Managed Service for OpenTelemetry charges for trace reporting, trace storage, and metric storage on a pay-as-you-go basis. Bills are generated daily.
Prices listed here are for reference only. For the latest prices, see the Managed Service for OpenTelemetry pricing page.
Key concepts
Traces, spans, and metrics are the billable units.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Trace | The end-to-end execution path of a transaction or process across a distributed system. |
| Span | A single operation within a trace. Each span is a named, timed segment representing one call request. |
| Metric | Statistical data such as request data, response time, and number of exceptions for applications, APIs, or databases. |
Relationships between traces, spans, and metrics:
All spans with the same trace ID within an Alibaba Cloud account form one trace.
A trace contains at most 10 spans. Each span has a maximum size of 2 KB. Excess data is discarded.
One metric is generated per reported trace.
For details, see Terms.
Pricing
Managed Service for OpenTelemetry provides daily free quotas. If your daily usage stays below the free quota, no charges apply. If your daily usage meets or exceeds the free quota, you are charged for all usage that day, not just the portion above the quota.
The free quota is a threshold, not a deduction. Once daily usage reaches the quota, you are billed for the full day's consumption.
Unit prices
|
Billable item |
Free quota |
Unit price |
|
Reporting fee |
1 million spans/day |
CNY 0.09/million spans |
|
Trace storage fee |
1 million spans/day |
CNY 0.02/million spans/day |
|
Statistical metric storage fee |
1 million metrics/day |
CNY 0.01/million metrics/day |
Fee calculation details
| Fee type | Calculation basis | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Trace reporting | Number of spans in reported traces | Traces are aggregated into statistical metrics: elapsed time, queries per second (QPS), and number of exceptions. |
| Trace storage | Traces stored per day x retention period | Default retention: 30 days. |
| Metric storage | Metrics stored per day x retention period | Default retention: 30 days. |
To change the retention period, go to the Cluster Configurations tab on the Cluster Configurations page in the Managed Service for OpenTelemetry console.
Calculation examples
The following examples use Chinese mainland pricing.
Trace reporting -- 1 million traces reported per day:
1 x USD 0.13 = USD 0.13/day
Trace storage -- 1 million traces stored for 15 days (15 million traces accumulated):
15 x USD 0.03 = USD 0.45/day
Metric storage -- 1 million metrics generated per day, stored for 15 days (15 million metrics accumulated):
15 x USD 0.0015 = USD 0.0225/day
Billing cycle
Bills are generated daily at 00:00 for the previous day's usage and deducted from your Alibaba Cloud account balance.
Activate the service
Pay-as-you-go examples
Example 1: You report 400 million traces (approximately 4 billion spans) per day.
-
Scenario 1: Store all trace data and metric data for 30 days.
Trace reporting fee: 4,000 (million spans) × CNY 0.09 (unit price per million spans) = CNY 360/day
Daily trace storage fee: 4,000 (million spans) × 30 (days) × CNY 0.02 (unit price per million spans) = CNY 2,400/day
Daily metric storage fee: 400 (million metrics) × 30 (days) × CNY 0.01 (unit price per million metrics) = CNY 120/day
Total: CNY 2,880/day
-
Scenario 2: Store trace data for 7 days and metric data for 30 days.
Trace reporting fee: 4,000 (million spans) × CNY 0.09 (unit price per million spans) = CNY 360/day
Daily trace storage fee: 4,000 (million spans) × 7 (days) × CNY 0.02 (unit price per million spans) = CNY 560/day
Daily metric storage fee: 400 (million metrics) × 30 (days) × CNY 0.01 (unit price per million metrics) = CNY 120/day
Total: CNY 1,040/day
Example 2: You report 10 million traces (approximately 100 million spans) per day.
Store trace data for 7 days and metric data for 30 days.
Trace reporting fee: 100 (million spans) × CNY 0.09 (unit price per million spans) = CNY 9/day
Daily trace storage fee: 100 (million spans) × 7 (days) × CNY 0.02 (unit price per million spans) = CNY 14/day
Daily metric storage fee: 10 (million metrics) × 30 (days) × CNY 0.01 (unit price per million metrics) = CNY 3/day
Total: CNY 26/day
Cost comparison: managed vs. self-hosted
Most open source APM systems retain data for only 7 days. Managed Service for OpenTelemetry retains data for 30 days by default. Separate computing and storage fees let you independently adjust the retention period to balance cost and data availability.
|
Customer type |
Number of customer nodes |
Daily requests |
Machine configuration |
Open source cost (CNY/month) |
Managed Service for OpenTelemetry (CNY/month) |
|
Small-sized customer |
80 |
20 million requests (Complexity: 5 spans per request on average) |
|
5,836 |
764.8 |
|
Medium-sized customer |
300 |
300 million requests (Complexity: 7 spans per request on average) |
|
22,480 |
16,065 |
|
Large-sized customer |
1,000 |
1 billion requests (Complexity: 8 spans per request on average) |
|
65,088 |
64,800 |
Nodes refers to the number of Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances or Docker containers.
Request volumes are based on Apache documentation. Each trace can report up to 10 KB of data.
Self-hosted infrastructure assumes statistical data is stored for 15 days and full detail data for 7 days.
Total requests = requests per day x data retention period. Open source agents are used; other components are maintained by Alibaba Cloud.