Cost optimization FAQ

What is a savings plan?

A savings plan offers discounted pay-as-you-go rates in exchange for a 1-year or 3-year spending commitment (measured in CNY/hour). The plan covers your hourly pay-as-you-go usage up to your commitment amount at the discounted rate. See What is a savings plan?

What are the features of a savings plan?

• Flexible purchase: Starts at USD 0.01/hour with no pricing restrictions. Supports installment payments to optimize your cash flow.

• Cost optimization: Reduces pay-as-you-go costs by up to 76%.

• Simplified management: A single plan covers pay-as-you-go instances of products such as ECS and ECI across regions, instance families, and accounts.

What is the hourly commitment of a savings plan?

Your hourly commitment is the minimum spending you commit to, measured in CNY per hour. Hourly bills up to this amount receive a discount and are covered by the savings plan. When your hourly bill is less than your hourly commitment, your payment depends on the payment option. For a Partial Upfront plan, you pay 50% of your hourly commitment. For a No Upfront plan, you pay 100% of your hourly commitment. See Purchase and use savings plans to select an appropriate hourly commitment value.

How does a savings plan work when the number of covered instances is not an integer?

If your savings plan covers 38.22 instances per hour and you run 39 instances, one instance is 22% covered by the plan and the remaining 78% is charged at the pay-as-you-go rate. If you run only 38 instances, the commitment for the remaining 0.22 instances is wasted for that hour.

What types of savings plans are there?

General-purpose savings plans are more flexible, while ECS Compute savings plans offer higher discounts. See What is a savings plan?

What payment methods do savings plans support?

Savings plans support three payment options: all upfront, partial upfront, and no upfront. Discounts vary by term and payment option, with the 3-year all upfront option offering the highest discount. See What is a savings plan?

Where can I find the recommendation and purchase pages for savings plans?

• Method 1

  Purchase a plan from the Savings Plan purchase page, or get a recommendation from the Savings Plan recommendation page. The system recommends a suitable plan based on criteria such as reference usage data, plan type, and payment option.

• Method 2

  You can go to ECS Console - Savings Plan.

• Method 3

  Go to Expenses and Costs. In the navigation pane on the left, choose Savings Plan.

How do I query the discounts for a savings plan?

Go to the Savings Plan Pricing page and set the plan properties to view the corresponding pay-as-you-go discounts.

How do I check the cost savings after purchasing a savings plan?

Go to the Savings Plan Overview page to view your cost savings, including cumulative savings, savings for the current year, and savings for the current month.

Can I have multiple active savings plans at the same time?

Yes. The system automatically applies the plan that provides the optimal discount.

Can I purchase reserved instances after purchasing a savings plan?

Yes. However, reserved instances are applied before savings plans when covering pay-as-you-go instance costs.

Can I purchase SCUs after purchasing a savings plan?

Yes. However, Storage Capacity Units (SCUs) are applied before savings plans when covering pay-as-you-go instance costs.

If I upgrade an instance type, can it still be covered by a savings plan?

Coverage depends on the type of savings plan you purchased. Savings plans cover multiple instance types and can be combined. If the new instance type is not covered by your current plan, purchase an additional plan that covers the new instance type.

Do savings plans provide inventory reservation?

Do savings plans offer discounts for spot instances?

No. Savings plans do not cover spot instances.

What happens when a savings plan expires?

When a savings plan expires, covered instances revert to the standard pay-as-you-go rate. The instances are not released, and your services are not affected.

Do reserved instances provide inventory reservation?

Zonal reserved instances reserve matching instance inventory. Regional reserved instances do not reserve inventory.

What operating systems do reserved instances support?

Reserved instances cover pay-as-you-go bills of Linux and Windows instances. For example, a Linux reserved instance applies to any Linux instance regardless of image source (public image, custom image, shared image, or Alibaba Cloud Marketplace image).

If your pay-as-you-go instance uses a Bring Your Own License (BYOL) image and you want a reserved instance to offset the bill, submit a ticket.

Which instance families can use reserved instances?

Can reserved instances cover the bills of spot instances?

No, they cannot.

Can I modify the instance family of a reserved instance?

No, you cannot.

In what scenarios should I purchase zonal reserved instances?

Purchase a zonal reserved instance when you need inventory reservation.

In what scenarios should I purchase regional reserved instances?

Purchase a regional reserved instance when you do not need inventory reservation but want more flexible bill coverage, such as zone flexibility and instance size flexibility.

How is the zone flexibility of a reserved instance applied?

Only regional reserved instances support zone flexibility. Example:

You have the following pay-as-you-go instance:

One Linux instance, ecs.c5.xlarge, in China (Qingdao) Zone B. Its name is C5PAYG-b.

You purchase the following reserved instance:

One regional reserved instance, ecs.c5.xlarge, in China (Qingdao). Its name is C5RI.

