This topic describes how Classic Load Balancer (CLB) is billed.
Adjustments are made to the billable items of CLB. Beginning 00:00:00 (UTC+8), December 1, 2024, the following new billable items are used by pay-as-you-go CLB instances:
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Instance fee is renamed public IP retention fee.
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A billable item instance fee is added.
For more information, see CLB billing adjustments.
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The sale of pay-by-specification CLB instances has been discontinued since 00:00:00 (UTC+8) on June 1, 2025. For details, see End of sale for pay-by-specification CLB instances.
Metering methods
Pay-as-you-go CLB instances support two instance metering methods: pay-by-LCU and pay-by-specification (sale discontinued).
CLB supports the following Internet data transfer metering methods: pay-by-bandwidth and pay-by-data-transfer
Billing method | Instance metering method | Instance network type | Internet data transfer metering method | Use cases |
Pay-by-LCU | Internet-facing | Pay-by-data-transfer |
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Internal | N/A | |||
Pay-by-specification (sale discontinued) | Internet-facing | Pay-by-data-transfer |
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Pay-by-bandwidth | ||||
Internal | N/A |
Billable items
The following figure shows the billable items of a pay-as-you-go CLB instance.
Billable items
Pay-as-you-go CLB instances have the following billable items. The network type and metering methods determine what billable items apply to your instance.
Billable item | Description | Applies to |
Public IP retention fee | The configuration fee for a public IP address. No matter an IP address is in use or not, this fee applies. | Internet-facing instances only |
Instance fee | Fee charged for ownership over unreleased CLB instances. | All instances |
LCU fee | Load Balancer Capacity Unit (LCU) fee charged hourly based on your actual usage. | Pay-by-LCU instances only |
Specification fee | Charged at a fixed rate regardless of your actual usage. | Pay-by-specification instances only |
Internet data transfer fees | Fee on outbound Internet data transfers, charged based on your actual usage. Inbound Internet data transfers are free-of-charge. | Only Internet-facing instances using the pay-by-data-transfer Internet data transfer metering method |
Bandwidth fee | Charged at a fixed rate based on the maximum bandwidth configuration regardless of your actual usage. | Only Internet-facing instances using the pay-by-bandwidth Internet data transfer metering method |
Internal pay-as-you-go CLB instances do not incur public IP retention fees, Internet data transfer fees, or bandwidth fees. If you associate a separately purchased Elastic IP Address (EIP) with your instance, EIP-incurred fees are charged by EIP and not by CLB.
Within the same region, internal communication between a CLB instance and a backend ECS instance does not incur any data transfer fees.
Billing cycles
The following table describes the billing cycles supported by CLB.
Billing cycle | Fee deduction time and bill generation time | Billable item |
Hourly | You are charged on an hourly basis. A bill is generated about 1 hour after the end of a billing cycle. The exact time when bills are generated is determined by the system. | A pay-as-you-go CLB instance is billed based on the following billable items:
For more information, see Pay-as-you-go. |
Daily | You are charged on a daily basis. A bill is typically generated in the early morning of the next day. The exact time when bills are generated is determined by the system. | Bandwidth fees (pay-as-you-go) For more information, see Pay-as-you-go. |
Pricing
For more information about the pricing of each CLB billable item, see Pay-as-you-go. The prices on the buy page shall prevail.
You can use the LCU calculator to estimate the number of LCUs consumed by a CLB instance.
References
Billing method: Pay-as-you-go
Specification changes: Modify the configurations of a pay-as-you-go CLB instance
Learn more
Overdue payments
Payment status | Resource status | Solution |
Overdue | If your Alibaba Cloud account has an overdue payment, all pay-as-you-go instances within your account are affected.
| After you top up the account balance, your service is resumed. |
Fifteen days after a CLB instance is suspended due to an overdue payment, the CLB instance is released. You are notified one day before the instance is released. The configurations and data of the instance are deleted and cannot be recovered. | In this case, you cannot restore the configuration or data. |
View amount due
Log on to the Expenses and Costs console.
On the Billing Account page, view overdue payments.
Expired instances
CLB instances that have overdue payments are moved to the Expired Instances list.
Background information
If a payment becomes overdue, the CLB instance continues to provide services within the following 15 days.
When the payment remains overdue for 15 days, the CLB instance is suspended and moved to the Expired Instances list.
If you top up your account and complete the overdue payment within 15 days after the CLB instance is suspended, the CLB instance is removed from the Expired Instances page and listed on the Instances page.
If you do not complete the overdue payment 15 days after the CLB instance is suspended, the CLB instance is released.
Renew an expired CLB instance
Log on to the CLB console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Expired Instances.
View the details of CLB instances that have overdue payments.
Find the CLB instance that you want to renew and click Renew in the Actions column. After the CLB instance is renewed, it is removed from the Expired Instances page and listed on the Instances page.
View resource usage
Log on to the Expenses and Costs console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose .
On the Bill Details page, click View Usage Details in the upper-right corner. Set Commodity Name to CLB (Pay-As-You-Go) International Site, set the mandatory Billable Item to Classic Load Balancer, specify a Time Period and Time Unit, then click Export CSV.
After you open the downloaded file, you can view the resource usage by instance ID, region, or IP address.
Query billing and spending details
Log on to the Expenses and Costs console and go to the Bill Details page.
On the Bill Details page, set the filter conditions to view the required information. For more information, see Bill details.