This topic helps you identify and resolve common causes of unexpected charges on your Alibaba Cloud account. Use the quick reference table to find the section that matches your situation.
Quick reference
Symptom | Section |
Charged after a free trial or free quota expires | |
Still charged after releasing resources | |
Received a charge notification but cannot find the record | |
Charges suddenly increased or small unexpected amounts appeared | |
Charged for a product you did not purchase | |
Not using a pay-as-you-go product but still charged | |
Pay-as-you-go bills despite a subscription or resource package | Pay-as-you-go bills despite a subscription or resource package |
Need to check prices or verify a bill | |
How account changes affect billing |
Pay-as-you-go billing delay
Pay-as-you-go products such as Model Studio Large Language Models (LLMs), Function Compute (FC), and Apsara File Storage NAS (NAS) have a billing delay of 1 to 3 hours. Charges are not settled in real time. A lag exists between when usage occurs and when the corresponding bill is generated.
This delay has the following implications:
Final billing cycle after resource release — After you delete an API key or release a resource, the final billing cycle statement takes 2 to 3 hours to generate. Confirm the final charges after this period before you decide whether to top up your account balance.
Charges after a free trial or free quota expires
Cause
Most Alibaba Cloud products that offer free trials or free quotas use a pay-as-you-go metering method. When the free quota is exhausted, if the Stop When Quota Is Exhausted feature is not enabled, the system automatically switches to pay-as-you-go billing and deducts charges from your account balance.
Additional considerations:
Free quotas are calculated independently per model or service. For example, the free quota for one model does not apply to another. Some third-party models or models in specific regions may not have a free quota at all.
After the free quota is exhausted, usage continues to be billed at standard pay-as-you-go rates.
How to stop charges
Delete the API key associated with the service to stop further API calls.
In the product console, disable the pay-as-you-go billing switch.
Enable the Stop When Quota Is Exhausted feature in the console so that the service is automatically halted when the free quota runs out.
Even after you take these steps, a final billing statement for the last billing cycle may still be generated. Allow 1 to 3 hours for the system to finalize the last cycle before you confirm the final charges.
Charges after releasing resources
If you have released a resource but continue to see charges, one or more of the following scenarios may apply.
Billing delay for daily-billing products
Products that bill on a daily cycle — such as Alibaba Cloud DNS, Global Traffic Manager (GTM), Security Center, and Web Application Firewall (WAF) — generate a final bill for the entire day on the day the resource is released or deleted. This charge typically appears the following day (T+1). Starting the day after that, no new charges are generated.
How to investigate: For products billed on a daily cycle, verify whether the bill date matches the date the resource was released. If so, this is the expected final settlement for that day and no further charges are generated.
Database Backup (DBS) storage charges
If you enabled cross-region backup for an ApsaraDB RDS instance, or configured a Retain Backups After Instance Release policy for a deleted instance, DBS backup storage charges apply after the free 7-day retention period expires. These charges continue even after the ApsaraDB RDS instance has been released.
How to investigate: In the DBS console, check Backup Plans for active plans on released instances and review any backup retention policies still in effect.
Security Center pay-as-you-go features
Even if your Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance uses a subscription plan or has been stopped, individually enabled pay-as-you-go features in Security Center — such as CSPM scanning, virus protection, or basic services — are billed independently.
How to stop charges: In the Security Center console, go to Settings and disable any pay-as-you-go features you no longer require.
Associated resources not fully cleaned up
When a primary resource such as an ECS instance is released, its associated pay-as-you-go resources are not automatically released and continue to generate charges. Common scenarios include:
ECS snapshots — Manual snapshots and automatic snapshot policies are not deleted when an ECS instance is released. Both continue to incur charges. To stop charges, in the ECS console, go to , delete all snapshots, and remove any associated automatic snapshot policies.
Object Storage Service (OSS) — Deleting individual files from a bucket does not stop billing. You must clear all objects, incomplete multipart upload fragments, and all historical object versions from the bucket, then delete the bucket itself. Manage your buckets in the OSS console.
Elastic IP Address (EIP) — An EIP that is not bound to any resource incurs an IP retention fee. You must actively release the EIP to stop charges. In the VPC console, go to Elastic IP Addresses to release any unassociated EIPs.
Function Compute, SAE, ApsaraDB RDS, and ApsaraDB for Redis — Stopping an application or instance is not the same as releasing it. Stopped resources continue to incur charges. To stop billing, perform a Release Instance or Delete Application operation in the respective product console.
WUYING Workspace premium public bandwidth — Shutting down a WUYING Workspace instance does not release the associated premium public network bandwidth resource, which continues to incur charges. To stop billing, unbind the office network connection first, then delete the bandwidth resource in the WUYING Workspace console.
Charge notification with no matching record in your account
Cause
A single mobile phone number or payment method may be linked to multiple Alibaba Cloud accounts. The charge may have originated from a different account associated with your phone number.
How to investigate
On the Alibaba Cloud login page, use the Retrieve Account by Phone Number feature to look up all Alibaba Cloud accounts linked to your phone number.
Log on to each associated account separately and go to Billing Details to search for the specific charge.
If the account ID shown in the SMS notification does not match your currently logged-in account ID, the charge belongs to a different account associated with your phone number.
Sudden increase in charges
Shutdown mode differences
Pay-as-you-go ECS instances support the economical mode (No Fees for Stopped Instances), which suspends billing for the instance configuration while the instance is stopped. If the instance is switched to Standard (normal) stop mode, or if the instance is re-created, full instance configuration charges resume immediately. This change can make your costs appear to have suddenly increased compared to the previous period.
