A Savings plan is a discount plan that can be applied to offset the bills of pay-as-you-go instances, excluding preemptible instances. A combination of savings plans and pay-as-you-go instances is more flexible in use than subscription instances or a combination of reserved instances and pay-as-you-go instances.
What is a savings plan?
A savings plan is a discount plan that allows you to receive pay-as-you-go billing discounts in exchange for a commitment to use a consistent number of resources over a one-year period or three-year period. The number of resources is measured in dollars per hour. After you purchase a savings plan, the fees of hourly bills of your pay-as-you-go instances are deducted based on the amount of the plan.
When you use a savings plan, your pay-as-you-go instances of each instance type have a regular pay-as-you-go unit price and a savings plan unit price. You can go to the Discount Details page in the Billing Management console to view the discount. You are charged for resource usage within your commitment based on the savings plan unit price. You are charged for resource usage beyond your commitment at the regular pay-as-you-go unit price.
For example, Alex uses multiple ecs.g6.xlarge instances in the China (Shanghai) region and can use a three-year general-purpose savings plan to obtain the following discounts.
Note: The prices provided in this example are for reference only. For more information about the actual prices and discounts, see Price Calculator of Elastic Compute Service (ECS) and go to the Discount Details page of Savings Plan.
For example, the regular pay-as-you-go unit price of the ecs.g6.xlarge instance is USD 1 per hour and a three-year savings plan provides savings of 54.5% off the pay-as-you-go price for the ecs.g6 instance family in the China (Shanghai) region. The savings plan unit price of the ecs.g6.xlarge instances is calculated based on the following formula: USD 1 per hour × 0.455 = USD 0.455 per hour.
If Alex makes a commitment of USD 2 per hour, the savings plan can be applied to offset hourly bills of 4.396 pay-as-you-go ecs.g6.xlarge instances. In this case, the fee is calculated based on the following formula: 2/0.455 = 4.396.
The following table compares the regular pay-as-you-go prices and the savings plan prices.
Billing rule | The first hour (when six instances are running) | The second hour (when five instances are running) | The third hour (when four instances are running) |
Total regular pay-as-you-go price without the need to apply the savings plan | 6 × USD 1 = USD 6 | 5 × USD 1 = USD 5 | 4 × USD 1 = USD 4 |
Total price after the savings plan is applied | The instances that exceed the maximum number of instances (4.396 instances) that can be offset by the savings plan are billed on a pay-as-you-go basis. USD 2 + USD 1 × (6 - 2/0.455) = USD 3.604 | The instances that exceed the maximum number of instances (4.396 instances) that can be offset by the savings plan are billed on a pay-as-you-go basis. USD 2 + USD 1 × (5 - 2/0.455) = USD 2.604 | The total price is calculated based on the commitment because the number of running instances is less than the maximum number of instances (4.396 instances) that can be offset by the savings plan. USD 2 |
Select an hourly commitment
For each savings plan, you must select an hourly commitment. Resource usage within your commitment is calculated and offset based on the savings plan unit price. Resource usage beyond your commitment is billed at the regular pay-as-you-go unit price.
You can purchase a desired savings plan on the Savings Plans page or purchase a recommended savings plan on the Recommended page.
Savings plan type
Savings plans are available in two types: general-purpose and ECS compute. The following table provides a comparison of the two types of savings plans. ECS compute savings plans are less flexible but offer higher discounts than general-purpose savings plans.
Item | General-purpose savings plan | ECS compute savings plan |
Use across services | Can be used across services and supports the following services and resources:
| Can be used only for the following ECS resources: instance computing resources (vCPUs and memory), system disks, and public bandwidth. |
Region limits | Does not impose limits on regions. | Can be applied only in a single region. |
Instance limits | Does not impose limits on instance families, instance sizes, or operating systems. | Can be applied only to specific instance families. You can place an order by instance family set. In this case, this savings plan type can be applied to all instance families in the set. You can also place an order by instance family. In this case, this savings plan type can be applied only to the specified instance family. Does not impose limits on instance sizes or operating systems. |
Scenarios
Savings plans and reserved instances can be applied to offset the bills of pay-as-you-go instances. The following table describes scenarios where a combination of savings plans and pay-as-you-go instances serves as an optimal billing solution.
