ALB billing overview

Billing methods

ALB supports the following billing methods:

Pay-as-you-go: Billed based on actual usage. Use first, pay later. Best for variable traffic.
Resource plans: Purchase capacity upfront. Usage is deducted from the plan first. Best for predictable, steady traffic.

Note

Resource plans offer discounted rates compared to pay-as-you-go pricing.
Excess usage beyond the plan quota is automatically billed at pay-as-you-go rates. Match your plan to expected usage to avoid unexpected charges.

Billable items

Pay-as-you-go ALB fees include the following components:

int

Billing cycle

ALB instance fees and LCU fees are billed hourly based on actual usage. Bills are typically issued within one hour after each billing cycle ends.

For Internet-facing ALB instances, Internet data transfer fees are charged through the associated EIPs. The billing cycle, deduction, and bill issuance time follow the same schedule as pay-as-you-go EIP. EIP billing overview.

Pricing

ALB list prices are detailed in ALB billing rules and ALB resource plans. For actual prices, visit the ALB buy page.

Estimate LCU consumption with the ALB LCU Calculator.

More Information

Overdue payments

Causes

Your account may become overdue if:

No resource plan is purchased and your account balance is insufficient.
A resource plan is purchased but does not cover all fees.

Overdue payment policy

Status	Resource status	Action
Overdue warning	The system calculates the average payable amount from the past 7 hours to determine whether your account balance can cover 3 billing periods. If not, the system sends an SMS or email notification. Warning After your account becomes overdue, your instances may be stopped. Top up your account promptly to avoid service disruption.	Top up your Alibaba Cloud account. The instance resumes immediately.
After overdue	After your account becomes overdue, all pay-as-you-go instances under the account enter the overdue state. Instances continue to run for 15 days after the overdue event, then they are locked and stopped immediately. Billing stops when instances are stopped. You cannot release instances during the overdue period. If you top up and clear the overdue amount within 15 days of the instance being stopped, ALB service resumes automatically.	Top up your Alibaba Cloud account. The instance resumes immediately.
15 days after stoppage	The ALB instance is released. All configurations and data associated with the instance are permanently deleted and cannot be recovered.	Unrecoverable.

View the overdue amount

Log on to the Expenses and Costs console.
On the Billing Account page, view the overdue amount.

View usage details

Log on to the Expenses and Costs console. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Billing > Bill Details.
Click View Usage Details in the upper-right corner. Set Commodity Name to Application Load Balancer and Billable Item to Application Load Balancer. Configure the Time Period and Time Unit, then click Export CSV.

The exported file shows detailed LCU usage by time range, instance ID, and other dimensions.

Query bills and consumption details

Go to the Expenses and Costs console - Bill Details page.
On the Bill Details page, view consumption and billing information. For more information, see View and analyze bills.