Billing overview

Billing method

Metering method

Scenario

Pay-as-you-go

pay-by-data-transfer

• Scenarios that experience traffic fluctuations, such as gaming and video applications.

• Scenarios that experience temporary traffic spikes.

If you cannot estimate the traffic usage, we recommend that you select the pay-by-data-transfer metering method.

Pay-by-bandwidth

• Scenarios in which traffic is stable.

• Scenarios that experience temporary traffic spikes.

Subscription

Pay-by-bandwidth

• Scenarios in which the usage period of resources can be estimated.

• Scenarios in which traffic is stable.

• Scenarios that require long-term use of resources. In these scenarios, the subscription billing method is more cost-effective.

Billable item

pay-as-you-go EIP

Subscription EIP

Internet data transfer fees

• Bandwidth fee (pay-by-bandwidth): You are charged based on the maximum bandwidth and usage duration on a pay-as-you-go basis, regardless of the amount of data transfers.

• Data transfer fee (pay-by-data-transfer): You are charged for the actual amount of data transfers on an hourly basis.

  Important

  • The amount of data transfer refers to the cumulative outbound data transfers (from Alibaba Cloud to the Internet) of an EIP. You are not charged for inbound data transfers.

  • If you create pay-by-data-transfer EIPs for the first time after 00:00 (UTC+8) on December 17, 2024, the bills of the EIPs are issued by Cloud Data Transfer (CDT).

    CDT supports tiered pricing for Internet data transfers. The unit price decreases as the amount of data transfers increases. For more information about CDT billing rules and discounts, see Internet data transfers.

  • If your pay-by-data-transfer EIPs were created before 00:00 (UTC+8) on December 17, 2024, the EIPs are still billed based on the billing rules described in this topic.

    You can enable CDT for EIP based on your business requirements. After you enable CDT for EIP, the data transfers of all existing and new EIPs are billed by CDT.

Bandwidth fee: You are charged based on the maximum bandwidth and subscription duration, regardless of the amount of data transfers.

EIP configuration fee (public IP retention fee)

EIP configuration fee (public IP retention fee): You are charged based on the unit price and usage duration for each public IP address that you use.

N/A

EIP association fee

Billing cycle

Fee deduction time and bill generation time

Applicable fees

Hourly

A bill is generated within 1 hour after the current billing cycle ends. The time when bills are issued is determined by the system.

• Internet data transfer fee. For more information, see the "Data transfer fee (for pay-by-data-transfer EIPs)" section of Pay-as-you-go.

• EIP configuration fee (public IP retention fee. For more information, see the "EIP configuration fee (public IP retention fee)" section of Pay-as-you-go.

Daily

A bill is generated in the early hours of the next day. The system determines the time when bills are generated.

• Internet data transfer fee. For more information, see the "Bandwidth fee (for pay-by-bandwidth EIPs)" section of Pay-as-you-go.

• EIP configuration fee (public IP retention fee). For more information, see the "EIP configuration fee (public IP retention fee)" section of Pay-as-you-go.

• EIP association fee

Monthly

A bill is generated on the first day of the following calendar month. The time when bills are issued is determined by the system.

Internet data transfer fee. For more information, see Subscription.