Pay-as-you-go is a billing method that lets you use resources first and pay for them afterwards. You can create or release Elastic Compute Service (ECS) resources on demand with no long-term commitments or upfront payments, and pay only for what you use. This eliminates the need to plan, purchase, and maintain large amounts of resources, simplifying resource deployment and providing savings of 30% to 80% when compared to self-built data centers. This topic describes the billing rules for pay-as-you-go resources.
Scenarios
Applications have short-term, bursty, variable, or unpredictable workloads.
Applications require resources to be created and released on demand.
Common scenarios that the pay-as-you-go billing method is suitable for include temporary scaling, testing, and flash sales.
Billable items
The following ECS resources support the pay-as-you-go billing method:
ECS instances, which include computing resources (vCPUs and memory)
Images
Disks
Public bandwidth (pay-by-bandwidth)
Snapshots
Billing rules
The following table describes how the resources in a pay-as-you-go instance are billed, on the premise that the instance is not stopped due to an overdue payment. Billing durations vary based on resource types.
Resource | Billing formula | Billing duration | Billing increment |
Computing resources (vCPUs and memory) | Unit price of an instance type × Usage duration |
| 1 second Important Within each billing cycle (1 hour), computing resources has a minimum billing duration that varies based on the number of vCPUs provided by the instance type:
|
Image | Unit price of an image × Usage duration | Billing begins when the instance is created and ends when the instance is released. | 1 second |
Cloud disk used as the system disk | Unit price of a cloud disk × Disk capacity × Usage duration | Billing begins when the instance is created and ends when the instance is released. | 1 second Important Within each billing cycle (1 hour), the system disk has a minimum billing duration that varies based on the number of vCPUs provided by the instance type:
|
Cloud disks used as data disks | Unit price of a cloud disk × Disk capacity × Usage duration | Billing begins when a data disk is created and ends when the data disk is released. | 1 second |
Public bandwidth (pay-by-bandwidth) | Unit price of public bandwidth × Bandwidth value × Usage duration | Billing starts when public bandwidth is provisioned, and ends when you disable public bandwidth or when the instance is released. | 1 second Important Within each billing cycle (1 hour), public bandwidth has a minimum billing duration that varies based on the number of vCPUs provided by the instance type:
|
Snapshots | Unit price of a snapshot × Snapshot size × Usage duration | Billing begins when a snapshot is created and ends when the snapshot is deleted. | 1 hour, with a minimum of 1 hour |
Settlement cycles
Bills for pay-as-you-go ECS resources are generated on an hourly basis. Fees for all pay-as-you-go resources in your account are consolidated. Fees become due once a month, or when the cumulative bills exceed a predefined limit, which is determined by the default payment method.
If your default payment method is bank card (credit or debit card), the limit is USD 1,000.
If your default payment method is PayPal, the limit varies based on your ECS usage.
Alibaba Cloud makes up to three attempts to collect fees: on the due date, 7 days after the due date (T+7), and 14 days after the due date (T+14). If Alibaba Cloud fails to collect payment on the due date, the payment becomes overdue. Then, Alibaba Cloud makes two more attempts to collect payment on T+7 and T+14. During this time, the instance is not stopped and is still billed. If all three attempts fail, the instance is stopped 15 days after the due date (T+15). Billing for the instance also stops. For more information, see the "Pay-as-you-go resources" section in Overdue payments.
If the cumulative bills in each month do not exceed the settlement limit, Alibaba Cloud attempts to collect the fees due on the first day of the following month.
Switch from pay-as-you-go to subscription
If your requirements shift towards long-term workloads, you can switch the billing method to subscription and benefit from a more cost-effective pricing schedule. For more information, see Change the billing method of an ECS instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription.
Overdue payments
When your account has overdue payments, all pay-as-you-go resources in your account are suspended. Overdue payments may result in the stop of instances and even the release of resources. To prevent these consequences and ensure service continuity, we recommend that you regularly add funds to your account to prevent overdue payments. For information about changes in resource status after payments become overdue, see Overdue payments.