The Knowledge and Memory Storage service uses a pay-as-you-go (postpaid) billing model. You do not need to purchase resources in advance, and you are billed on an hourly basis based on actual usage. This topic describes the billing methods, billing items, fee estimation examples, and overdue payment details.
Billing methods
Pay-as-you-go
The Knowledge and Memory Storage service uses a pay-as-you-go (postpaid) billing model. You are billed based on the amount of resources actually used, with no need to purchase in advance. The consumption generated by large model and compute resource calls — such as document processing, embedding, retrieval and re-ranking, and memory extraction — is measured in a unified unit called Credit .
Credit fees are charged starting from 00:00 (UTC+8) on June 25, 2026. Knowledge storage fees and memory storage fees are charged starting from 00:00 (UTC+8) on July 30, 2026.
Credit description
Credit is the unified measurement unit for model and compute consumption in the Knowledge and Memory Storage service.
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Unit price: CNY 1 / 100 Credit
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Billed on an hourly basis, settled together with storage fees.
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The number of Credit consumed by different operations depends on the model call volume and computational complexity.
For example, if embedding and retrieval re-ranking consume a total of 500 Credit in a given hour, the model and compute fee for that hour is CNY 5.
Memory storage billing items
The billing items for the memory storage service are shown in the following table.
The billing method for long-term or short-term memory storage depends on the storage instance used in the client initialization step when creating a memory store:
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If no existing Tablestore instance is specified (default), the system automatically creates a service-managed instance. Billing is based on the size of the chunked and embedded documents and the storage duration (CNY 1.08 / GB / month).
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If an existing Tablestore instance is specified, billing is based on the Tablestore data storage volume, and you are no longer billed based on the knowledge storage size.
The following billing items apply to users who use the service-managed instance (default):
|
Billing item |
Billing code |
Unit price |
Description |
|
Long-term memory storage |
LongTermMemoryStorage |
CNY 0.002 / 10,000 entries / hour |
Billed based on the number of long-term memory entries and the storage duration. |
|
Short-term memory storage |
ShortTermMemoryStorage |
CNY 0.00004 / 10,000 entries / hour |
Billed based on the number of short-term message entries and the storage duration. |
|
Memory data embedding |
MemoryModelEmbedding |
CNY 1 / 100 Credit |
Fees generated by embedding during memory write and retrieval. |
|
Memory data intelligent re-ranking |
MemoryIntelligentReRanking |
CNY 1 / 100 Credit |
Fees generated by re-ranking memory retrieval results. |
|
Memory data processing and parsing |
MemoryModelIngest |
CNY 1 / 100 Credit |
Fees generated by processing and parsing such as memory extraction and Wiki construction. |
Knowledge storage billing items
The billing items for the knowledge storage service are shown in the following table.
The billing method for the knowledge storage size billing item depends on the storage instance used in the client initialization step when creating a knowledge base:
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If no existing Tablestore instance is specified (default), the system automatically creates a service-managed instance. Billing is based on the size of the chunked and embedded documents and the storage duration (CNY 1.08 / GB / month).
-
If an existing Tablestore instance is specified, billing is based on the Tablestore data storage volume, and you are no longer billed based on the knowledge storage size.
The following billing items apply to users who use the service-managed instance (default):
|
Billing item |
Billing code |
Unit price |
Description |
|
Knowledge storage size |
KnowledgeStorage |
CNY 1.08 / GB / month |
Billed based on the size of the chunked and embedded documents and the storage duration, charged on an hourly basis. |
|
Knowledge data processing |
KnowledgeContentProcessor |
Currently free |
Document processing fees. |
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Knowledge data embedding |
KnowledgeModelEmbedding |
CNY 1 / 100 Credit |
Fees generated by embedding during document ingestion and query embedding during retrieval. |
|
Knowledge data intelligent re-ranking |
KnowledgeIntelligentReRanking |
CNY 1 / 100 Credit |
Fees generated by intelligent re-ranking of retrieval results. |
|
Knowledge Q&A model generation |
KnowledgeModelGenerate |
CNY 1 / 100 Credit |
Fees generated when generating summaries or answers from retrieval results. |
Knowledge data processing (KnowledgeContentProcessor) is currently free. Original documents and parsed shard files are stored in OSS, and the related fees are billed separately per Storage fees. Original documents and parsed shard files are stored in OSS, and the related fees are billed separately per Storage fees.
Overdue payment
When your Alibaba Cloud account has insufficient balance or is in arrears:
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The knowledge storage and memory storage services may enter a restricted state. New write requests will fail, but existing data is retained.
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If the account remains in arrears beyond a certain period, the instance may be suspended. The data retention policy follows the unified Alibaba Cloud rules.
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After you top up and settle the overdue fees, the service will automatically resume.
We recommend that you configure balance alerts to prevent service disruptions caused by overdue payments.