Inter-region data transfers

Billing rules

The following content describes the billing rules for different Alibaba Cloud services that provide inter-region access:

• Global Accelerator (GA) and Anycast Elastic IP Address (EIP): Pay-by-dominant-data-transfer is used. You are charged for data transfers in the dominant direction in each region. The direction in which a greater amount of data is transferred is the dominant direction.

• Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN), Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) peering connection, and Express Connect Routers (ECRs): Pay-by-outbound-data-transfer is used. You are charged for data transfers in each region.

• CEN and VPC peering connections support two service levels: Platinum and Gold. You can select a service level based on your business requirements. If you use other services that provide inter-region access, only the Gold service level is supported.

  Important

  If you change the service level within a billing cycle, the data transfers within the billing cycle are billed based on the unit price of the higher service level.

  Service	Service level	Service availability	Scenario

  Service	Service level	Service availability	Scenario
  CEN Inter-region VPC peering connections	Platinum	99.995%	Ideal for services that require high network quality and are sensitive to network jitters and latency, such as securities transactions, online voice chat, video conferencing, and real-time gaming.
  CEN Inter-region VPC peering connections Anycast EIP GA ECR	Gold	99.95%	Ideal for services that do not have high requirements for network quality, such as data synchronization and file transfer.

Inter-region data transfers are classified into the following categories:

• Intra-border data transfers: Data is transmitted between regions in the Chinese mainland or between regions outside the Chinese mainland.

• Cross-border data transfers: Data is transmitted between regions in the Chinese mainland and regions outside the Chinese mainland.

  Note

  The cross-border traffic fee for GA is based on the transmission network type.

  • BGP (Multi-ISP) Pro lines: USD 0.96 per GB.

  • Express Connect circuits: USD 0.80 per GB.

Pricing of inter-region data transfers

The following table provides the unit prices of inter-region data transfers. Unit: USD/GB. The unit prices are the same for both directions.

Service level: Gold

Service level: Platinum

Billing examples

Note

The following billing example is for reference only. The fees on your bill shall prevail.

One day, a company creates a VPC in each of the China (Shenzhen) and China (Hangzhou) regions. At 09:00:00 on that day, the company creates an inter-region connection on an Enterprise Edition transit router of CEN. The metering method of the inter-region connections is pay-by-data-transfer and the service level is Platinum. At 09:35:00, the company switches to the Gold service level.

Within the billing cycle, assume that 200 GB of data is transferred from the China (Shenzhen) region to the China (Hangzhou) region, and 100 GB of data is transferred from the China (Hangzhou) region to the China (Shenzhen) region. In the next billing cycle, 200 GB of data is transferred from the China (Shenzhen) region to the China (Hangzhou) region. The data transfer fee is:

• Billing Cycle 1 (09:00:00 to 10:00:00): Unit price of the Platinum service level in China (Shenzhen) × 200 GB + Unit price of the Platinum service level in China (Hangzhou) × 100 GB = 0.108 USD/GB × 200 GB + 0.108 USD/GB × 100 GB = USD 32.4.

• Billing Cycle 2 (10:00:00-11:00:00): Unit price of the Platinum service level in China (Shenzhen) × 200 GB = 0.072 USD/GB × 200 GB = USD 14.4.