After purchase, C5RI matches and covers the bill for C5PAYG-b.

Due to business needs, you release C5PAYG-b and launch an identical instance named C5PAYG-c in Zone C. The reserved instance then matches and covers the bill for C5PAYG-c.

How is the instance size flexibility of a reserved instance applied?

Only regional reserved instances support instance size flexibility. Examples:

A regional reserved instance of ecs.g5.4xlarge can cover one ecs.g5.4xlarge, two ecs.g5.2xlarge, or four ecs.g5.xlarge pay-as-you-go instances.

A 1-year regional reserved instance of ecs.g5.xlarge can cover one ecs.g5.xlarge pay-as-you-go instance per hour for one year, or 50% of one ecs.g5.2xlarge pay-as-you-go instance per hour for one year.

Can a zonal reserved instance be changed to a regional reserved instance?

Yes. You can modify the scope at any time:

• Change the scope from zonal to regional.

• Change the scope from regional to zonal.

• For a zonal reserved instance, change the zone within the same region.

Can I modify the region of a reserved instance?

No, you cannot. For example, a zonal reserved instance in China (Hangzhou) Zone B can be changed to another zone within China (Hangzhou) or to a regional reserved instance in China (Hangzhou), but cannot be moved to another region.

Can reserved instances be used across accounts?

No. However, enterprise users can enable the Benefit Asset Sharing feature in Enterprise Account Center to share a reserved instance across Alibaba Cloud accounts. See Share a reserved instance among multiple accounts.

Can reserved instances cover the storage and network bills of pay-as-you-go instances?

No. A reserved instance covers only the compute resource (vCPU and memory) bills of a pay-as-you-go instance. A Windows reserved instance also covers the image bill.

Can I control which specific instances are covered by a reserved instance?

No. When multiple instances meet the criteria, the system automatically applies the reserved instance based on an optimized matching scheme.

How are reserved instances billed?

Reserved instances are billed separately and support three payment options: all upfront, partial upfront, and no upfront.

After purchase, the term begins and you must pay according to the payment option for the entire term, regardless of whether the reserved instance is matched with a pay-as-you-go instance. The all upfront option offers the greatest savings. See What is a reserved instance?

How is the effective time calculated after a reserved instance is purchased?

How is the effective time calculated after a reserved instance is modified, split, or merged?

When you modify, split, or merge a reserved instance, the old instance becomes invalid and a new one is generated. Both the new effective time and old expiration time are calculated on the hour. For example, you split a zonal reserved instance (RI1) of ecs.g5.2xlarge into two zonal reserved instances (RI2 and RI3) of ecs.g5.xlarge at 13:45:00 on February 26, 2019. RI1 expires and RI2/RI3 take effect at 13:00:00 on February 26, 2019. From that point, the covered instance type changes from ecs.g5.2xlarge to ecs.g5.xlarge. If RI2 and RI3 match instances immediately, they cover the hourly bills of ecs.g5.xlarge instances from 13:00:00 on February 26, 2019.

Why can't I see the no upfront option when purchasing a reserved instance?

Availability depends on your ECS usage. To enable this option, submit a ticket.

Can I change the payment method of a reserved instance?

No, you cannot.

Can I get a refund for a reserved instance?

• You can request a no-questions-asked refund within five days of your purchase.

  Each Alibaba Cloud account is eligible for only one five-day no-questions-asked refund per year. For example, if you purchase an ECS instance and a reserved instance at the same time and request a no-questions-asked refund for the ECS instance, you cannot request one for the reserved instance in the same year.

• You can request a refund if there is insufficient instance capacity in the destination region or zone after you split, merge, or modify the scope of a reserved instance.

Can reserved instances be resold?

No, they cannot.

Can a Windows reserved instance cover the image fee?

Yes. The purchase price of a Windows reserved instance includes the Windows image fee, covering the image portion of a Windows pay-as-you-go instance bill.

Can a Linux reserved instance cover the image fee?

No, it cannot.

Is the coverage of a reserved instance refreshed every hour?

Yes. Coverage is refreshed every hour. View the matching and coverage details in View reserved instances.

Can a reserved instance cover multiple instances at the same time?

What is a Storage Capacity Unit (SCU)?

A Storage Capacity Unit (SCU) is a prepaid storage offering that covers pay-as-you-go bills of storage products such as disks. Compared with subscription disks, the combination of SCUs and pay-as-you-go disks offers both cost-effectiveness and flexibility.

Which block storage products can use SCUs?

Can SCUs be used alone?

No. An SCU must be matched with a pay-as-you-go disk or snapshot to cover its bill.

What are the deduction rules for SCUs?

An SCU covers pay-as-you-go bills based on a deduction coefficient. See Deduction rules.

How are SCUs billed?

SCUs are billed based on capacity. Prices vary by region. For pricing details, see the Cloud Product Pricing page.

Can I get a refund for an SCU?