Virtual private clouds (VPC) incurs no charge. However, charges apply to VPC peering connections, traffic mirroring, flow logs, and other Alibaba Cloud resources you create within a VPC.
Overview
Billable features: VPC peering connections, flow logs, traffic mirroring.
Public preview features (Free during preview): IP Address Manager (IPAM), high-availability virtual IP addresses (HaVip).
Free features:
VPCs, vSwitches, secondary CIDR blocks, reserved CIDR blocks
DNS hostnames, DHCP options sets
Route tables, prefix lists
Shared VPCs
ClassicLink, gateway endpoints
IPv4 gateways, network ACLs
Creating Alibaba Cloud resources in a VPC or generating storage and data transfer traffic incurs charges. See the billing documentation for each resource.
VPC peering connections
Intra-region connections: Free regardless of account ownership.
Inter-region connections: Outbound traffic incurs data transfer fees charged by Cloud Data Transfer (CDT).
Pricing depends on source region, destination region, and link type. Choose from two service tiers:
Platinum (99.995% SLA): Use for latency-sensitive applications requiring premium link quality, such as stock trading, voice calls, video conferencing, real-time gaming.
Gold (99.95% SLA): Use for workloads tolerant of variable link quality, such as, data synchronization and file transfers.
Billing cycle: Hourly. Switching link types within a billing cycle applies the higher service tier price for that hour.
Billing
Data transfer pricing is symmetric, meaning Region A to Region B costs the same as Region B to Region A.
Gold tier
Inbound region | ||||||
Outbound region | Chinese mainland | Asia Pacific | Europe | North America | South America | Middle East |
Chinese mainland | USD 0.072/GB | USD 0.80/GB | USD 0.80/GB | USD 0.80/GB | USD 0.80/GB | USD 0.80/GB |
Asia Pacific | USD 0.80/GB | USD 0.08/GB | USD 0.08/GB | USD 0.08/GB | USD 0.38/GB | USD 0.38/GB |
Europe | USD 0.80/GB | USD 0.08/GB | USD 0.02/GB | USD 0.05/GB | USD 0.38/GB | USD 0.38/GB |
North America | USD 0.80/GB | USD 0.08/GB | USD 0.05/GB | USD 0.02/GB | USD 0.38/GB | USD 0.38/GB |
South America | USD 0.80/GB | USD 0.38/GB | USD 0.38/GB | USD 0.38/GB | USD 0.38/GB | USD 0.38/GB |
Middle East | USD 0.80/GB | USD 0.38/GB | USD 0.38/GB | USD 0.38/GB | USD 0.38/GB | USD 0.38/GB |
Platinum tier
Inbound region | ||||||
Outbound region | Chinese mainland | Asia Pacific | Europe | North America | South America | Middle East |
Chinese mainland | USD 0.108/GB | USD 1.20/GB | USD 1.20/GB | USD 1.20/GB | USD 1.20/GB | USD 1.20/GB |
Asia Pacific | USD 1.20/GB | USD 0.12/GB | USD 0.12/GB | USD 0.12/GB | USD 0.57/GB | USD 0.57/GB |
Europe | USD 1.20/GB | USD 0.12/GB | USD 0.03/GB | USD 0.075/GB | USD 0.57/GB | USD 0.57/GB |
North America | USD 1.20/GB | USD 0.12/GB | USD 0.075/GB | USD 0.03/GB | USD 0.57/GB | USD 0.57/GB |
South America | USD 1.20/GB | USD 0.57/GB | USD 0.57/GB | USD 0.57/GB | USD 0.57/GB | USD 0.57/GB |
Middle East | USD 1.20/GB | USD 0.57/GB | USD 0.57/GB | USD 0.57/GB | USD 0.57/GB | USD 0.57/GB |
Flow logs
Cost components
Flow log costs comprise log generation fees, Simple Log Service fees, and NIS Traffic Analyzer processing and storage fees.
Log generation:
The billing cycle is an hour. Bills are generated 3 to 4 hours after each cycle ends (may vary).
Fees apply tiered pricing based on accumulated monthly log volume per region. Each account gets a 5 GB monthly free quota per region.
