items, CPU usage and memory usage. From February 12, 2025, SAE offers a CU resource plan that is more cost-effective.
Resource usage for each billable item is converted into CU usage, and you are charged based on the CU price. For more information, see Resource plans (subscription).
Billable items
SAE resources are billed based on vCPU and memory usage. Resource usage for each billable item must be converted into CU usage for billing. The details are as follows:
Description
vCPU usage is measured in vCPU-second and is equal to the product of the number of virtual CPU cores consumed by running applications or tasks and the running time (seconds). For example, if an application has 2 instances, each with a CPU specification of 1 core, and all instances run continuously for 100 seconds, the vCPU usage is 200 vCPU-seconds (2×1×100).
Memory usage is measured in GiB-second and is equal to the product of the memory (in GiB) consumed by running applications or tasks and the running time (seconds). For example, if an application has 2 instances, each with a memory specification of 2 GiB, and all instances run continuously for 100 seconds, the memory usage is 400 GiB-seconds (2×2×100).
If the usage duration in a billing cycle is less than one second, the usage duration is rounded up to one second.
CU conversion factors for each billable item
SAE offers billable items such as CPU usage and memory usage. The formula for converting these billable items to CU usage is: Resource usage × CU conversion factor = CU usage.
Billable item | vCPU usage (Unit: vCPU-second) | Memory usage (Unit: GiB-second) |
Unit of CU conversion factor | CU/vCPU-second | CU/GiB-second |
Value of CU conversion factor for default server | 1 | 0.25 |
Value of CU conversion factor for Hygon server | 1.274 | 0.3185 |
Unit price
You can contact your account manager to obtain the actual prices.
Region | Unit price per CU-hour |
| USD 0.000006859/CU |
| USD 0.00001176/CU |
| USD 0.00001069/CU |
Billing example
For a monthly cycle, consider an application in the Beijing region with 860 million vCPU-seconds and 2 billion GiB-seconds of memory usage. The CU usage and total fee are calculated as follows.
Resource type | Total usage | Converted CU usage |
vCPU | 860,000,000 vCPU-seconds | 860,000,000 CU |
Memory | 2,000,000,000 GiB-seconds | 500,000,000 CU |
Total CU usage: 1,360,000,000 CU | ||
Total fee = unit price per CU-hour × total CU usage = USD 0.000006859/CU × 1,360,000,000 CU = USD 9,328.24
Additional fees
If your SAE integrates and 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.
After all SAE applications are deleted or stopped, SAE stops billing. If your SAE applications depend on other Alibaba Cloud services, such as Server Load Balancer (SLB) and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), you are charged for using the services after all applications are deleted or stopped. If you no longer need to use the services, release the related resources. Then, the billing is stopped.
Service type | Description |
Network |
|
Logging | SAE allows you to use Simple Log Service (SLS) to aggregate and analyze application file logs. For more information about the billing of SLS, see SLS billing. |
Storage | SAE allows you to use File Storage NAS (NAS) to persistently store data. For more information about the billing of NAS, see NAS billing. |
Database | If SAE integrates database services provided by Alibaba Cloud, see the billing documentation for the relevant database. |
Priorities of payment methods
The priorities of payment methods decrease based on the following sequence:
Credits for an enterprise.
Available coupons in an Alibaba Cloud account.
Valid stored-value cards in an Alibaba Cloud account.
Available balance in an Alibaba Cloud account.
Available balance of an authorized Alipay account.
Available bank accounts that you specified for your authorized Alipay account.
Other bank accounts that are bound to an authorized Alipay account and support express payment.
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.