Container Monitoring, part of Managed Service for Prometheus, is available in two editions: Basic and Pro. Each edition has different capabilities and pricing.
Container Monitoring fees consist of:
Cluster scale fees: Based on the number of cluster nodes. Charged for Pro Edition only; free for Basic Edition.
Prometheus instance fees: Based on Prometheus instance usage. For details, see Instance billing.
Supported cluster types for Pro Edition
Pro Edition supports the following cluster types:
ACK managed Pro cluster
ACK Lingjun cluster
ACK dedicated cluster
Basic Edition vs. Pro Edition
| Feature | Basic Edition | Pro Edition |
|---|---|---|
| Container cluster basic metrics retention | 7 days | 90 days |
| Prometheus collector | Non-managed agents. Each agent uses 3 CPU cores and 4 GB of memory by default. You manage the agents. | Managed agents with a 99.95% production-grade SLA. |
| Dashboards | Basic dashboards built on Alibaba Cloud visualization components (non-Grafana). | Various Grafana dashboards. |
| Alerting | No default alert rules. | Default alert rules for each container service component. |
| Data export | Remote Read and HTTP API. | Remote Read, HTTP API, Remote Write, and EventBridge-based data delivery. |
Billing method
Only pay-as-you-go billing is available. Prepaid options such as resource plans and subscriptions are not supported.
Observability Capacity Unit (OCU)
Cluster scale fees are measured in Observability Capacity Units (OCUs). Every 10 container cluster nodes (including virtual nodes) count as 1 OCU. Clusters with fewer than 10 nodes still count as 1 OCU.
OCU unit prices
| Region | Unit price (USD/OCU) |
|---|---|
| Chinese mainland | 0.023 |
| Other regions | 0.033 |
Billable items
Pro Edition
| Billable item | How it is calculated |
|---|---|
| Cluster scale fees | Billed daily based on hourly OCU counts. See Billing cycle for the calculation method. |
| Prometheus instance fees | See Instance billing. |
Basic Edition
| Billable item | How it is calculated |
|---|---|
| Cluster scale fees | Free |
| Prometheus instance fees | See Instance billing. |
Billing cycle
Pro Edition cluster scale fees are calculated hourly and settled daily:
Each hour, the system records the maximum number of cluster nodes during that hour.
The hourly OCU count is calculated by dividing the maximum node count by 10, then rounding up.
At the end of each day (starting at 00:00), the system sums all hourly OCU counts from the previous day.
Daily cluster scale fee = total OCU count for the day x OCU unit price.
For the billing cycle of Prometheus instance fees, see Instance billing.
Billing example
Suppose you run a Pro Edition cluster in a non-Chinese-mainland region (OCU unit price: $0.033) with 25 nodes, and the node count stays constant for 24 hours:
Hourly OCU count: 25 nodes / 10 = 2.5, rounded up = 3 OCUs
Daily OCU total: 3 OCUs x 24 hours = 72 OCUs
Daily cluster scale fee: 72 OCUs x $0.033 = $2.376
This example covers cluster scale fees only. Prometheus instance fees are billed separately. For additional worked examples at different cluster scales, see Billing examples.
Activate Container Monitoring Pro Edition
Container Monitoring Pro Edition requires Managed Service for Prometheus. Activate the Prometheus service first, then enable Pro Edition.
Activate Managed Service for Prometheus. Choose one of the following billing modes:
To upgrade from Basic Edition to Pro Edition, see Upgrade Container Monitoring (Basic) to Container Monitoring (Pro).
View resource usage and bills
To check Container Monitoring Pro Edition usage and costs, go to the Expenses and Cost console. For step-by-step instructions, see Bill query.
