Billable items and billing rules of pay-as-you-go instances - ApsaraMQ for Kafka

If you use the pay-as-you-go billing method, you are charged based on the number of resources that you use. In most cases, this billing method is suitable for testing or short-term scenarios in which traffic peaks are uncertain. This billing method allows you to use resources before you pay for them. Payments are settled on an hourly basis.

Billable items

Billable item	Description
Public traffic	Public traffic is divided into read traffic and write traffic. The maximum read traffic and the maximum write traffic that are supported by ApsaraMQ for Kafka are the same. When you purchase an ApsaraMQ for Kafka instance, compare the peak values of the read and write traffic of your business to determine the higher value. Then, select a traffic specification based on the higher value. You are charged for this billable item only if your instance is of the Internet- and virtual private cloud (VPC)-connected type.
Traffic specification	The traffic specification of a cluster in ApsaraMQ for Kafka indicates the computing and processing capabilities of the cluster. The capabilities are measured by the amount of traffic that is consumed by elastic network interfaces (ENIs). The ENI traffic is calculated based on the following formula: ENI traffic = Business traffic + Replication traffic in the cluster. Business traffic is the actual messaging traffic that is generated in business scenarios. Replication traffic in the cluster refers to the amount of traffic that is generated when data in your ApsaraMQ for Kafka cluster is backed up. By default, the cluster has three replicas after a backup is performed. Business traffic is divided into read traffic and write traffic. The ratio of the maximum read traffic to the maximum write traffic is 1:1 for Professional Edition (High Write) instances and Standard Edition (High Write) instances, and 5:1 for Professional Edition (High Read) instances. When you purchase an instance, compare the peak values of read traffic and write traffic to determine the higher value. Then, select a traffic specification based on the higher value. To ensure business stability, we recommend that you purchase a quota that is approximately 130% of your peak read or write traffic. The excess traffic is used for buffering.
Disk capacity	The minimum disk capacity varies based on the traffic specification. This helps ensure high performance and cost-effective storage. ApsaraMQ for Kafka supports ultra disks and SSDs. We recommend that you use SSDs. The prices of disks vary based on the disk type. Exercise caution when you select a disk type. After an order is placed, you cannot change the disk type. By default, data is stored in three replicas. For a Standard Edition instance, if you purchase a disk that has a storage space of 300 GB, the actual storage space that you can use to store your business data is 100 GB. The remaining 200 GB is used to store backups. For a Profession Edition instance, if data is stored in three replicas, the disk cost is approximately 60% lower than the disk cost of a self-managed Apache Kafka cluster. If you purchase a disk that has a storage space of 300 GB, the actual storage space that you can use to store your business data is 300 GB. An additional 600 GB of storage space is provided free of charge for you to store backups. Important Free storage space is available only for topics that use cloud storage as the storage engine. For information about cloud storage, see Comparison between storage engines.
Partitions	The number of free partitions on instances varies based on the traffic specification. The number of available topics on an ApsaraMQ for Kafka instance equals the total number of partitions on the instance. For example, if you purchase an instance that contains 50 partitions and select the alikafka.hw.2xlarge traffic specification that provides 1,000 free partitions for the instance, the total number of partitions on the instance is 1,050. The total number of partitions is calculated by using the following formula: Total number of partitions = Number of purchased partitions + Number of free partitions. The number of available topics equals the total number of partitions. Therefore, the number of available topics is also 1,050. The number of available groups is 2,100. The number of available groups is calculated based on the following formula: Number of available groups = Total number of partitions × 2. Note ApsaraMQ for Kafka no longer allows you to purchase instances based on the topic specification. If you purchased your existing instance based on the topic specification, the topic specification is converted into the partition specification. The number of partitions after conversion is based on the number of topics that you purchased.

