Billing of public bandwidth

Prices in the Chinese mainland

Regional centers refer to provincial capitals and municipalities directly under the central government, excluding Beijing, Shanghai, and all prefecture-level cities in Guangdong Province. Sub-provincial cities that are not provincial capitals — such as Dalian, Qingdao, Xiamen, and Ningbo — are also classified as regional centers.

Prices in other countries and regions

For the edge node coverage of each billing region, see Node distribution.

Static public IP bandwidth

When you create an ENS instance, you can assign a public IP address to its NIC. ENS then automatically assigns a static public IP address to the instance for internet access. With a static public IP address, you are charged only for internet bandwidth — no configuration fee applies.

How bandwidth is measured: ENS measures the inbound and outbound bandwidth of all instances on each edge node every 5 minutes. The higher of the two values is used as a valid peak bandwidth data point.

In pay-as-you-go mode, peak inbound and outbound bandwidth values are upper limits, not guaranteed service commitments. Bandwidth may be throttled under resource contention.

Three billing methods are available for static public IP bandwidth. A single billing method applies to all static public IPs under the same Alibaba Cloud account. For details, see Billing method consistency.

EIP bandwidth

If an ENS instance is attached to an EIP, the instance accesses the internet through the EIP. You are charged for both the EIP configuration fee and the internet bandwidth the EIP uses.

How EIP bandwidth is measured: ENS measures the inbound and outbound bandwidth of all EIPs on each edge node. The higher of the two values is used as a valid peak bandwidth data point. EIPs under the same account, on the same edge node, and using the same billing method are billed together.

EIPs under the same account can use different billing methods. For example, if you have three EIPs, the first can use pay-by-traffic and the other two can use pay-by-monthly-95th-percentile-bandwidth. ENS merges the bandwidth only for EIPs sharing the same account, edge node, and billing method.

EIP configuration fee (effective April 1, 2024):

Validity factor = Number of valid days / Total days in the month.

Example: June 2024 has 30 days. If an EIP has 17 valid days, the validity factor is 17/30 = 0.5667.

Valid days are counted from the day the EIP is created to the day it is released within a calendar month. If the EIP is not released in the current month, the period ends on the last day of the month.

• Scenario 1: An EIP is created on June 5 and released on June 25. Valid days in June: 21.

• Scenario 2: An EIP is created on June 5 and kept through the end of June. Valid days in June: 26.

Choosing a billing method

The table below compares all three methods using the same baseline: a China Telecom node in Beijing, 50 Mbps peak bandwidth usage for an entire month (June 2024, 30 days).

The example above uses a full month (30/30 validity factor = 1.0) for illustration. When bandwidth usage spans fewer days, multiply by the corresponding validity factor.

Daily peak bandwidth

ENS measures bandwidth every 5 minutes, generating 288 data points per day. The highest data point in a day is the daily peak bandwidth for that node.

Pricing example: A node has a daily peak bandwidth of 50 Mbps. The unit price is USD 0.3077/Mbps/day (China Telecom in Beijing).

Daily fee for that node = 50 x 0.3077 = USD 15.39

Monthly 4th peak bandwidth

ENS calculates the daily peak bandwidth for each node every day throughout the month. At the end of the month, all daily peak values are sorted in descending order, and the fourth highest value is the billable bandwidth.

If no bandwidth is used during certain periods, no data points are generated for those periods.

Pricing example: In June 2024 (30 days), an instance on a China Telecom node in Beijing uses bandwidth for 17 days (June 5–June 21). The 4th highest daily peak bandwidth is 60 Mbps.

• Validity factor: 17/30 = 0.5667

• Unit price: USD 7.6923/Mbps/month

• Monthly fee for that node: 60 x 7.6923 x 0.5667 = USD 261.51

Monthly 95th percentile bandwidth

ENS measures bandwidth every 5 minutes throughout the month, generating one data point every 5 minutes. All data points (N) for a node are sorted in descending order. The top 5% of data points (M = floor(N x 0.05)) are discarded, and the (M+1)th data point is the 95th percentile billable bandwidth.

If no bandwidth is used during certain periods, no data points are generated for those periods.

Pricing example: In June 2024 (30 days), an instance on a China Telecom node in Beijing uses bandwidth for 14 days.

• Total data points: 14 days x 288 data points/day = 4,032 data points

• Top 5% discarded: floor(4,032 x 0.05) = floor(201.6) = 201 data points

• 95th percentile value: the 202nd data point (after sorting in descending order)

• Assume the 202nd data point is 60 Mbps.

• Validity factor: 14/30 = 0.4667

• Unit price: USD 0.0714/Mbps/month

• Monthly fee for that node: 60 x 0.0714 x 0.4667 = USD 2.00