Snapshot billing

Billable items

• Before you use snapshots for the first time, you must activate the Snapshot service. Activation is free, and billing starts only after you create a snapshot. By default, manual snapshots and snapshots created by automatic snapshot policies are standard snapshots. Alibaba Cloud charges a standard snapshot storage fee based on the total size and storage duration of your standard snapshots in each region.

• To reduce storage costs, you can convert standard snapshots to archive snapshots. Alibaba Cloud charges an archive snapshot storage fee based on the total size and storage duration of your archive snapshots in each region.

  Important

  The minimum retention period for an archive snapshot is 60 days (1,440 hours). If you delete an archive snapshot before this period ends, you are charged the storage fee for the time it was stored, plus an early deletion fee for archive snapshots for the remaining time.

• If you use the snapshot replication feature to copy a standard snapshot to another region for cross-region data backup, you incur a snapshot replication data transfer fee and a standard snapshot storage fee in the destination region. Archive snapshots cannot be replicated.

• If you use the (public preview) snapshot warm-up feature to preload data from Object Storage Service (OSS) to eliminate first-access latency, you incur a snapshot warm-up fee.

Billable item	Billing formula	Billing method
Standard snapshot storage fee	Unit price for standard snapshots: Go to the Elastic Compute Service product page. On the Snapshot tab, view the unit price for standard snapshots in each region. Standard snapshot size: Unit: GB. For more information about how to view snapshot sizes, see View snapshot sizes. Storage duration: Billing starts after a snapshot is created and stops after the standard snapshot is deleted.	Only pay-as-you-go is supported. Snapshots are billed hourly. Partial hours are billed as full hours. You can purchase prepaid resource plans to offset the storage fees for your standard snapshots and reduce costs. You can purchase a Standard (LRS) Storage Plan or a Storage Capacity Unit (SCU) to offset the storage fees for standard snapshots. Deduction rule: After purchase, the resource plan is automatically applied to cover the hourly storage fees for standard snapshots in the same region within its validity period. Usage beyond the plan's capacity is billed on a pay-as-you-go basis. Deduction order: Standard (LRS) Storage Plan > Storage Capacity Unit (SCU) > pay-as-you-go. Deduction examples: OSS resource plan deduction example and SCU deduction example.
Archive snapshot storage fee	Unit price for archive snapshots: Go to the Elastic Compute Service product page. On the Snapshot tab, view the unit price for archive snapshots in each region. Archive snapshot size: Unit: GB. For more information about how to view snapshot sizes, see View snapshot sizes. Storage duration: Billing starts after a snapshot is archived and stops after the archive snapshot is deleted.	Only pay-as-you-go is supported. Resource plans cannot be used to offset these fees. Billed hourly. Partial hours are billed as full hours.
Early deletion fee for archive snapshots	Unit price for archive snapshots: Go to the Elastic Compute Service product page. On the Snapshot tab, view the unit price for archive snapshots in each region. Deleted archive snapshot size: Unit: GB. For more information about how to view snapshot sizes, see View snapshot sizes. Remaining duration: 1,440 hours (60 days) - Actual storage duration, in hours.	Only pay-as-you-go is supported. Resource plans cannot be used to offset these fees. Billed hourly. Partial hours are billed as full hours. After deleting an archive snapshot, you are still billed for the current hour. The charge will appear in your bill details in the following hour.
Snapshot replication data transfer fee	Unit price for snapshot replication: Go to the Elastic Compute Service product page. On the Snapshot tab, view the unit price for snapshots in each region. Snapshot size: Varies by replication type. For more information, see Billing. Important If you choose to encrypt the snapshot during replication, you do not incur key fees when using the default KMS key. For other scenarios, see KMS billing for details.	Only pay-as-you-go is supported. Resource plans cannot be used to offset these fees. Billed hourly. Partial hours are billed as full hours.
Snapshot warm-up fee	The total snapshot warm-up fee for a region is the sum of the fees generated in each availability zone where the feature is enabled. The fee for a single availability zone is calculated as follows: Snapshot size: Full snapshot size, in GB. Go to the ECS console - Snapshots page. You can find the size in the Full Snapshot size column for the target snapshot. Duration: The retention time for the warm-up feature, in hours. Number of concurrent disk creations: The number of concurrent disk creations specified in the warm-up configuration. Unit price for snapshot warm-up: Go to the Elastic Compute Service product page. On the Snapshot tab, view the unit price for snapshot warm-up in each region.	Only pay-as-you-go is supported. Resource plans cannot be used to offset these fees. Billed per second, with a minimum charge for one hour.

Billing examples

The prices in these examples are for reference only. For actual pricing, see the Elastic Compute Service product page.

Example 5: Snapshot warm-up billing example

Snapshot warm-up is billed based on the full size of the snapshot. Assume you have two standard snapshots, Snapshot A (100 GB) and Snapshot B (120 GB), in the China (Hohhot) region. You warm up both snapshots in a single availability zone for 2 hours, with 100 concurrent disk creations. The unit price for snapshot warm-up in the China (Hohhot) region is CNY 0.0000138889/(GB × disk × hour). The warm-up fee for a single availability zone is calculated as follows: Snapshot size × Warm-up retention period × Number of concurrent disk creations × Unit price.

Warm-up fee for standard snapshot A: 100 GB × 2 hours × 100 disks × CNY 0.0000138889/(GB × disk × hour) = CNY 0.277778

Warm-up fee for standard snapshot B: 120 GB × 2 hours × 100 disks × CNY 0.0000138889/(GB × disk × hour) = CNY 0.3333336

1. Log on to the Expenses and Costs console. In the navigation pane on the left, choose Bill > Billing Details, and then click Details.

2. Set Product Name to ECS-Snapshot, and then click Search.

Stop all snapshot billing

After you enable the snapshot service, you cannot disable it. You can stop snapshot billing in the following ways.

1. Manually delete the target snapshots.

   • To stop snapshot billing for a single instance: In the current region, view all snapshots, including manual and automatic snapshots, created for the cloud disks of the instance. Then, manually delete the snapshots.

   • To stop snapshot billing for your Alibaba Cloud account: Snapshots are billed by region. To stop all snapshot charges for your account, you must delete all snapshots in all regions. Switch to each region to view and delete the snapshots.

2. Prevent new snapshot charges.

   After you manually delete all snapshots, check for and delete any automatic snapshot policies that are still in effect. This prevents new snapshots from being created automatically.

Stop snapshot warm-up fees

Billing for snapshot warm-up stops when you disable the feature, when the warm-up retention period expires, or if your account has an overdue payment. The following steps describe how to disable the snapshot warm-up feature:

1. Go to the ECS console - Snapshots. In the top left, select the resource group and region where your target resource is located.

2. On the Snapshots tab, find the target snapshot. In the Actions column, choose > Manage Snapshot Prefetch.

3. On the Snapshot Prefetch page, find the target warm-up availability zone and click Close in the Actions column. The warm-up status changes to Disabled, and billing stops.