Note

You are charged for the billable items that you use.
You can change the value of the Maximum Message Retention parameter to save disk space. The system deletes messages when the disk usage reaches the predetermined threshold or the message retention period reaches the specified value of the Maximum Message Retention parameter. The Maximum Message Retention parameter specifies the maximum period of time for which messages can be retained when disk space is sufficient. For more information, see Modify message configurations. When disk usage reaches 85%, disk capacity is considered insufficient. In this case, the system deletes the earliest stored messages to ensure service availability. By default, messages are retained for up to 72 hours. You can also select a period that ranges from 24 hours to 480 hours. For more information, see When are historical messages deleted from ApsaraMQ for Kafka?
The number of API calls is not a billable item.

Billing formulas

Billable items and their unit prices vary based on the instance type. For more information, see Billable items.

Internet- and VPC-connected instances: Instances of this type can be accessed over the Internet and in VPCs.
Total fees = (Unit price of Internet traffic + Price of the traffic specification + Unit price of disk capacity × Purchased disk capacity/100 + Price of a partition × Number of purchased partitions) × Number of hours
Note
If you purchased an Internet- and VPC-connected instance based on the topic specification, the total fees are calculated based on the following formula: Total fees = (Unit price of Internet traffic + Price of the traffic specification + Unit price of disk capacity × Purchased disk capacity/100 + Price of a topic × Number of additional topics) × Number of hours.
VPC-connected instances: Instances of this type can be accessed only in VPCs.
Total fees = (Price of the traffic specification + Unit price of disk capacity × Purchased disk capacity/100 + Price of a partition × Number of purchased partitions) × Number of hours
Note
If you purchased a VPC-connected instance based on the topic specification, the total fees are calculated based on the following formula: Total fees = (Price of the traffic specification + Unit price of disk capacity × Purchased disk capacity/100 + Price of a topic × Number of additional topics) × Number of hours.

Settlement description

If you use the pay-as-you-go billing method, you are charged for the billable items, such as the traffic specification and disk capacity, that you specify when you create an instance.

You are charged on an hourly basis. A usage duration shorter than an hour is rounded up to an hour.
Fees are calculated each hour and bills are generated at an interval of 24 hours. Fees that are incurred on the previous day are deducted from your Alibaba Cloud account balance based on your bill generated on the current day.

After you purchase a pay-as-you-go ApsaraMQ for Kafka instance, the system allocates instance resources to you. Fees for a pay-as-you-go ApsaraMQ for Kafka instance are calculated based on the following formula: Total fees = Price of the instance × Service time. You are charged for a pay-as-you-go ApsaraMQ for Kafka instance even if you do not use the instance. If you have questions about your bill, you can view the billing details. For more information, see View billing details.

Billing description

Note

The prices and regions that are described in the following table are only for reference. The actual prices on the buy page shall prevail.

Billing of public traffic

The billing of elastic IP addresses (EIPs) is related to the bandwidth of BGP (Multi-ISP) lines. The unit prices of EIPs vary based on the region. The calculation result is rounded to three decimal places.

Region	Unit price of bandwidth (USD per hour)
Region	1 Mbit/s	2 Mbit/s	3 Mbit/s	4 Mbit/s	5 Mbit/s	6 Mbit/s and higher (n represents the bandwidth value)
All regions	0.01	0.02	0.03	0.04	0.05	0.05 + (n - 5) × 0.03

Billing of traffic specifications

The billing rules of traffic specifications vary based on the instance edition. Standard Edition (High Write), Professional Edition (High Write), and Professional Edition (High Read) instances support different traffic specifications. The maximum traffic processed by a cluster and the number of free topics vary based on the traffic specification. A higher traffic specification indicates a larger number of free topics. Therefore, higher fees are incurred. The unit prices of traffic specifications vary based on the region group to which your region belongs. For information about region groups, see Region groups.

For information about the specifications of each instance edition, see Instance editions.

Note

For information about traffic specifications supported by instances that are purchased based on the topic specification, see What are the number of free topics and partitions in the traffic specification of an instance that is purchased based on topic specifications?

