Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance types are billed based on the computing resources (vCPUs and memory) they offer. This topic describes the billing methods of instance types, compares these billing methods, and provides guidance on how to choose a billing method.
Instance pricing and purchase
Instance types are billed based on computing resources: vCPUs and memory.
Purchase: Go to the instance buy page.
Pricing
Instance type prices may vary by region. You can view price schedules of instance types on the Price tab of the Elastic Compute Service product page.
ImportantComputing resources are the basic resources of instances. You pay for the computing resources of your pay-as-you-go instances throughout the lifecycle of the instances regardless of actual use, except when the instances are stopped in economical mode. For more information, see Economical mode.
Billing methods
Comparison of the billing methods
The following table compares the billing methods that instance types support.
Billing method | Preemptible instance (Spot) | ||
Billing rule and payment model | Prepayment (payment before use of resources) Fee = Unit price of an instance type × Subscription duration. | Postpayment (payment after use of resources)
Note Reserved instances or savings plans can be applied to get significant savings on pay-as-you-go instances. For more information, see the "Reserved Instance and Savings Plan" section of this topic. | Postpayment (payment after use of resources)
|
Cost-effectiveness | Subscription prices are much lower than pay-as-you-go prices. | Pay-as-you-go prices are higher than the prices applied when other billing methods are used.
| Prices fluctuate with changes in supply and demand. Preemptible instances can sometimes be available at up to 90% less than pay-as-you-go prices. |
Use scenario | Business that requires long-term, consistent use of resources over a predictable period of time, such as web services and database services that run 24/7. | Applications with short-term, fluctuating, or unpredictable workloads, such as temporary scaling, testing, and flash sales. | Applications that have urgent computing needs for large amounts of additional capacity, such as temporary scaling, testing, and scientific computing. |
Instance release |
| You can release pay-as-you-go instances at any time. Release pay-as-you-go instances that you no longer need at the earliest opportunity. You are still billed until these instances are stopped and released due to overdue payments. | You can release preemptible instances at any time. Preemptible instances may be automatically released when the market price exceeds your bid or when the resources for the instance types are insufficient. |
Change of billing methods | Change the billing method of an instance from subscription to pay-as-you-go | Change the billing method of an ECS instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription | Not supported. |
Change of instance types or bandwidth configurations | Supported. | Supported. | Not supported. |
Use of subscription Alibaba Cloud Marketplace images | Supported. | Not supported. | Not supported. |
Internet Content Provider (ICP) filings for websites hosted on instances that are deployed inside the Chinese mainland | Supported. You can apply for ICP filings only for instances that have a subscription duration of at least three months. Note You must purchase public bandwidth. | Not supported. | Not supported. |
Creation of instances by calling API operations | Supported. | Supported. | Supported. |
Free use of Security Center Basic and CloudMonitor Basic | Supported. | Supported. | Supported. |
Reserved Instance and Savings Plan
Reserved instances and savings plans can be used on pay-as-you-go instances to offer discounts on resource rates for a commitment to use a certain amount of resources. You can apply any combination of pay-as-you-go, Savings Plan, and Reserved Instance across your workloads.
Billing method | Description | Paymment option |
Reserved instances are a billing discount applied to the use of pay-as-you-go instances in your account and provide significant savings compared to pay-as-you-go pricing. The price of a reserved instance is determined by its region, instance type, operating system, payment option, term, and instance quantity. Reserved instances allow you to reduce costs by making a commitment to a consistent instance configuration for a term of one or three years and in return for receiving discounted rates for your resources. Pay-as-you-go instances must match the attributes of a reserved instance, allowing you to benefit from the billing discount. | All Upfront, Partial Upfront, or No Upfront | |
Savings plans offer a flexible pricing model that provides savings beyond pay-as-you-go rates in exchange for a commitment to use a specified amount of resources per hour for a one- or three-year period. The price of a savings plan is determined based on its hourly usage commitment, payment option, and term. The billing discounts provided by savings plans vary based on the savings plan type, payment option, term, and eligible pay-as-you-go instance attributes such as region and instance family. Savings plans automatically apply to pay-as-you-go instances regardless of region and instance family. | All Upfront, Partial Upfront, or No Upfront |
Comparison between subscription, Reserved Instance, and Savings Plan
You can use subscription, pay-as-you-go with reserved instances, or pay-as-you-go with savings plans in cases where you have predictable and consistent workloads, to save money on ECS usage. When purchased for the same duration, savings plans provide the most flexibility, followed by reserved instances, and then subscription instances. The following table compares subscription, Reserved Instance, and Savings Plan.
