Performance Testing Service (PTS) supports the pay-as-you-go billing method. You are charged based on your resource usage. Bills are generated and fees are deducted from the balance of your Alibaba Cloud account at the end of each billing cycle. This topic describes the billable items, pricing rules, billing rules, and billing cycle of the pay-as-you-go billing method. This topic also describes how to activate PTS.
Billable items
The pay-as-you-go billing method is based on stress testing tasks. You are charged based on the Virtual User Minutes (VUM) consumption in a stress testing task that is complete. The changes in the number of used IP addresses, the stress testing duration, and the sampling rate of stress testing logs affect the VUM consumption.
Billable item | Billable sub-item |
VUM consumption | Number of used IP addresses |
Stress testing duration (minutes) | |
Sampling rate of stress testing logs (default value: 1%) |
VUM consumption = Number of used IP addresses × 500 (concurrent) × Stress testing duration (minutes)
The value 500 (concurrent) in the VUM consumption formula is a fixed value.
When you configure a stress testing scenario, the default sampling rate of stress testing logs displayed on the Advanced Settings page is 1%. In this case, additional VUM consumption is generated. This way, the total VUM consumption can be calculated by using the following formula: (1 + Log sampling rate) × Original VUM consumption. For example, if you set the log sampling rate to 20%, the total VUM consumption is 1.2 times the original VUM consumption. If you set the log sampling rate to 100% (maximum value), the total VUM consumption is twice the original VUM consumption.
The stress testing duration is measured in minutes. If the duration is less than 1 minute, the duration is converted into minutes in proportion. For example, if the total stress testing duration in your current stress testing scenario is 5 minutes and 40 seconds, the 40 seconds must be converted into minutes in proportion, that is, 0.67 minutes. Therefore, the total stress testing duration is 5.67 minutes.
The number of used IP addresses is calculated by using the following formula:
If you do not use the IP extension feature:
In concurrency mode: Number of used IP addresses = Maximum number of concurrent users during the stress testing/500 (rounded up)
In requests per second (RPS) mode: Number of used IP addresses = Maximum RPS during the stress testing/4000 (rounded up)
If you use the IP extension feature, the number of used IP addresses is the specified number of IP addresses.
During the PTS stress testing performed over the Internet, the maximum bandwidth of each stress tester is 100 Mb/s, which is approximately 12.5 MB/s. When the bandwidth usage of a stress tester reaches the saturation, a higher number of stress testing exceptions may occur and the response time (RT) may significantly increase. This way, stress testing results cannot accurately reflect the real system performance. Therefore, before you start the stress testing, you must evaluate the maximum required theoretical bandwidth and specify a sufficient number of stress testers during scenario configuration to ensure sufficient bandwidth resources. In addition, you must focus on the resulting billing changes to avoid unnecessary cost overhead.
VUM quota
Starting from May 11, 2023, first-time users who use the pay-as-you-go billing method can enjoy the VUM quota of 5,000 provided by Alibaba Cloud PTS. The maximum concurrency is 1,000, which meets your daily requirements for continuous stress testing.
The VUM quota of 5,000 automatically becomes invalid 30 days after you activate PTS. If the number of concurrent users does not exceed 1,000, you are not charged. You are charged for the stress testing tasks whose number of concurrent users exceeds 1,000 based on the pay-as-you-go billing method.
After the pay-as-you-go billing method is used, the VUM consumption in a stress testing task is preferentially deducted from the VUM quota. If the VUM quota is reached, you are charged for the exceed VUM consumption based on the billable item rules of the pay-as-you-go billing method. For more information, see Billable Items.
Pricing rules
Public Cloud: USD 0.00046 per VUM
The actual prices displayed on the PTS buy page shall prevail.
Billing rules
Starting from January 4, 2024, PTS provides different stress testing capabilities that are billed on a pay-as-you-go basis based on the authentication type of your Alibaba Cloud account (individual or enterprise user).
Capability | Enterprise user | Individual user |
Maximum number of concurrent users | 200,000 | 1,000 |
Maximum RPS | 1,600,000 | 8,000 |
Number of scenarios that can be started at the same time | 10 | 10 |
Number of APIs in a single scenario | 50 | 50 |
Parameter file size | 2 GB | 2 GB |
Maximum number of IP addresses | 400 | 2 |
IPv6 | Supported | Supported |
Execution of the stress testing within Alibaba Cloud regions | Supported | Supported |
Maximum stress testing duration of a single task | 24 hours | 30 minutes |
After-sales support |
Billing example
For example, in public cloud concurrency mode, the maximum number of concurrent users in the current stress testing scenario is 1,000 and the total stress testing duration is 5 minutes. In addition, the log sampling rate remains unchanged and the IP extension feature is disabled.
In this case, the number of IP addresses used in this stress testing task is 2 (1000/500), which can be calculated by using the following formula: Number of concurrent users in this stress testing task/500 (rounded up), and the VUM consumption in this stress testing task is 5,000 (2 × 500 × 5), which can be calculated by using the following formula: Number of used IP addresses × 500 × Stress testing duration.
Therefore, the total cost of this test is USD 2.3 (5000 × 0.00046).
The preceding billing example is for reference only. The actual prices displayed on the PTS buy page shall prevail.
Billing cycle
The system generates a VUM consumption bill for the previous day on a daily basis and deducts the bill amount from the balance of your Alibaba Cloud account. The bill generation time is determined by the system.
Activate PTS
On the Activate PTS page, read and select the Terms of Service, and then click Activate Now. After you activate PTS, log on to the PTS console. By default, the system uses the pay-as-you-go billing method.
View bills
You can view the overall PTS consumption on the Expenses and Costs page. For more information, see View consumption details.
Impacts of overdue payments
If your Alibaba Cloud account does not have a sufficient balance to settle your bill on the same day when the bill is generated, the bill becomes overdue. For more information about the impact of overdue payments, see Overdue payments of the pay-as-you-go billing method.