Resource package or free quota exhausted
When an OSS resource package, snapshot resource package, or a model's free quota is fully consumed, all subsequent usage automatically switches to pay-as-you-go billing. The pay-as-you-go unit price is typically higher than the equivalent resource package rate, which can cause a noticeable spike in charges.
Small bill accumulation and rounding rule changes
You may notice unexpected small fractional amounts appearing in your bill. This can occur for the following reasons:
Settlement cycle changes — Some products, such as snapshot storage, previously billed on an hourly cycle. Because individual hourly charges were extremely small, they were often rounded to zero. After the billing cycle changed to monthly settlement, previously accumulated micro-charges may now appear as small but non-zero amounts in your monthly bill.
Small payable amounts after discounts — For products such as OSS, initial usage costs may be very low. After discounts and rounding rules are applied, the payable amount may display as ¥0.01 (CNY). Because this amount is minimal, it may not immediately trigger a deduction notification, but it is eventually charged to your account.
Charges from products you did not purchase
Unexpected charges with no obvious source are commonly caused by one of the following scenarios:
Resources created automatically by linked products — Products such as CDN, Simple Log Service (SLS), and Function Compute may automatically write data to OSS or create other dependent resources in the background, generating charges without any explicit action on your part.
Pay-as-you-go features enabled by default — For example, the Security Center free trial may remain active and billable after the trial period ends if not explicitly canceled. ApsaraDB RDS default backup storage may exceed the free quota. A pay-as-you-go disk may have been selected during ECS instance creation.
Billing starts upon resource activation — Products such as VPN Gateway, Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN) Transit Router, PAI-DSW, and Knowledge Base begin billing from the moment they are activated, regardless of whether they are actually used. Charges are based on how long the resource exists, not on usage volume.
Actions by RAM users or team members — A RAM user with the necessary permissions may have created resources in a different region under the main account.
How to investigate: In the Billing & Cost console, go to Expense Details and locate the instance ID associated with the unexpected charge. Use that instance ID to find and manage the resource in the corresponding product console.
Pay-as-you-go charges without active usage
Whether a pay-as-you-go product generates charges without active usage depends on its metering method:
API call-based services (such as TINGWU, Zhizuo Workshop, and Model Studio web search plugin) — These services use a pure pay-as-you-go model. Charges are incurred only when an API call is successfully made or a feature is actively used. If you have not made any API calls or enabled any related plugins, no charges are generated — even if the service has been activated.
Resource-holding services (such as OSS, snapshots, Cloud Storage Gateway (CSG), and Vector Retrieval Service (VRS)) — As long as the resource exists — for example, a bucket contains data, a snapshot has not been deleted, or a gateway instance has been created — charges continue to accrue based on storage volume or instance duration. Activating the service without creating an instance or uploading any data does not generate charges.
Billing after the free quota is exhausted — For products such as LLMs, after the free quota expires or is fully consumed, continued usage automatically switches to pay-as-you-go billing and charges are deducted from your account balance.
Pay-as-you-go bills despite a subscription or resource package
Alibaba Cloud products bill independently, and prepaid resources cover only specific billable items.
Products bill independently — For example, an ECS subscription covers only compute resources and block storage. It does not include OSS storage, snapshots, Elastic IP addresses (EIP), or Security Center fees. These associated products default to pay-as-you-go billing and must be purchased separately or covered by their own resource packages or subscriptions.
Pay-as-you-go associated resources — Snapshots, images, excess bandwidth, and pay-as-you-go disks associated with a subscription instance are all independently billed. They are not covered by the instance's prepaid subscription.
Deduction scope and activation delay — Resource packages and savings plans only offset charges for specific, matching billable items. Newly purchased packages may have a short activation delay before they take effect. Usage that falls outside the package scope, or does not match the required specifications, continues to be billed at pay-as-you-go rates.
Billing unit conversion
Pay-as-you-go pricing is sometimes expressed in units that are easy to misread. For example, a price listed as "$0.0012 (USD) per thousand tokens" is not the same as "$0.12 per token." The correct per-token cost is $0.0000012, which requires dividing by 1,000. Always verify the exact billing unit (such as per thousand tokens, per GiB, or per hour) before estimating or validating costs.
Coupon and resource package scope limitations
Student discounts, promotional gift vouchers, and other coupons typically apply only to specific products or service tiers and cannot be used to offset all pay-as-you-go charges. Coupons generally cannot be applied retroactively to outstanding overdue balances that have already been incurred.
Checking prices and verifying bills
Price Calculator — Use the Alibaba Cloud Price Calculator on the official website. Enter your configuration details and usage duration to get a precise cost breakdown and estimated total price for products such as ECS, ApsaraDB RDS, and others.
Product pricing documentation — Visit the official billing documentation or pricing page for each product to find the current list price, time-of-use pricing (for example, OSS peak and off-peak traffic rates), and billing units for specific configurations (such as GPU instance pricing, or per-second and per-token rates for AI model calls).
Bill reconciliation — In the Billing & Cost console, go to Expense Details to view the actual hourly or daily charges for pay-as-you-go resources. You can verify whether the charges match your expected formula (for example, unit price × duration × quantity) by reviewing the detailed records.
Account authentication changes and platform differences
Account authentication changes — Upgrading from personal to enterprise real-name authentication, or updating enterprise registration information, does not change the billing standards, pricing structure, or service entitlements for any cloud products. Unit prices are not adjusted, and no additional fees are incurred as a result of the authentication type change.
NoteAfter a real-name authentication change is completed, there is a 30-day quiet period during which the authentication cannot be changed again.