Standard Edition (High Write)

Traffic specification	Maximum read traffic of ENIs (MB/s)	Maximum write traffic of ENIs (MB/s)	Number of free partitions	Unit price in region group 1 (USD per hour)	Unit price in region group 2 (USD per hour)	Unit price in region group 3 (USD per hour)
alikafka.hw.2xlarge	3 × 20	3 × 20	1,000	0.335	0.470	0.420
alikafka.hw.3xlarge	3 × 30	3 × 30	1,000	0.475	0.650	0.590
alikafka.hw.6xlarge	3 × 60	3 × 60	1,000	0.655	0.880	0.790
alikafka.hw.9xlarge	3 × 90	3 × 90	1,000	0.800	1.050	0.930
alikafka.hw.12xlarge	3 × 120	3 × 120	1,000	0.960	1.250	1.100

Professional Edition (High Write)

Traffic specification	Maximum read traffic of ENIs (MB/s)	Maximum write traffic of ENIs (MB/s)	Number of free partitions	Unit price in region group 1 (USD per hour)	Unit price in region group 2 (USD per hour)	Unit price in region group 3 (USD per hour)
alikafka.hw.2xlarge	3 × 20	3 × 20	1,000	0.80	1.17	1.06
alikafka.hw.3xlarge	3 × 30	3 × 30	1,000	0.99	1.45	1.31
alikafka.hw.6xlarge	3 × 60	3 × 60	1,000	1.34	1.980	1.77
alikafka.hw.9xlarge	3 × 90	3 × 90	1,000	1.59	2.37	2.11
alikafka.hw.12xlarge	3 × 120	3 × 120	1,000	1.88	2.82	2.50
alikafka.hw.16xlarge	3 × 160	3 × 160	2,000	2.09	3.16	2.78
alikafka.hw.20xlarge	3 × 200	3 × 200	2,000	3.25	4.87	4.32
alikafka.hw.25xlarge	3 × 250	3 × 250	2,000	3.67	5.51	4.88
alikafka.hw.30xlarge	3 × 300	3 × 300	2,000	4.00	6.03	5.31
alikafka.hw.60xlarge	3 × 600	3 × 600	2,000	4.25	6.62	5.64
alikafka.hw.80xlarge	3 × 800	3 × 800	2,000	4.41	7.00	5.85
alikafka.hw.100xlarge	3 × 1,000	3 × 1,000	3,000	4.56	7.39	6.04
alikafka.hw.120xlarge	3 × 1,200	3 × 1,200	3,000	4.69	7.71	6.21
alikafka.hw.150xlarge	3 × 1,500	3 × 1,500	3,000	4.94	8.30	6.54
alikafka.hw.180xlarge	3 × 1,800	3 × 1,800	3,000	5.16	8.84	6.83
alikafka.hw.200xlarge	3 × 2,000	3 × 2,000	3,000	5.34	9.29	7.05

Professional Edition (High Read)

Traffic specification	Maximum read traffic of ENIs (MB/s)	Maximum write traffic of ENIs (MB/s)	Number of free partitions	Unit price in region group 1 (USD per hour)	Unit price in region group 2 (USD per hour)	Unit price in region group 3 (USD per hour)
alikafka.hr.2xlarge	50 + 2 × 10	10 + 2 × 10	1,000	0.80	1.17	1.06
alikafka.hr.3xlarge	75 + 2 × 15	15 + 2 × 15	1,000	0.99	1.45	1.31
alikafka.hr.6xlarge	150 + 2 × 30	30 + 2 × 30	1,000	1.34	1.98	1.77
alikafka.hr.9xlarge	180 + 2 × 45	45 + 2 × 45	1,000	1.59	2.37	2.11
alikafka.hr.12xlarge	240 + 2 × 60	60 + 2 × 60	1,000	1.88	2.82	2.50
alikafka.hr.16xlarge	240 + 2 × 80	80 + 2 × 80	2,000	2.09	3.160	2.780
alikafka.hr.20xlarge	300 + 2 × 100	100 + 2 × 100	2,000	3.25	4.87	4.32
alikafka.hr.25xlarge	375 + 2 × 125	125 + 2 × 125	2,000	3.67	5.51	4.88
alikafka.hr.30xlarge	450 + 2 × 150	150 + 2 × 150	2,000	4.00	6.03	5.31
alikafka.hr.60xlarge	900 + 2 × 300	300 + 2 × 300	2,000	4.25	6.62	5.64
alikafka.hr.80xlarge	1,200 + 2 × 400	400 + 2 × 400	2,000	4.41	7.00	5.85
alikafka.hr.100xlarge	1,500 + 2 × 500	500 + 2 × 500	3,000	4.56	7.39	6.04
alikafka.hr.120xlarge	1,800 + 2 × 600	600 + 2 × 600	3,000	4.69	7.71	6.21
alikafka.hr.150xlarge	2,250 + 2 × 750	750 + 2 × 750	3,000	4.94	8.30	6.54
alikafka.hr.180xlarge	2,700 + 2 × 900	900 + 2 × 900	3,000	5.16	8.84	6.83
alikafka.hr.200xlarge	3,000 + 2 × 1,000	1,000 + 2 × 1,000	3,000	5.34	9.29	7.05