Scenario | Combination of savings plans and pay-as-you-go instances | Combination of reserved instances and pay-as-you-go instances |
You want to change the instance family of your instances for business adjustment purposes, or you want to upgrade your instances to a next-generation instance family. | Does not impose limits on instance sizes or operating systems. General-purpose savings plans support more services and do not impose limits on regions or instance families. | Does not support changes in the instance family. |
You want to deploy your instances in multiple regions. | A reserved instance can be used only in a single region. | |
You want to simplify the process that is used to select resources in the budgeting phase. | Requires an estimate of the approximate usage range but not details about the instance family or the operating system. | Requires details about the region, instance family, and operating system. |
For more information about instance billing, see Instance types.
Payment options
Savings plans support three payment options: All Upfront, Partial Upfront, and No Upfront. You can receive different discounts based on the selected payment option of your savings plan. Your savings plans are automatically applied to offset the bills of your pay-as-you-go instances based on specific rules within the terms of the plans. For more information, see Savings plans.
Lifecycle management
The following rules apply to the lifecycle management of savings plans:
Management process from taking effect to expiration
When a savings plan is purchased, the savings plan immediately takes effect at the hour of purchase. A reserved instance takes effect and expires on the hour.
For example, you purchased a one-year savings plan at 13:45:00 of May 29, 2020. The savings plan takes effect at 13:00:00 of May 29, 2020 and expires at 24:00:00 of May 30, 2021. If you use eligible pay-as-you-go instances, the savings plan is applied by hour to offset the bills of your pay-as-you-go instances starting from 13:00:00 of May 29, 2020 until the expiration time.
Note: Expired savings plans cannot continue to offset the bills of pay-as-you-go instances. However, the pay-as-you-go instances are not released. This helps ensure your business continuity. Make sure that your account balance is sufficient to ensure the service availability of your pay-as-you-go instances.
Overdue payment, suspension, payment, and resumption
If you select the Partial Upfront or No Upfront payment option and you are unable to pay your hourly commitment because you have overdue payments within your account, the overdue payment management process is triggered. When a payment in your account becomes overdue, your savings plans are suspended after a 72-hour period. The discounts of your savings plans are no longer applied starting from the next hour and cannot be resumed until the overdue bills are settled.
Note:
If your savings plans are suspended, you are still charged by hour based on the commitment.
If your savings plans are suspended multiple times or for an extended period of time, you may not be able to use the No Upfront payment option for other Alibaba Cloud services. Make sure that you have sufficient balance in your account.
Limits
The following table describes the limits of savings plans.
Limited object | Item | Limit |
Savings plan | Quantity | You can purchase up to 200 savings plans for each Alibaba Cloud account. |
Eligible instance | Savings plans cannot be applied to instances of retired Generation I instance families that include t1, s1, s2, s3, m1, m2, c1, and c2. | |
Order of application | When multiple discount plans take effect, they are applied in the following order:
| |
ECS instance | Billing method |
|
Instance family | ECS compute savings plans can be applied only to pay-as-you-go instances of a specific instance family in a specific region. |
Use across accounts
If you want to manage the financial relationships of multiple Alibaba Cloud accounts in a centralized manner, you can use the corporate finance feature in the User Center. The corporate finance feature allows you to establish trusteeship between multiple Alibaba Cloud accounts. You can use the main account to pay the bills of linked accounts. After the trusteeship is established between multiple accounts, you can share savings plans within the main account to offset the bills of pay-as-you-go instances within the linked accounts.
Note: In corporate finance, the main account and linked accounts are independent Alibaba Cloud accounts that are used to grant financial management permissions. The relationships between these accounts are different from the relationships between regular Alibaba Cloud accounts and RAM users.
The following limits apply to the usage of savings plans across accounts:
Savings plans within linked accounts cannot be shared.
If you want to use savings plans within a linked account, the original savings plans within the linked account take priority over shared plans.