This topic describes the billable items, billing methods, and pricing of Alibaba Cloud Workspace Cloud Phone.
Billable items
Cloud Phone costs consist of required basic resources and optional value-added services.
Instance Edition
Resource type | Billable item | Description | References |
Basic resources (required) | Compute resources, Storage resources | Resources required to run cloud phones, including vCPUs, memory, and storage space. | |
Value-added services (optional) | Internet NAT Gateway | If the instance group of cloud phones uses a virtual private cloud (VPC), the system allocates pay-as-you-go Internet NAT gateways when you enable Internet access for the VPC. | |
Elastic IP Address (EIP) | If the instance group of cloud phones uses a VPC, the system allocates pay-as-you-go EIPs when you enable Internet access for the VPC. | ||
Object Storage Service (OSS) | If you enable data backup for cloud phones, the backed-up data is stored in OSS buckets. |
Basic resources
Billing methods
Cloud Phone supports the following billing methods:
| Billing method | How it works | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Pay upfront for a fixed duration. You must specify a subscription period at purchase. | Predictable, long-running workloads where you want lower per-hour costs. |
| Pay-as-you-go | Pay after use based on actual consumption. Billed in 4-hour cycles. | Short-term testing, variable workloads, or evaluating Cloud Phone before committing. |
Billing for a pay-as-you-go instance group starts when it is created. A billing cycle lasts for 4 hours. Billing stops at the end of the billing cycle in which the instance group is deleted. If your account has an insufficient balance at any point, billing stops instantly, and you will not be charged for the full 4-hour block. For more billing details, see \[Announcement\] Pay-as-you-go update for Cloud Phone.
Billing for a cloud phone continues regardless of its state, including when it is stopped.
Specifications and prices
The following table describes the specifications supported by Cloud Phone. When you create a cloud phone, select a specification based on your application workloads and then select a region based on the location of your customers and your business requirements.
Instance Edition
Regions in the Chinese mainland
| Type | Name | vCPUs / Memory / Storage | Subscription (USD/month) | Pay-as-you-go (USD/hour) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lightweight | acp.basic.small | 2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 32 GiB | 9.9057 | 0.0457 |
| General | acp.std.small | 4 vCPU / 4 GiB / 32 GiB | 13.8679 | 0.0579 |
| Balanced | acp.std.medium | 3 vCPU / 6 GiB / 32 GiB | 14.9347 | 0.0610 |
| Standard | acp.std.large | 4 vCPU / 8 GiB / 32 GiB | 21.3353 | 0.0808 |
| Performance | acp.perf.large | 8 vCPU / 16 GiB / 32 GiB | 36.4224 | 0.1524 |
China (Hong Kong) and regions outside China
| Type | Name | vCPUs / Memory / Storage | Subscription (USD/month) | Pay-as-you-go (USD/hour) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lightweight | acp.basic.small | 2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 32 GiB | 15.3538 | 0.0709 |
| General | acp.std.small | 4 vCPU / 4 GiB / 32 GiB | 21.4953 | 0.0898 |
| Balanced | acp.std.medium | 3 vCPU / 6 GiB / 32 GiB | 23.1488 | 0.0945 |
| Standard | acp.std.large | 4 vCPU / 8 GiB / 32 GiB | 33.0697 | 0.1252 |
| Performance | acp.perf.large | 8 vCPU / 16 GiB / 32 GiB | 56.4546 | 0.2362 |
Convert the billing method
Instance Edition
You can convert only pay-as-you-go instance groups to subscription instance groups. This conversion does not impact cloud phone data or usage.
Prerequisites
The instance group whose billing method you want to change is in the Available state.
Your Alibaba Cloud account has no unpaid orders. If any exist, complete or cancel them before you proceed.
Procedure
Log on to the Cloud Phone console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose .
On the Instance Group page, find the desired pay-as-you-go instance group in the Available state and click the ⋮ icon in the Actions column. Then, click Change Billing Method.
NoteYou can use the Status column or the filter icon in the upper-right corner of the Billing Method column to quickly filter the desired instance group.
On the Cloud Phone - Switch Billing Method page, specify a time period in the Duration section. In the lower-right corner of the page, confirm the configuration fees and click Switch Now.
NoteTo avoid service interruptions due to instance group expiration, enable Auto-renewal.
Complete the payment as prompted.
Payment methods
Cloud Phone supports the following payment methods:
Balance in your Alibaba Cloud account
Online payment
Refund policy
If you no longer need any active subscription resources, you can request a refund. Before you apply for a refund, make sure that you understand the refund rules and limitations. For more information, see Rules for unsubscribing from resources. For detailed refund steps, see Unsubscribe from a resource.
For a subscription instance group, you can only request a refund for all cloud phones in it at the same time.
View your bills
Procedure
Log on to the Expenses and Costs console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Bills > Bill Details.
NoteIf your console appears differently from the description in this topic, you might be using the previous version of the Expenses and Costs console. In this case, click Try New Version at the bottom of the left-side navigation pane.
On the page that appears, click the Billing Details tab, specify the filter conditions, and then click Search. You can configure the Statistic Item and Statistic Period parameters to specify an aggregation dimension and a statistical period. The results that meet the filter conditions are displayed in the list.
Related operations
On the Billing Details tab, you can also perform the following operations:
In the upper-right corner of the list, click the settings icon. In the Customize Column Options dialog box, select the columns that you want to display in the list.
In the upper-right corner above the list, click the export icon. In the Export Billing Overview (CSV) dialog box, select Current List or All Items to export the bills to your on-premises device as a CSV file. You can use spreadsheet software to open the CSV file to view and analyze the bills.
Effects of overdue payment
If the total balance of your account, including coupons, is less than the amount due, the system marks your account as having an overdue payment.
You can check overdue bills on the Expenses and Costs console.
The following timeline describes what happens when your pay-as-you-go account becomes overdue:
| Phase | Duration | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Overdue | Days 1 - 15 | Your cloud phone enters the Overdue state. Your data is retained, but you cannot power on, power off, restart, or connect to the cloud phone. Top up your account to resume normal operations. |
| Release | After 15 days | The cloud phone is automatically released. |
If a cloud phone is released, all its data is permanently deleted and cannot be recovered.
FAQ
Why am I still being charged after releasing my cloud phone?
Dependent resources such as NAT gateways, elastic IP addresses (EIPs), and Internet Shared Bandwidth instances are not automatically released with the cloud phone. Verify that the following resources have been released:
| Resource | Console |
|---|---|
| NAT Gateway | NAT Gateway console |
| EIP | EIP console |
| Internet Shared Bandwidth | Internet Shared Bandwidth console |
Am I charged for connecting to a cloud phone?
No. Protocol-based traffic for connecting to cloud phones is free of charge.