Billing of disk capacity

The billing rules of disk capacity vary based on the disk type. The unit prices of disk capacity vary based on the region group to which your region belongs. If the disk capacity provided free of charge in the traffic specification does not meet your business requirements, you can purchase additional disk capacity by increasing the value of the Disk Capacity parameter on the buy page. For information about region groups, see Region groups.

Disk type	Disk size (GB)	Unit price in region group 1 (USD per hour)	Unit price in region group 2 (USD per hour)	Unit price in region group 3 (USD per hour)
Ultra disk	100	0.01	0.02	0.02
SSD	100	0.03	0.04	0.04

Note

The disk cost of a Professional Edition instance that stores data in three replicas is approximately 60% lower than the disk cost of a self-managed open source cluster.

Billing of partitions

If the number of free partitions that are provided in the traffic specification does not meet your business requirements, you can purchase additional partitions by increasing the value of the Partitions parameter on the buy page. The unit price of each additional partition varies based on the region group. For information about region groups, see Region groups.

Billable item	Unit price in region group 1 (USD per topic-hour)	Unit price in region group 2 (USD per topic-hour)	Unit price in region group 3 (USD per partition-hour)
Partitions	0.000444	0.000639	0.000583

Billing of additional topics

Note

This billable item is applicable only for instances that are purchased by topic.

If the number of free topics provided in the traffic specification does not meet your business requirements, you can purchase additional topics by increasing the value of the Topics parameter on the buy page. Each time you purchase an additional topic, the quota for partitions is increased by 16. If the number of topics on your instance reaches the upper limit that is allowed by the current traffic specification, we recommend that you select a higher traffic specification because a higher traffic specification corresponds to more topics. This helps reduce your costs. The price of each additional topic varies based on the region group. For information about region groups, see Region groups.

Billable item	Unit price in region group 1 (USD per topic-hour)	Unit price in region group 2 (USD per topic-hour)	Unit price in region group 3 (USD per topic-hour)
Topic	0.02	0.02	0.02

Note

The default number of topics indicates the minimum number of topics that are supported by an instance. The system allocates resources to the instance based on the minimum number of topics even if you specify a smaller number of topics. In this case, your costs are not reduced.

Region groups

Region group	Region
Region group 1	China (Hangzhou)
	China (Shanghai)
	China (Qingdao)
	China (Beijing)
	China (Zhangjiakou)
	China (Hohhot)
	China (Ulanqab)
	China (Shenzhen)
	China (Heyuan)
	China (Guangzhou)
	China (Chengdu)
Region group 2	China (Hong Kong)
	Singapore
	Japan (Tokyo)
	South Korea (Seoul)
	US (Virginia)
	US (Silicon Valley)
	Germany (Frankfurt)
	UK (London)
Region group 3	Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur)
	Indonesia (Jakarta)
	Philippines (Manila)
	Thailand (Bangkok)

References

If you have questions about your bill, you can view the billing details. For more information, see View billing details.
For information about how to change the billing method of an instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription, see Change the billing method from pay-as-you-go to subscription.
For information about frequently asked questions (FAQ) related to billing, see Billing FAQ.