Pay-as-you-go is the default billing method of STAROps. This topic describes the pay-as-you-go billing rules, billing items, pricing, free quota, deduction priority when resource plans coexist, and how to query your fees.
Billing method overview
Pay-as-you-go is the default billing method of STAROps. After you activate the service, your credit consumption beyond the free quota is charged at the unit price.
Pay-as-you-go has the following features:
No upfront payment is required. You pay only for what you consume.
Bills are issued daily. Each bill settles the credit consumption of the previous day.
The billing method stays effective long term and never expires.
Billing items and credit consumption reference
STAROps uses AI credits (AI_Credits) as the unified unit of measurement. Different types of intelligent O&M operations consume different amounts of credits, depending on task complexity and model resource usage. The following values are reference estimates of the credit consumption of each feature. For actual consumption, check the Credit Management page in the STAROps console:
Feature | Estimated consumption (credits per invocation) |
AI chat (single Q&A conversation) | About 30 |
Root cause analysis (RCA) | About 200 |
Container inspection | About 200 |
Free quota
STAROps provides a monthly free quota and a one-time new user welcome package. No additional application is required:
Type | Eligible users | Quota | Reset rule |
Monthly free quota | All customers who have activated STAROps | 2,500 credits per month | Resets automatically each month. Unused credits do not roll over to the next month. |
New user welcome package | Alibaba Cloud accounts that have not claimed the STAROps new user welcome package | 10,000 credits (one-time) | Valid for 31 days. Unused credits are cleared when the package expires. |
Usage within the monthly free quota is free of charge. Consumption beyond the quota is billed at the pay-as-you-go unit price.
Billing cycle
Pay-as-you-go bills are issued daily. The billing cycle works as follows:
Every day, STAROps counts the total credits consumed on the previous day (00:00:00 to 23:59:59).
The remaining consumption, after the free quota and resource plan deductions, is charged at the unit price.
A bill is generated the next day, and the amount is automatically deducted from your Alibaba Cloud account balance.
Pricing
The pay-as-you-go unit price is USD 0.0016 per credit.
Fee formula: Fee = Actual credits consumed after free quota and resource plan deductions × Unit price
Billing example: assume that you have used up the monthly free quota and have no resource plan, and that you consume 500 credits on a given day. The fee for that day is 500 × 0.0016 = USD 0.8.
Use with resource plans
Pay-as-you-go and resource plans can take effect at the same time. STAROps deducts credit consumption in the following priority order:
New user welcome package (if any): consumed first. After it is used up, the next level applies.
Monthly free quota: consumed before paid credits.
Resource plans: when multiple resource plans are active, the plan closest to expiration is deducted first.
Pay-as-you-go: after all the credits above are used up, consumption is billed in real time at USD 0.0016 per credit.
If your usage is relatively stable, purchase resource plans to get a better unit price. After the credits in your resource plans are used up, STAROps automatically switches to pay-as-you-go without service interruption.
Fee inquiry
You can check the fees generated by pay-as-you-go in the following ways:
Credit consumption details: Log on to the STAROps console and view the daily credit consumption on the Credit Management page.
Bill query: Log on to the Alibaba Cloud Billing Management console to view daily bill details and deduction records.
References
For the complete STAROps billing system, including credit descriptions and a comparison of billing methods, see Billing overview.