After you purchase a subscription Web Application Firewall (WAF) instance, the Burstable QPS feature is enabled by default. This prevents service disruptions if your traffic exceeds the queries per second (QPS) capacity of your plan. The feature automatically handles and bills for any overage traffic on a pay-as-you-go basis, ensuring your application remains available during sudden traffic spikes, such as during sales promotions.
Effective 00:00:00 on May 28, 2026, WAF will gradually adjust the burstable pay-as-you-go feature. After this adjustment, the Burstable QPS feature is enabled by default for all new and existing WAF 3.0 subscription users, and you cannot manually disable it or adjust its QPS capacity. For more information, see [Notice] Adjustments to WAF billing features.
Billing
If your peak QPS exceeds the total capacity of your subscription plan (your base plan QPS plus any QPS extensions), the Burstable QPS feature handles the overage. This pay-as-you-go feature is enabled by default when you purchase a WAF instance and cannot be disabled.
Billable item
You are charged for the QPS that exceeds your subscription's capacity. The unit prices are as follows:
If you do not have bot management or API security enabled, the following base rates for Burstable QPS apply:
Chinese mainland: USD 0.02 per QPS/day.
Outside the Chinese mainland: USD 0.03 per QPS/day.
Additional fees apply if you enable the following features:
Legacy API Security: USD 0.015 per QPS/day.
Legacy bot management: USD 0.015 per QPS/day.
New Agentic API Security: USD 0.018 per QPS/day.
New Agentic Bot: USD 0.018 per QPS/day.
Billing cycle
Fees are settled daily (UTC+8). A new billing cycle begins after each settlement.
Formula
Total fee = (Daily peak QPS - QPS included in subscription - QPS extension) × Unit price per QPS.
Maximum guaranteed capacity
WAF instances in the Chinese mainland: 100,000 QPS
WAF instances outside the Chinese mainland: 50,000 QPS
Billing example
This example uses the pricing for a WAF instance in the Chinese mainland. Assume you have a WAF 3.0 Ultimate edition subscription (which includes 10,000 QPS) and have purchased a 50,000 QPS extension. If you have bot management enabled and your traffic reaches a daily peak QPS of 64,000, your overage is 4,000 QPS (64,000 - 10,000 - 50,000).
In this scenario, because bot management is enabled, the unit price for Burstable QPS is USD 0.035 per QPS/day. Therefore, your total fee for the day would be USD 140 (4,000 × 0.035).
View Burstable QPS bills
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Log on to the Web Application Firewall 3.0 console. From the top menu bar, select the resource group and region (Chinese Mainland or Outside Chinese Mainland) for the WAF instance.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose .
In the list of bills, you can view daily details for your instance, including Type of Burstable QPS, Unit Price for Burstable QPS, Service Traffic, Capacity Limit, and the total fee.