| Subscription | - You complete the payment when you create an instance.
- Subscription instances can be changed into pay-as-you-go instances. For more information, see Switch from subscription to pay-as-you-go.
- If you want to use an instance for a long period of time, the subscription billing method is more cost-effective than the pay-as-you-go billing method. You are offered lower prices for longer subscription periods.
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| Pay-as-you-go | - The system generates a bill and deducts the fee from your Alibaba Cloud account per hour. The amount is calculated based on the instance type and largest storage capacity of your instance at the time of billing.
- The billing cycle is 1 hour. If you use an instance for less than 1 hour, you are billed for 1 hour.
- If you change the storage capacity of your instance during a billing cycle, the system uses your largest storage capacity for billing.
Example: Assume that the billing cycle is from 01:00:00 to 02:00:00 (UTC+8) and your instance storage capacity is 1 GB at 01:10:00, 8 GB at 01:20:00, and 2 GB at 01:50:00. In this case, you are charged for the 8 GB storage capacity in this billing cycle. - In most cases, the system generates the bill in 1 to 3 hours after a billing cycle ends. The actual point in time when your bill is generated may vary.
Example: Bills from 09:00:00 to 10:00:00 (UTC+8) are generated before 11:00:00.
- Pay-as-you-go instances can be changed into subscription instances. For more information, see Switch from pay-as-you-go to subscription.
- Pay-as-you-go instances are ideal for short-time use. If you no longer need a pay-as-you-go instance, you can release it to reduce costs. For more information, see Release an instance.
Important After a pay-as-you-go instance is released, it is no longer charged.
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