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    Elastic IP Address:Billing overview

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    Elastic IP Address:Billing overview

    Last Updated:Feb 07, 2025

    This topic describes the metering methods, billable items, and billing cycles of Elastic IP Address (EIP).

    Metering methods

    EIPs support the subscription and pay-as-you-go billing methods, which support different metering methods for Internet data transfers. Each metering method is ideal for specific scenarios. You can select a metering method based on your business requirements.

    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 items

    The billable items vary based on the metering method for EIP Internet data transfers.

    image

    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.

    • You are not charged an EIP configuration fee (public IP retention fee) in the following scenarios:

      • The EIP is associated with an elastic container instance or an Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance in a virtual private cloud (VPC). The number of EIPs that your Alibaba Cloud account can own does not exceed 2,000.

      • The EIP is allocated from an IP address pool. Such as public IP addresses are billed based on the billing rules for public IP addresses. For more information, see the "Billing" section of Create and manage an IP address pool.

      • The public IP address range is brought to Alibaba Cloud by you.

    • You are charged an EIP configuration fee (public IP retention fee) in other scenarios.

    Note

    N/A

    EIP association fee

    Important

    If you purchased EIPs for the first time after 00:00:00 (UTC+8) on January 15, 2020, you are charged an EIP association fee. If you purchased EIPs before 00:00:00 (UTC+8) on January 15, 2020, you are not charged an EIP association fee.

    In a calendar day, whether you are charged an EIP association fee is determined based on the number of times that EIPs are associated by each account in each region.

    • Free of charge: EIP association times ≤ five times the quota

    • Charged: EIP association times > five times the quota

      • You are charged USD 0.149 for each extra association. Association fees are calculated and bills are generated on a daily basis.

      • If the quota on EIPs is changed, EIP association fees are still charged based on the original quota on the day when the change is made. EIP association fees are charged based on the new quota starting the next day.

    Note

    The quota is equal to the default number of EIPs that your Alibaba Cloud account can own. For more information about how to view quotas, see View and manage quotas.

    Example: Assume that your account has a default quota of 20 EIPs. On May 6, 2024, the quota is increased to 30.

    • On and before May 6, 2024, the number of times that you can use this account to associate EIPs in each region per day is: 20 × 5 = 100.

      If you associate EIPs 110 times in a region, you are charged a total fee of USD 1.49 for the extra association times (the 101st to the 110th times).

    • Starting May 7, 2024, the number of times that you can use this account to associate EIPs in each region per day is: 30 × 5 = 150.

    Billing cycles

    The following table describes the billing cycles of EIPs.

    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.

    Pricing

    For more information about the billable items of EIPs, see Subscription and Pay-as-you-go. The prices on the buy page shall prevail.

    View billing details

    On the Elastic IP Addresses page, find the EIP that you want to manage and choose 更多操作 > Renewal and Bills > Bills in the Actions column. You are redirected to the Expenses and Costs console, where you can view the billing details of your EIP. For more information, see Consumption by bill , Billing details, and Usage records.

    References

    Billing methods and rules

    More references