Learn what affects savings plan discounts and how to purchase, upgrade, or renew a plan.
Discount factors
Savings plan discounts increase with longer terms and higher upfront payments. Consider the following factors:
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Commitment term: Available as 1-year, 3-year, or 5-year. Longer terms yield greater discounts.
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Payment option: Options are All Upfront, Partial Upfront, and No Upfront. Higher upfront payments yield greater discounts.
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Region and specifications: The region and specifications of the covered cloud services also affect the discount.
The following diagram shows how discounts vary for an ECS savings plan.
Discount application
When multiple discount types apply, they are used in this order:
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Reserved instances and Resource Plans (such as a storage capacity unit)
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Savings plans
Savings plans cover pay-as-you-go bills with these rules:
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If your pay-as-you-go usage qualifies for a discount greater than your savings plan discount, the higher discount applies. The resulting cost is deducted from your committed spend.
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Multiple savings plans are applied in purchase order, not by discount rate. For example, if you buy an All Upfront plan followed by a Partial Upfront plan, the All Upfront plan offsets your bill first at its discount rate.
Purchase a savings plan
New purchase
Use purchase recommendations to find a savings plan based on your usage history.
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Log on to the Purchase Recommendations page for savings plans.
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In the Select Calculation Conditions section, specify the savings plan name, type, commitment term, payment option, eligible products, and historical usage period. Run the calculation to view the recommendation.
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Purchase a plan based on the Calculation Result.
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If the recommendation does not meet your needs or your usage history is limited, click Custom Purchase to purchase a plan manually.
Upgrade
Upgrade rules
You can upgrade eligible savings plans at any time before they expire.
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Upgrades take effect at the next full hour. For example, if you pay for an upgrade at 15:30, the committed spend increases at 16:00. The price difference is calculated from 16:00. The original expiration date remains unchanged.
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Upgrade fee = (New hourly committed spend × Remaining hours - Old hourly committed spend × Remaining hours) × Upfront payment ratio.
The following savings plans support upgrades:
|
Product line |
Product name |
Notes |
|
Elastic Compute |
savings plan |
Only savings plans for General Purpose ECS and Compute-optimized ECS support upgrades. |
Upgrade procedure
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Log on to the Expenses and Costs console.
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In the left-side navigation pane, choose Account > Savings Plan to open the Overview page.
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On the Overview tab, select an Enterprise/Organization/Account, enter the Savings Plan ID, select a Start At time, and then click Search. You can also use instance tags to find the plan that you want to upgrade.
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In the Actions column, click Upgrade. Follow the prompts to complete the order and payment.
Renewal
Renewal rules
You can renew eligible savings plans or enable auto-renewal at any time before they expire.
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Renewals must use the same commitment term as the original purchase. For example, a 1-year plan can only be renewed for another 1-year term.
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Expired savings plans cannot be renewed.
The following savings plans support renewal:
|
Product line |
Product name |
Notes |
|
Elastic Compute |
savings plan |
Only savings plans for General Purpose ECS and Compute-optimized ECS support renewal. |
Renewal procedure
Method 1: Renew from the savings plan console.
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Log on to the Expenses and Costs console.
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In the left-side navigation pane, choose Account > Savings Plan to open the Overview page.
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On the Overview tab, select an Enterprise/Organization/Account, enter the Savings Plan ID, select a Start At time, and then click Search. You can also use instance tags to find the plan that you want to renew.
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In the Actions column, click Renew. Follow the prompts to complete the order and payment.
Method 2: Renew from the renewal management page.
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Log on to the Expenses and Costs console.
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In the left-side navigation pane, choose Billing > Orders > Resource Renewal.
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On the Manual Renewal tab, filter by Instance ID and Status, and then click Search to find the savings plan instance that you want to renew.
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In the Actions column, click Renew (or Batch Renewal). Follow the prompts to complete the order and payment.
Method 3: Set up auto-renewal from the renewal management page.
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Log on to the Expenses and Costs console.
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In the left-side navigation pane, choose Billing > Orders > Resource Renewal.
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On the Manual Renewal tab, filter by Instance ID and Status, and then click Search to find the savings plan instance.
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In the Actions column, click Enable Auto-renewal. In the dialog box that appears, click Enable Auto-renewal.
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After you enable auto-renewal, the first payment is attempted at 08:00, nine days before expiration. If the balance is insufficient, the system retries daily. If the balance remains insufficient one day before expiration, auto-renewal fails.
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To revert to manual renewal, go to the Auto-renewal tab.
Unsubscription rules
Since April 3, 2026, Alibaba Cloud supports self-service unsubscription for savings plans. For more information, see Savings Plan Self-Service Unsubscription Announcement.
|
Condition |
Description |
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Supported unsubscription types |
|
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Payment type restrictions |
Only All Upfront savings plans support self-service unsubscription. Partial Upfront and No Upfront plans do not currently support self-service unsubscription. |
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Unsupported scenarios |
Savings plans that have already generated deductions do not currently support self-service unsubscription. |
Take ECS as an example. A savings plan can offset the cost of ECS instances, but the lifecycle of the savings plan is independent of the lifecycle of the ECS instances. Your ECS instances will not become unavailable because a savings plan expires or is unsubscribed. The only exception is account overdue status, in which case the pay-as-you-go fees for the instances are handled according to the overdue payment policy.