Pay-as-you-go Standard Edition

Resource overview

Pay-as-you-go basic resources fall into three categories: compute resources, storage resources, and data transfer resources.

• Compute resources

  Compute jobs such as SQL (including UDFs), MapReduce, Spark, MaxFrame, and MCQA acquire resources on demand from a shared resource pool. You cannot specify the amount of resources that a job uses, and no limit is imposed on the amount that a job can use.

  You are billed based on the actual usage of each type of compute job. For more information about billing rules, see Computing pricing (pay-as-you-go).

  If too many jobs run at the same time, multiple users compete for resources and a job may not obtain all the resources that it requests. As a result, results may be returned more slowly.

• Storage resources

  You are charged only for the data stored in tables. MaxCompute compresses data for storage and bills you based on the compressed data volume. The compressed data volume usually differs from the volume that you measured before you uploaded the data, and is typically about one-fifth of the original volume.

  For more information about billing rules, see Storage pricing.

• Data transfer resources

  • Data uploads: Uploading data to MaxCompute is free of charge.

  • Data downloads: Only the data that you download over the Internet is charged. For more information about billing rules, see Download pricing.

Limits

Each Alibaba Cloud account can activate the pay-as-you-go Standard Edition only once in each region. After you activate the pay-as-you-go Standard Edition, you can also activate the subscription billing method.

An authorized RAM user and the Alibaba Cloud account to which the RAM user belongs are treated as a single account.

Usage notes

• To activate the pay-as-you-go Standard Edition, see Activate MaxCompute.

• After you activate the pay-as-you-go Standard Edition:

  • Projects that you create in the activated region can use pay-as-you-go compute resources.

  • The pay-as-you-go Standard Edition does not limit the number of jobs that you can run. Jobs use compute resources from a shared resource pool.

    For example, assume that a job requires 1,200 CUs. If the resource pool has sufficient capacity, the job can occupy 1,200 CUs. If the resource pool is fully occupied or has fewer than 1,200 CUs available, the job must wait for resources to be released or compete for the remaining resources, which extends the job execution time.

• For information about how to switch between the MaxCompute pay-as-you-go Standard Edition and other editions, see Change billing methods.

References

If you want to reduce job running costs and your jobs are not sensitive to completion time, you can activate the Pay-as-you-go Spot Edition. This edition suits analysis scenarios that involve large volumes of low-value data, such as user behavior logs and system logs.