Pay-as-you-go is a billing method that allows you to use resources before you pay for them. If you use the pay-as-you-go billing method, you are charged only for the Serverless APP Engine (SAE) resources that are used. You do not need to purchase resources in advance. This topic describes the billing rules, billing cycle, and unit price associated with this billing method.
Usage notes
Pay-as-you-go billing converts resource usage into CU usage before settling based on the CU unit price. Bills are generated and fees are deducted from the balance of your Alibaba Cloud account at the end of each billing cycle.
Billing cycle
The pay-as-you-go billing method for SAE tallies resource usage on an hourly basis (UTC+8), and converts it into CU usage for billing purposes. Once billed, a new cycle commences.
Bills may be queried with a slight delay. Typically, you can view the bill for three hours after the cycle starts. For instance, the bill for 01:00 to 02:00 is available after 04:00.
Billable items
Fees are generated for SAE based on two billable items, vCPU usage 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 formula
The formula for calculating resource usage of an applications is:
vCPU resource usage = Sum of CPU specification (core) × running time for the month (seconds).
Memory resource usage = Sum of memory size (GiB) × running time for the month (seconds).
The formula for converting billable items into CU usage:
CU usage for a single billable item = Resource usage × CU conversion factor.
Total CU usage = CU usage converted from vCPU usage + CU usage converted from memory usage.
Formula for caculating total fees for billable items:
Total fee = Unit price per CU-hour × total CU usage.