Comparison item | Subscription | Reserved Instance | Savings Plan |
Limits on discounts | Discounts are specific to individual instances that you purchase. | A reserved instance can match up to 100 pay-as-you-go instances to offer billing discounts. | Savings plans can reduce your bills on ECS usage regardless of the number of instances. |
Resource reservation | Supported. | Supported. A zonal reserved instance reserves resources in a specific zone. | Not supported. |
Cross-service use | Not supported. | Supported. Reserved instances can be applied to both ECS instances and elastic container instances. | Supported. Savings plans can be applied to both ECS instances and elastic container instances. |
Cross-region use | Not supported. | Not supported. | Supported. General-purpose savings plans can be used across regions. |
Cross-zone use within the same region | Not supported. | Supported. Regional reserved instances can be used across different zones within the same region. | Supported. |
Cross-instance family use | Not supported. | Not supported. | General-purpose savings plans can be used across different instance families. |
Cross-instance type use in the same instance family | Not supported. | Supported. | Supported. |
Cross-operating system use | Not supported. | Not supported. | Supported. |
Cross-account use on established trusteeship | Not supported. | Supported. | Supported. |
Installment | Not supported. | Supported. You can choose the All Upfront, Partial Upfront, or No Upfront payment option. | Supported. You can choose the All Upfront, Partial Upfront, or No Upfront payment option. |
Change of billing methods
You can change the billing method of an instance from subscription to pay-as-you-go or from pay-as-you-go to subscription.
Billing examples
The following table provides examples on how to calculate the fees for an instance type. Assume that you created an ecs.g7.large instance in the China (Hangzhou) region.
The prices in the table are for reference only. Prices displayed on the Pricing tab on the Elastic Compute Service product page prevail.
The table describes instance type fees, excluding fees for the image, Elastic Block Storage (EBS) devices, public bandwidth, and snapshots.
Billing method | Billing item | Fee (USD) |
Subscription |
| Instance type fee = Unit price of the instance type × Subscription duration = 69.21 × 1 = 69.21. |
Pay-as-you-go |
| Instance type fee = Unit price of the instance type × Usage duration = 0.1188 × 30 × 24 = 85.536. |
Examples of typical scenarios
The following figure shows some typical scenarios to which you can refer to choose appropriate billing methods.
Business type | Business characteristic | Sample scenario | Recommended billing method |
Linked pattern | All business segments are closely linked. When the traffic loads of one business segment increase, the traffic loads of other business segments also grow. | Hot news, e-commerce promotions, and spikes in traffic of pan-Internet industries. | Pay-as-you-go + Savings Plan or Reserved Instance. |
Stable pattern | Business loads are stable with no obvious peak hours or off-peak hours. | Stable online business, such as internal office automation (OA) systems. |
|
Burstable pattern | All business segments are loosely linked. Workloads may burst at some points in time. | Event-based tasks, job tasks, and simulation tasks. | Pay-as-you-go. You can use the pay-as-you-go billing method together with savings plans or reserved instances if your workloads fluctuate frequently. |
Hybrid pattern | A variety of business segments exist. Computing power requirements of these business segments vary at different points in time and have different priorities. | Scenarios where online, offline, and job tasks are deployed in a hybrid manner and where multiple environments are used alternately, such as blue-green deployment. | Pay-as-you-go + Savings Plan or Reserved Instance. |
Recommended combinations of billing methods
You can mix and match billing methods for ECS instances to achieve the perfect blend of performance and costs tailored towards your use cases. The following figure shows the recommended combinations of billing methods.