Billing of FaaS - FPGA as a Service - Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center

The billing of FPGA as a Service (FaaS) is the same as the billing of Elastic Compute Service (ECS). This topic describes the billing of FaaS.

Billable items and billing methods

An FPGA-accelerated instance consists of computing resources such as vCPUs, memory, and GPUs, images, and Elastic Block Storage (EBS) devices. The following table describes the billable items of FaaS resources.

Billable item	Description	Billing method	Billing method switching	Billing references
Computing resources (vCPUs, memory, and a GPU)	You are charged for the computing resources required by an instance type, including vCPUs, memory, and a GPU. The price of an instance type varies based on the region. For more information, go to the pricing page.	Subscription, pay-as-you-go, and preemptible instance. You can use the pay-as-you-go billing method together with reserved instances or savings plans.	Change the billing method of an instance from subscription to pay-as-you-go Change the billing method of an instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription	Instance types
Image	Image fees vary based on the image type and the usage duration. Images are classified into public images, custom images, shared images, and Alibaba Cloud Marketplace images. The billing for the images varies based on the image types.	Subscription and pay-as-you-go. You can use the pay-as-you-go billing method together with reserved instances. Note Images must be used only with ECS instances. The fees for Windows reserved instances include the fees for public images and can cover public image charges.	Not supported	Images
Block storage device	Block storage devices are classified into cloud disks and local disks. Cloud disk: Fees vary based on the unit price, capacity, and usage duration. The billing method of a cloud disk varies based on the method that you use to create the cloud disk. Local disk: Local disks must be created together with specific instance types and cannot be separately purchased. The fees for local disks are included in the fees for the instance types.	Subscription, pay-as-you-go, and storage capacity unit (SCU). You can use the pay-as-you-go billing method together with savings plans.	Change the billing method of a disk Change the billing method of an instance from subscription to pay-as-you-go Change the billing method of an instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription	Block storage devices
Public bandwidth	You can access the Internet by using static public IP addresses, elastic IP addresses (EIPs), and NAT gateways. If you use a static public IP address to access the Internet, you are charged only for the outbound public bandwidth. If you use an EIP or a NAT gateway to access the Internet, you must separately purchase the EIP or the NAT gateway. For more information about the billing details, see EIP billing overview and Billing of Internet NAT gateways.	Pay-by-bandwidth and pay-by-data-transfer.	Change the billing method for network usage of an ECS instance that uses a static public IP address	Public bandwidth
Snapshot	When you create snapshots, you are charged for region-specific snapshot storage based on the size of the snapshots that are stored in each region. When you copy snapshots, you are charged for snapshot storage and data transfers of snapshot replication.	Pay-as-you-go, Standard locally redundant storage (LRS) storage plan, and SCU.	Not supported	Snapshots

Renewal policy

You can renew only subscription instances. You do not need to renew pay-as-you-go instances, but must make sure that your Alibaba Cloud account has sufficient balance. For more information, see Renewal overview.

Note

You can enable the economical mode for pay-as-you-go instances. The fees for an FPGA-accelerated instance include the fees for FaaS resources. If you enable the economical mode for the instance, you are not charged for FaaS resources. For more information, see Economical mode.

The following table describes the features that are related to the renewal of subscription instances.

Feature	Scenario description	References
Manual renewal	Before an instance is automatically released, you can renew the instance in the ECS console to extend the expiration date.	Renew a subscription instance
Auto-renewal	Enable auto-renewal: If you enable the auto-renewal feature for an instance, the instance is automatically renewed before it expires. You can enable this feature to prevent the instance from being automatically released. View the auto-renewal status: On the Instances page or Renewal page, you can check whether the auto-renewal feature is enabled for the instance. Disable auto-renewal: If you no longer require the auto-renewal feature for an instance after the current billing cycle of the instance ends, you can disable this feature before the fees are automatically deducted from your account.	Configure auto-renewal settings of an instance View the auto-renewal state Disable auto-renewal
Renewal and configuration downgrade	If the configurations of an ECS instance exceed your requirements, you can renew the instance and downgrade the configurations within 15 days before the instance expires or the time period when the instance has expired but is not released.	Renew an instance and downgrade its configurations
Unified expiration date	If you have multiple subscription instances that expire on different dates, you can synchronize the expiration dates to the same day of the month to simplify management and renewal.	Synchronize the expiration dates of subscription instances

Bills

You can go to Expenses and Costs to view the bills and the consumption details of your ECS resources. For more information, see View billing details.

Expiration or overdue payments

After ECS resources expire, the resource status varies and the overdue payments are handled based on the billing methods. For more information, see Overdue payments.

Billing FAQ

If billing issues occur when you purchase or use an FPGA-accelerated instance, you can find the answers to frequently asked questions in Billing FAQ.

Note

For information about the cost components, cost benefits, and cost optimization suggestions of ECS, see Best practices for cost optimization.