PolarDB supports three billing methods for storage: pay-as-you-go + storage plans, pay-as-you-go, and subscription. They each correspond to a set of billing rules.
Billing comparison
PolarDB charges fees for the storage capacity consumed by your clusters. For more information, see PSL4 and PSL5 and Storage capacity. The following table compares the three billing methods.
Billing method | Description | Benefit | Scenario |
Pay-as-you-go + storage plans | The consumed storage is first deducted from the available amount in the storage plans. After your storage plans are exhausted, you are charged for the excess storage usage on a pay-as-you-go basis. | Flexible and cost-effective |
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Pay-as-you-go | You are charged based on the storage capacity consumed by the actual amount of data in your clusters, and fees are deducted on an hourly basis. | Flexible | Your Alibaba Cloud account has small volumes of data stored in the clusters of specific regions, and the amount of data generated by your business is prone to frequent fluctuations. |
Subscription | A specific amount of storage capacity is purchased for your cluster when you create the cluster. | Cost-effective | The total amount of data of the clusters in specific regions under your Alibaba Cloud account is smaller than 10 TB, and the amount of data generated by your business seldom fluctuates. |