This topic provides an overview of Application Load Balancer (ALB) billing, including billing methods, billable items, billing cycles, and overdue payment policies.
Billing methods
ALB supports the following billing methods:
Pay-as-you-go: You are billed based on actual usage of each billable item. You use resources first and pay later. This method is best suited for workloads with variable traffic.
Resource plans: You purchase a resource plan in advance. When bills are settled, usage is first deducted from the resource plan. This method is best suited for workloads with predictable, steady traffic.
Resource plans offer discounted rates compared to pay-as-you-go pricing.
Usage that exceeds the resource plan quota is automatically billed at pay-as-you-go rates. Purchase a resource plan that matches your expected usage to avoid unexpected charges.
Billable items
Pay-as-you-go ALB billing consists of the following components:
Billing cycle
ALB instance fees and Load Balancer Capacity Unit (LCU) fees are billed hourly based on actual usage. Bills are typically issued within one hour after the end of each billing cycle. The exact billing time is determined by the system.
For Internet-facing ALB instances, Internet data transfer fees are charged through the associated Elastic IP Addresses (EIPs). The billing cycle, deduction, and bill issuance time for Internet data transfer fees follow the same schedule as pay-as-you-go EIP. For more information, see EIP billing overview.
Pricing
For ALB list prices, see ALB billing rules and ALB resource plans. For actual prices, visit the ALB buy page.
You can use the ALB LCU Calculator to estimate your LCU consumption.
More Information
Overdue payments
Causes
Your account may become overdue if:
You have not purchased a resource plan and your account balance is insufficient.
You have purchased a resource plan, but the plan 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 .
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.
After you open the exported file, you can view detailed LCU usage by time range, instance ID, and other dimensions.
Query bills and consumption details
On the Bill Details page, view consumption and billing information. For more information, see View and analyze bills.