How does ARMS charge fees based on the observable data? - Application Real-Time Monitoring Service

Application Real-Time Monitoring Service (ARMS) has introduced new billing rules. You are charged based on the observable data or enabled features. This topic describes the billing modes, billable items, and billing cycles of different sub-services.

Important

New users of Application Real-Time Monitoring Service (ARMS) are charged based on the observable data. For users who have activated ARMS, billing can be upgraded in the ARMS console as prompted. For more information, join the DingTalk group (ID: 37120013838) to obtain technical support.

Billing modes and billable items

If you use the pay-as-you-go billing method, you are charged based on the observable data or enabled features.

Pay-by-observable-data

Note

Savings plans are not supported. To use a savings plan, submit a ticket.

Sub-service	Billable item	Monthly free quota	Free storage duration (days)	Unit price (Alibaba Cloud)	Rule
Application Monitoring	Metric	50 GB	90	Chinese mainland: USD 0.062/GB Regions outside the Chinese mainland: USD 0.087/GB	Billing (new)
	Trace		30
	Profiling		7
Managed Service for OpenTelemetry	Metric ^①	50 GB	90	Chinese mainland: USD 0.062/GB Regions outside the Chinese mainland: USD 0.087/GB	Billing (new)
	Trace		30
	Profiling		7
Managed Service for Prometheus	Standard Edition metric ^②	50 GB	90	Chinese mainland: USD 0.062/GB Regions outside the Chinese mainland: USD 0.087/GB	Billing overview
	Ultimate Edition metric ^②		180	Chinese mainland: USD 0.093/GB Regions outside the Chinese mainland: USD 0.13/GB

Note

Observable data is collected by the self-developed ARMS agent or open source agents or SDKs, cleansed, aggregated, transformed, analyzed, and stored in ARMS. The amount of observable data is not equal to the traffic.
You are charged based on the amount of observable data. After data is written to ARMS, you are entitled to free storage. The storage duration depends on the data type, and cannot be modified.
If you use an Alibaba Cloud account to purchase an ARMS sub-service, the sub-service provides a free quota for the account. The free quota is shared among the applications or instances that belong to the account. Monthly free quotas cannot be used across regions. Assume that you use the ARMS service for the first time in the China (Hangzhou) region. You can use monthly free quotas only in the China (Hangzhou) region.
^①Managed Service for OpenTelemetry will charge fees for default performance metrics from July 2024. Fees are charged for custom metrics based on the data volume. Managed Service for OpenTelemetry provides 50 GB of traffic per month free of charge.
^②Managed Service for Prometheus provides basic metrics and custom metrics.
- You can store the basic metrics of Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) clusters for seven days free of charge. The default storage duration of custom metrics cannot be modified. For more information about basic metrics, see Metrics.
- Custom metrics refer to non-basic metrics. You are charged based on the observable data reported for custom metrics.
Profiling data is generated when you use the continuous profiling and application diagnostics features of Application Monitoring. Profiling data includes memory snapshots, flame graphs of performance analysis, and thread status and call stack information of thread analysis.
For Application Monitoring and Managed Service for OpenTelemetry, the minimum billing unit of each billable item for an application is 0.1 GB per day. Assume that an application is monitored in Application Monitoring on a day. 20 MB of metric data, 10 MB of trace data, and 0 MB of profiling data are collected. You are charged for 0.1 GB of metric data, 0.1 GB of trace data, and 0 GB of profiling data.
For Managed Service for Prometheus, the minimum billing unit of an instance is 0.1 GB per day. Assume that 20 MB of metric data is collected by a Prometheus instance on a day. You are charged for 0.1 GB of metric data.

Pay-by-feature

Sub-service	Billable item	Monthly free quota	Unit price (Chinese mainland)	Rule
Application Security	Agent	None	USD 0.015/Agent/Hour	Billing
Managed Service for Grafana	Number of managed workspaces	A free shared workspace is provided by default. The first time that you activate the Pro Edition, a one-month free trial is provided.	As low as USD 37.74/dedicated workspace/per month	Billing

Note

If you are charged based on the enabled features, free quotas are automatically provided for your Alibaba Cloud account.

Billing cycle

The billing cycle of ARMS is one day. ARMS generates the bills of the previous day at 00:00 every day. Generally, bills are generated before 08:00. If your Alibaba Cloud account has sufficient balance, the system deducts fees from the balance. You can view bills in the Expenses and Costs console and view resource usage in the ARMS console.

View data volume

You can view data volume on the Usage Statistics tab of the Overview page in the ARMS console.

Set the usage limit

Note

Both ARMS and Managed Service for OpenTelemetry charge fees based on the actual amount of observable data written to the system. You can set an upper limit for the amount of written observable data.

On the Usage Statistics page, find the product that you want to manage in the corresponding region, and click Configure Quota in the Actions column. In the dialog box that appears, set the Maximum Amount of Data parameter, and set the Notification Objects and Notification Period parameters when the maximum amount of data is configured.

