Understand Alibaba Cloud billing methods

Pay-as-you-go resources are running on your account, possibly in a rarely used region or created by another account user. Check your resources:

• View the Bill Overview page. Select a billing month to analyze your consumption by product.

• Log on to the Alibaba Cloud Management Console. On the Overview page, check your cloud resources in all regions. Pay special attention to regions that you do not use often.

Pay-as-you-go billing starts when a resource is created, regardless of login status. To stop charges, use the cost-saving shutdown feature or release the resource.

Shutdown does not always stop billing. If fees continue after release:

• Unreleased associated resources: Releasing a primary instance (e.g., ECS) does not release associated resources like Elastic IP Addresses (EIPs) or snapshots, which continue to incur fees.

• Billing delay: Pay-as-you-go bills are generated hourly. Releasing a resource at 10:08 still generates a bill for the 10:00–11:00 cycle after 11:00.

Subscriptions commit you to specific resource specifications for a fixed period at lower prices than pay-as-you-go. Resources shut down upon expiration. Best for clear budget planning and stable demand (e.g., 24/7 web services).

To convert a subscription to a savings plan:

1. Log on to the Alibaba Cloud ECS console.

2. In the navigation pane on the left, choose Deployment & Elasticity > Savings Plan.

3. On the Savings Plan page, click the One-click Convert Subscription Instance to Pay-as-you-go + Savings Plan button. The conversion action page appears.

4. On the conversion action page, select the instance that you want to convert and the specifications of the target savings plan. Then, click Next: Calculate Fees. The system automatically calculates the conversion plan and fees.

5. After the calculation is complete, click View Plan to go to the conversion plan details page. After you confirm that the plan is correct, click Next: Confirm Conversion.

   • If the payable difference is greater than 0, you must pay the difference after you confirm the conversion.

   • If the payable difference is less than 0, the difference is refunded to your account.

6. After the conversion is successful, click the View button. You are redirected to the Expenses and Costs center, where you can view the conversion order.

1. Variable resource usage: Frequent ECS upgrades and downgrades (e.g., scaling before promotions) incur hidden costs under subscription. A Savings Plan with pay-as-you-go eliminates these switching costs.

2. Time-varying demands: When teams use different resources at different times (e.g., ECS by day, ECI by night), subscriptions waste capacity. A Savings Plan offsets both ECS and ECI pay-as-you-go fees, cutting total costs.

A savings plan offers greater flexibility in resource usage while providing significant discounts.

• Compared to subscriptions, a Savings Plan with pay-as-you-go lets you adjust resources freely without locking in specifications upfront.

• Compared to resource plans, a Savings Plan offsets a broader range of services, improving flexibility and cost-effectiveness.

You can go to the Elastic Compute Service Savings Plans pricing discount details page to view discount details. On this page, you can set the properties of your savings plan to view the corresponding pay-as-you-go discounts.

If you already have pay-as-you-go instances, go to the Savings Plan Purchase Plan Calculation page. Enter the savings plan type, subscription duration, and payment method. The system automatically recommends the hourly committed spend and estimates the expected savings.

If you have not created pay-as-you-go instances, go to the Savings Plan Price Calculator. Enter your desired instance configuration to obtain recommended plans.

Alibaba Cloud provides two methods to help you calculate the committed spend and purchase a suitable savings plan: platform-recommended plans and a price calculator.

You can also manually calculate your hourly commitment amount and then go to the Savings Plans purchase page. Calculating the hourly commitment amount for ECS instances and Calculating the hourly commitment amount for ECI instances.

After you purchase a savings plan, you can continue your free trial. The free trial applies first, and the savings plan offsets any usage that exceeds the trial quota.

After a savings plan takes effect, you are charged the committed amount even if you have no usage to offset. If you want to start using the savings plan after 3 months, you can specify the effective time when you purchase the plan.

Go to the Savings Plan Overview page to view saved amounts, usage details, and coverage rates. Adjust your committed spend based on current usage and coverage data.

No, you cannot. A savings plan requires you to commit to a certain amount of spend over a period of time in exchange for lower prices.

Currently, savings plans do not support unsubscription.

After purchasing a Savings Plan, you may still receive pay-as-you-go bills if your instances fall outside the plan scope, offsetting rules limit coverage, or the plan has not yet taken effect. Troubleshoot as follows:

1. Scope mismatch: Verify the plan covers the service and billing items you are using.

2. Offset rules: Check the offset order and scope. Compute-optimized ECS plans, for example, are limited to specific regions and instance families.

3. Effective time: Confirm the plan has started offsetting fees.

If issues persist, review the Savings Plan documentation or contact customer service.

Resource plans offer discounted prices when you purchase a fixed amount of usage upfront. They suit storage and traffic products with clear budget planning and predictable consumption, while ensuring resource usage flexibility.

After you purchase a resource plan, if your pay-as-you-go bills are not offset, it may be for one of the following reasons:

1. Scope mismatch: Confirm the resource plan covers the service and billing items you are using.

2. Effective time: New plans may have a delay before offsetting begins. Check if the plan has taken effect for the current billing period.

3. Non-covered items: Resource plans only offset specific services (e.g., a transcoding plan cannot offset storage). Different plans cannot offset each other.

4. Unmet conditions: Some plans require specific configurations. For example, ApsaraVideo VOD data transfer plans require an accelerated domain name with pay-by-data-transfer billing enabled.

If issues persist, review the resource plan documentation or contact customer service.

Whether a resource plan supports unsubscription depends on the rules of the specific product.

Resource plans that support unsubscription fall into two scenarios: full refund for unused resources and partial refund.

For partial refunds, the refund amount is calculated as follows: Refund amount = Order payable amount - Consumed amount. The consumed amount is calculated based on the following rules:

• For total usage resource plans, the consumed amount is linearly prorated based on usage.

• For periodic usage resource plans, the consumed amount is calculated based on the actual usage duration.

Unsubscription Rules.