OSS billing: billable items, pricing, and payment methods-Object Storage Service(OSS)-阿里云帮助中心

Storing data in OSS incurs a storage fee based on duration. Each upload, download, or access incurs a request fee, and public internet distribution incurs outbound data transfer fees. Value-added services such as CDN acceleration, image processing, Transfer Acceleration, and DDoS protection generate additional billable items.

If your workload has predictable usage, purchase a resource plan to reduce costs. A resource plan must precisely match the billable item it covers. For example, a data transfer plan offsets only outbound data transfer fees. A mismatched plan will not apply to your bill.

Pricing

Full pricing details are on the OSS Product Pricing.

Billable items

OSS has two categories of billable items:

Basic billable items: Common charges for most OSS users, including the storage fee for stored data, outbound data transfer fees for downloads or CDN distribution, and the request fee for read and write requests.
Billable items for value-added services: Optional services such as image processing, Transfer Acceleration, and DDoS protection. Billable items for value-added services.

Billing diagram

The following diagram shows all OSS billable items.

Billing methods

OSS supports two billing methods:

Pay-as-you-go: A post-paid method where you pay for actual usage of each billable item. Ideal for workloads with fluctuating usage.
Resource plans: A pre-paid method. Purchase resource plans for common billable items such as storage and outbound data transfer to receive a discount. Usage is first deducted from the plan; excess usage is billed on a pay-as-you-go basis. Suitable for workloads with stable usage.

Other prepaid options for storage fees

Additional prepaid options are available for certain storage fees:

Storage capacity unit (SCU): Offsets certain storage fees for OSS and other cloud storage products.
Reserved capacity: This pre-paid option covers storage fees for Standard (LRS) buckets in a specific region and for ECS snapshots.
Reserved capacity (non-regional): A pre-paid product for Standard (LRS) storage fees from buckets not associated with a specific region. Usage is deducted from the reserved capacity during bill settlement.

Free tier

First-time OSS users are eligible for a free tier that provides a certain amount of Standard (LRS) storage capacity, outbound data transfer, and request counts at no charge.

Billing cycle

OSS meters resource usage and calculates fees on an hourly basis.

Note

Take storage fees as an example. The OSS产品定价 page specifies that the unit price for storage fees is CNY/GB/month, but billable items are charged on an hourly basis. The calculation method is Actual resource usage × Hourly unit price. Therefore, you need to convert the monthly unit price for storage to an hourly unit price. For example, the unit price for Standard (Locally Redundant Storage) is CNY 0.12/GB/month, and its corresponding hourly unit price is approximately CNY 0.000167/GB/hour (0.12 ÷ 30 ÷ 24).

Billing overview