Billing rules
Managed Service for OpenTelemetry uses the pay-as-you-go billing method and meters trace ingestion, trace storage, and metric storage separately. This topic describes the terms used in billing, the free trial, the billable items and their unit prices, billing examples, how to enable pay-as-you-go, the billing cycle, and how costs compare with self-managed open source deployments.
Notice: The prices in this topic are for reference only. For official prices, see the Pricing page.
Terms
Trace — A trace represents how one transaction or process runs through a distributed system.
Span — A span is a named, timed segment of continuous execution within a trace. Within a trace, each call is recorded as one span.
Metric — Statistical data, such as request counts, response times, and error counts of applications, APIs, and databases.
Relationship between a trace and spans — All activity that shares the same trace ID within one account counts as a single trace. A trace contains a maximum of 10 requests (spans), and each span can be up to 2 KB in size. Data beyond that size is discarded. For more information about how a trace relates to its spans, see Basic concepts of Managed Service for OpenTelemetry.
Relationship between a trace and a metric — Ingested traces are aggregated into statistical metrics. One trace generates one metric.
Billable items and unit prices
The billable items of Managed Service for OpenTelemetry are trace ingestion, trace storage, and metric storage. The following table lists the daily free quota and the unit price of each billable item.
After you enable pay-as-you-go, Managed Service for OpenTelemetry provides a daily free quota. You are not charged when your usage stays below the free quota. When your usage reaches or exceeds the free quota, you are charged for all traces and metrics.
| Billable item | Free quota | Unit price |
| Ingestion fee | 1 million spans/day | CNY 0.09/million spans |
| Trace storage fee | 1 million spans/day | CNY 0.02/million spans/day |
| Metric storage fee | 1 million metrics/day | CNY 0.01/million metrics/day |
Ingestion fee
The ingestion fee depends on the number of request spans that are actually ingested. The ingestion fee covers only the traffic of the current day.
Example: You ingest 1 million requests per day, which is about 10 million spans. The average daily fee is 10 (million spans) × 0.09 = CNY 0.9.
Ingested traces are aggregated into statistical metrics, such as the latency, queries per second (QPS), and error counts of applications, APIs, and databases. To change the ingested volume, set the sampling rate on the Cluster Configurations > Sampling Storage page of the Managed Service for OpenTelemetry console.
Trace storage fee
The trace storage fee depends on the actual storage volume. The total storage volume is measured each day and depends on the data retention period: the volume measured for a day is the daily ingested volume multiplied by the data retention period. You can change the data retention period on the Cluster Configurations > Cluster Configurations page of the Managed Service for OpenTelemetry console.
Example: You ingest 1 million traces (about 10 million spans) per day and store them for 15 days. The daily measured volume of stored traces is 15 (days) × 10 (million spans) = 150 million. The daily storage fee is 150 (million) × 0.02 = CNY 3.
Metric storage fee
The metric storage fee depends on the actual storage volume. The total storage volume is measured each day and depends on the data retention period: the volume measured for a day is the daily volume of generated metrics multiplied by the data retention period. You can change the data retention period on the Cluster Configurations > Cluster Configurations page.
Example: You ingest 1 million traces per day and store them for 15 days, which generates about 1 million metrics per day. The daily measured volume of stored metrics is 15 (days) × 1 (million metrics) = 15 million. The daily storage fee is 15 (million) × 0.01 = CNY 0.15.
Pay-as-you-go examples
Example 1: You ingest 400 million traces (about 4 billion spans) per day.
Plan 1 and Plan 2 differ only in the trace retention period. Compare their totals to see how the retention period affects the daily fee.
Plan 1: Store all trace data and metric data for 30 days.
Trace ingestion fee: 4,000 (million spans) × 0.09 (unit price per million spans ingested) = CNY 360/day
Daily trace storage fee: 4,000 (million spans) × 30 (days) × 0.02 (unit price per million spans stored) = CNY 2,400/day
Daily metric storage fee: 400 (million metrics) × 30 (days) × 0.01 (unit price per million metrics stored) = CNY 120/day
Total: CNY 2,880/day
Plan 2: Store trace data for 7 days and metric data for 30 days.
Trace ingestion fee: 4,000 (million spans) × 0.09 (unit price per million spans ingested) = CNY 360/day
Daily trace storage fee: 4,000 (million spans) × 7 (days) × 0.02 (unit price per million spans stored) = CNY 560/day
Daily metric storage fee: 400 (million metrics) × 30 (days) × 0.01 (unit price per million metrics stored) = CNY 120/day
Total: CNY 1,040/day
Example 2: You ingest 10 million traces (about 100 million spans) per day.
Trace data is stored for 7 days and metric data for 30 days.
Trace ingestion fee: 100 (million spans) × 0.09 (unit price per million spans ingested) = CNY 9/day
Daily trace storage fee: 100 (million spans) × 7 (days) × 0.02 (unit price per million spans stored) = CNY 14/day
Daily metric storage fee: 10 (million metrics) × 30 (days) × 0.01 (unit price per million metrics) = CNY 3/day
Total: CNY 26/day
Enable pay-as-you-go
To enable pay-as-you-go, go to the Activate Managed Service for OpenTelemetry page.
Billing cycle
Managed Service for OpenTelemetry is billed daily and deducts the fee of the previous day at 00:00 each day.
Cost comparison with self-managed open source deployments
Most mainstream open source application performance management (APM) solutions store data for a fixed period of 7 days. Managed Service for OpenTelemetry stores data for 30 days by default.
Managed Service for OpenTelemetry prices computation and storage separately and lets you change the storage duration in real time. You can adjust the storage duration of your data as needed to control costs.
| Customer profile | Number of nodes | Daily requests | Infrastructure configuration | Self-hosting cost (CNY/month) | Managed Service for OpenTelemetry(CNY/month) |
| Small | 80 | 20 million requests (average complexity: 5 spans per request) | 4 Elasticsearch instances (4 vCPU, 16 GB memory, 1 TB SSD); 4 Collector instances (4 vCPU, 8 GB memory) | 5,836 | 764.8 |
| Medium | 300 | 300 million requests (average complexity: 7 spans per request) | 8 Elasticsearch instances (8 vCPU, 16 GB memory, 6 TB SSD); 8 Collector instances (4 vCPU, 8 GB memory) | 22,480 | 16,065 |
| Large | 1,000 | 1 billion requests (average complexity: 8 spans per request) | 12 Elasticsearch instances (16 vCPU, 64 GB memory, 21 TB SSD); 16 Collector instances (4 vCPU, 8 GB memory) | 65,088 | 64,800 |
The number of nodes is the number of ECS instances or Docker containers.
The number of daily requests is based on the official Apache documentation, which uses a write size of 10 KB per trace.
The infrastructure configuration is calculated with statistical data stored for 15 days and full detailed data stored for 7 days.
Managed Service for OpenTelemetry is billed by the total number of stored application requests (daily requests × retention period). It uses an open source agent, and Alibaba Cloud maintains all other components.