Parameter	Description
Maximum Amount of Data	The maximum amount of data that can be written to ARMS metrics per day. Unit: GB.
Excessive Data	The application is automatically stopped, and then started at 00:00 the next day: When the upper limit is reached, ARMS immediately stops receiving the data reported from the cloud service in the region, and automatically re-starts receiving the data at 00:00 the next day. The application is automatically stopped, and not started at 00:00 the next day: When the upper limit is reached, ARMS immediately stops receiving the data reported from the cloud service in the region. You need to manually re-start receiving the data. To re-start receiving the data, choose Application Monitoring > Application List in the left-side navigation pane, choose Settings > Application Start/Stop Settings in the upper right corner of the page, and enable the monitoring in the dialog box that appears.
The amount of data written has reached the upper limit.	An alert notification is triggered when the written data reaches a specified percentage of the upper limit.
Notification Objects	For information about how to create notification objects, see Notification objects.
Notification Period	The period during which an alert notification is sent.

Estimate fees

Estimate fees based on data volume

If you have not monitored an application in ARMS, you can connect a test application to ARMS. Then, you can view data volume on the Usage Statistics > Overview to estimate the overall cost.
If you have applications monitored in ARMS, you can directly view data volume on the Usage Statistics > Overview to estimate the overall cost.

Assume that you use Application Monitoring to monitor your applications. In a month, applications deployed in the China (Hangzhou) region generate 1,000 GB of observable data and applications deployed in the China (Beijing) region generate 800 GB of observable data. Considering that you have a 50-GB free quota per month, the fee of the month is calculated based on the following formula: USD 0.062 × (1,000 + 800 - 50) = USD 108.5.

Estimate fees based on the business scale

You can estimate fees based on the following data models. Estimated fees are not accurate, and are for reference only.

Application Monitoring

Assume that queries per second (QPS) are 100, sampling rate is 10%, convergence is enabled for interface metrics, and profiling is disabled. Each agent collects about 2 GB of data. The following table lists the differences between previous and current prices.

Application scale	Estimated monthly data volume	Current price (pay-as-you-go)	Previous price (pay-as-you-go)	Previous price (resource plan)
Small (50 nodes = 50 agents)	3,000 GB	USD 186/month	USD 1,490.4/month 88% costs saved	USD 776/month (76% costs saved). Two 28,800 Agent × Hour resource plans that cost USD 1,241.9 are required.
Medium (200 nodes = 200 agents)	12,000 GB	USD 744/month	USD 5,961.6/month 88% costs saved	USD 2,328.57/month (68% costs saved). One 230,400 Agent × Hour resource plan that costs USD 3,725.71 is required.
Large (500 nodes = 500 agents)	30,000 GB	USD 1,860/month	USD 14,904/month 88% costs saved	USD 4,657/month (60% costs saved). Two 230,400 Agent × Hour resource plans that cost USD 7,451.42 are required.

The purchase method provided in the Previous price (resource plan) column is for reference only. You can enjoy a higher discount by purchasing a resource plan with higher specifications based on your business requirements.

Managed Service for OpenTelemetry

In the new billing rules, you are charged for Managed Service for OpenTelemetry based on the volume of observable data that is written. The average size of a span is 1.27 KB. Assume that 0.1 billion spans are generated each day, and spans are stored for 30 days. The following table describes the comparison between the daily fees calculated based on the new and previous versions of billing rules.

Business scale	Estimated daily data volume	Pay-as-you-go fee based on the new billing rules	Pay-as-you-go fee based on the previous billing rules	Cost down by
0.1 billion spans stored for 30 days	121 GB	USD 7.5 per day	USD 10.75 per day	30%

Note

In the new billing rules of Managed Service for OpenTelemetry, you are not separately charged the reporting fee, storage fee for traces, and storage fee for each metric.

Managed Service for Prometheus

Assume that the average size of a metric entry is 0.5 KB. The following table lists the differences between previous and current prices of Managed Service for Prometheus.

Number of reported metric entries per day	Estimated daily data volume	Previous price (pay-as-you-go)	Current price (pay-as-you-go)	Cost saved
0 - 50 million	0 - 25 GB	0 - USD 1.55/day	0 - USD 6.299/day	75%
50 million - 150 million	25 GB - 75 GB	USD 1.55 - USD 4.65/day	USD 6.299 - USD 16.535/day	71% - 75%
150 million - 300 million	75 GB -150 GB	USD 4.65 - USD 9.3/day	USD 16.535 - USD 29.528/day	68% - 71%
300 million - 600 million	150 GB - 300 GB	USD 9.3 - USD 18.6/day	USD 29.528 - USD 50.787/day	63% - 76%
600 million - 1200 million	300 GB - 600GB	USD 18.6 - USD 37.2/day	USD 50.787 - USD 83.858/day	55% - 63%
More than 1200 million	More than 600 GB	More than USD 37.2/day	More than USD 83.858/day	55%