Monthly usage
Price (USD/GB)
0 TB to 10 TB (inclusive)
0.37
10 TB to 30 TB (inclusive)
0.185
30 TB to 50 TB (inclusive)
0.074
Greater than 50 TB
0.037
Simple Log Service: Charges apply after flow logs are delivered to SLS, including ingestion and storage fees.
SLS offers two billing methods: pay-by-ingested-data and pay-by-feature. Creating a flow log with a new Logstore in the VPC console defaults to pay-by-feature.
NIS Traffic Analyzer: Charges apply after delivering flow logs to NIS Traffic Analyzer, including analysis processing and storage fees.
Examples
Example 1
You enable a flow log in a region on September 1, 2022, 00:00:00. It delivers 3 GB of logs to SLS by October 1, 2022, 00:00:00.
The 5 GB monthly free quota covers log generation. You pay SLS fees only.
Example 2
You enable flow logs in China (Shanghai) on September 1, 2022, 00:00:00. 100 GB of logs are delivered to SLS by October 1, 2022, 00:00:00.
Log generation cost: (100 - 5) × USD 0.37 = USD 35.15. Total: USD 35.15 + SLS fees.
Example 3
You enable flow logs in China (Beijing) on September 1, 2022, 00:00:00. 60 TB of logs are delivered to SLS by October 1, 2022, 00:00:00.
Log generation cost (tiered pricing):
0 to 10 TB (inclusive): (10 × 1024 - 5) × USD 0.37 = USD 3,786.95
10 TB to 30 TB (inclusive): 20 × 1024 × USD 0.185 = USD 3,788.8
30 TB to 50 TB (inclusive): 20 × 1024 × USD 0.074 = USD 1,515.52
Greater than 50 TB: 10 × 1024 × USD 0.037 = USD 378.88
Total log generation cost: 3,786.95 + 3,788.8 + 1,515.52 + 378.88 = USD 9,470.15. Total: USD 9,470.15 + SLS fees.
Overdue payments
Enable low balance alerts to receive SMS or email notifications when your account balance falls below the threshold.
Service continues without suspension for 15 days after payment becomes overdue. Instances keep running.
Failing to pay within 15 days triggers automatic service suspension. Stopped instances prevent operations on flow log instances and halt billing.
Topping up within 15 days after suspension automatically restores service.
Failing to pay within 15 days after suspension releases flow log instances automatically. Instance configurations and data are permanently deleted.
Traffic mirroring
Cost components
Traffic mirroring cost = Instance fee + Traffic processing fee
Instance fee = Number of traffic mirror sources that have traffic mirror sessions enabled × Active duration of the traffic mirror sessions (in hours) × Unit price of instance fee (USD/source/hour)
Traffic processing fee = Total amount of mirrored data (GB) × Unit price of traffic processing fee (USD/GB)
Billable item | Unit price |
Instance fee | 0.014 USD/unit/hour |
Traffic processing fee | 0.007 USD/GB |
Billing rules
Traffic processing fees: waived until March 31, 2027.
Instance fees: charged hourly per active traffic mirror source. Partial hours round up to full hours.
Multiple sessions per source: instance fee charged once. Active duration is cumulative across sessions. For example, 5 hours in session 1 + 4 hours in session 2 = 9 billable hours.
Example
Five Elastic Network Interfaces (ENIs) in a VPC run traffic mirror sessions for 30 days, 24 hours/day. Total mirrored data is 20 GB. Cost calculations are as follows:
Instance fee = 5 × 30 × 24 × 0.014 = 50.4 USD
Traffic processing fee = 20 × 0.007 = 0.14 USD
Total traffic mirroring fee = 50.4 + 0.14 = 50.54 USD
Overdue payments
Traffic mirroring operates normally for 15 days after payment becomes overdue.
Failing to pay within 15 days suspends traffic mirroring. You cannot perform any operations on traffic mirroring instance.
Topping up within 15 days after suspension automatically restores service. Suspended mirror sessions resume.
Failing to top up within 15 days after suspension deletes mirror session instances. Instance configurations and data are permanently deleted.