This topic describes the billing information of PolarDB, including the billing methods, billable items, storage plans, expiration or overdue payments, and renewal.
PolarDB is a cloud-native database service that uses a decoupled storage and computing architecture. The compute nodes and storage usage of a PolarDB cluster are separately billed. PolarDB provides storage plans to help you reduce costs.
Billing methods
PolarDB provides the subscription, pay-as-you-go, and Serverless billing methods to meet requirements in different scenarios. For more information, see Billing methods.
Subscription: a prepaid model. You select resources of fixed specifications and pay upfront when you create a cluster. The longer the subscription duration, the greater the discount. This method is suitable for businesses with consistent and long-term resource requirements.
Pay-as-you-go: a postpaid model. You select resources of fixed specifications but do not need to pay upfront when you create a cluster. You are billed based on your actual resource usage. This method is suitable for businesses with flexible resource requirements.
Serverless: a postpaid model. You do not need to select resources of fixed specifications or pay upfront when you create a cluster. In this billing method, PolarDB can dynamically scale resources based on the workload requirements. This method is applicable to businesses with fluctuating or unpredictable loads.
If your billing method no longer meets your business requirements, you can switch the billing method. For more information, see Switch between billing methods.
Billable items
The billable items of PolarDB includes: computes nodes, cluster storage usage, backup storage that exceeds the free quota, SQL Explorer (optional), and cold data archiving (optional). For more information, see Billable items.
Storage plans
PolarDB provides storage plans to help you reduce storage costs. For more information, see Storage plans.
Bills
You can choose PolarDB. For more information, see Bills.
to view the resource usage and bills ofExpiration or overdue payments
If your PolarDB cluster expires or your Alibaba Cloud account has overdue payments, the operation of the PolarDB cluster may be interrupted. Renew your subscription or top up your account at the earliest opportunity. For more information, see Expiration or overdue payments.
Renewal
PolarDB allows you to automatically or manually renew subscription clusters. For more information, see Renewal.
NoteAfter a subscription PolarDB cluster expires, the operation of the cluster may be interrupted. If you want to continue using the PolarDB cluster, renew your subscription at the earliest opportunity.