Managed Service for Prometheus instances use a pay-as-you-go billing model. You are charged only for the metric data you ingest and store.
Billing overview
Charges are based on two cost dimensions:
|
Cost dimension |
Description |
|
Data ingestion |
Volume of metric data written to your instance. Two billing modes are available: by ingestion data volume or by ingestion metric sample count. |
|
Data retention |
Cost of storing metric data in hot storage (recent data) and archival storage (long-term retention). |
You select a billing mode during instance creation and can change the billing mode only once per instance.
Compare billing modes
The following table compares the two billing modes:
|
|
By ingestion data volume |
By ingestion metric sample count |
|
Billing unit |
GB of uncompressed metric data |
Number of samples (data points) |
|
Free ingestion quota |
50 GB/month per account in the first activated region |
500,000 metrics/day per instance |
|
Free hot storage |
30 days |
90 or 180 days, depending on the pricing option |
|
Hot storage extension |
Not supported |
Supported |
Free quotas
Free quotas apply to data ingestion and hot storage. Archival storage has no free quota.
Basic metrics
Basic metrics are built-in metrics from integrated Alibaba Cloud services. Ingestion is always free.
|
Integrated service |
Free hot storage period |
|
Container services - Basic Edition |
7 days |
|
Container services - Pro Edition |
90 days |
|
Managed Service for Prometheus |
90 days |
|
Realtime Compute for Apache Flink |
15 days |
Custom metrics
Custom metrics are user-defined metrics sent to your instance through the remote write API. Free quotas depend on the billing mode:
|
Billing mode |
Free ingestion quota |
Free hot storage period |
|
By ingestion data volume |
50 GB/month per account in the first activated region |
30 days |
|
By ingestion metric sample count |
500,000 metrics/day per instance |
90 or 180 days, depending on the pricing option |
Pricing
Data ingestion
By ingestion data volume
Billed by the volume of uncompressed metric data written to your instance through the remote write API.
Billing formula:
Daily ingestion fee = (Daily custom metric data written - Remaining monthly free quota) x Unit price per GB
Written data is billed in increments of 0.1 GB. If the daily written data is less than 0.1 GB, it is billed as 0.1 GB. Any daily total exceeding 0.1 GB is rounded to one decimal place.
By ingestion metric sample count
Billed by the number of samples (data points) written to your instance.
Billing formula:
Daily ingestion fee = (Daily custom metric samples / 1,000,000, rounded) x Tiered unit price
Data retention
Hot storage
Hot storage keeps recent metric data accessible for queries.
-
If you use the by ingestion data volume billing mode, the hot storage period defaults to 30 days and cannot be extended.
-
If you use the by ingestion metric sample count billing mode, hot storage is billed based on the stored metric data volume after the free storage period expires.
Hot storage fee: per million samples stored per day
Archival storage
Archival storage retains metric data beyond the hot storage period.
Billing formula:
Daily archival storage fee = Daily archived uncompressed metric data (GB) x Unit price per GB
Billing examples
These examples assume a Prometheus instance in the Singapore region with the following parameters:
|
Parameter |
Value |
|
Basic metrics: scrape jobs |
1 job, 1 target, 200 metrics per target |
|
Custom metrics: scrape jobs |
1 job, 2 targets, 500 metrics per target |
|
Size of a single sample |
0.5 KB |
|
Scraping interval |
15 seconds |
|
Hot storage retention |
90 days |
|
Archival storage retention |
90 days |
Archival storage costs accumulate over time. The formulas below account for a total retention period of 180 days (90 days hot + 90 days archival).
Example 1: By ingestion data volume
Step 1: Calculate daily ingested volume
Daily ingested volume = Scrape jobs x Targets per job x Metrics per target x (86,400 / Scraping interval) x Sample size
-
Basic metrics: 1 x 1 x 200 x (86,400 / 15) x 0.5 KB = 576,000 KB = 0.5 GB
-
Custom metrics: 1 x 2 x 500 x (86,400 / 15) x 0.5 KB = 2,880,000 KB = 2.7 GB
Step 2: Calculate monthly ingestion fee
|
Metric type |
Calculation |
Monthly fee |
|
Basic metrics |
Free (unlimited ingestion) |
USD 0 |
|
Custom metrics |
(2.7 GB/day x 30 days - 50 GB free quota) x USD 0.087/GB |
USD 2.697 |
|
Total ingestion |
USD 2.697 |
Step 3: Calculate monthly data retention fee (archival storage)
Archival storage fee = (0.5 + 2.7) GB/day x 90 days x USD 0.00022/GB x 30 days = USD 1.9008
Monthly total
|
Cost component |
Amount |
|
Data ingestion |
USD 2.697 |
|
Data retention (archival storage) |
USD 1.9008 |
|
Monthly total |
USD 4.5978 |
Example 2: By ingestion metric sample count
Step 1: Calculate daily ingested samples
Daily ingested samples = Scrape jobs x Targets per job x Metrics per target x (86,400 / Scraping interval)
-
Basic metrics: 1 x 1 x 200 x (86,400 / 15) = 1,152,000 samples
-
Custom metrics: 1 x 2 x 500 x (86,400 / 15) = 5,760,000 samples
Step 2: Calculate monthly ingestion fee
|
Metric type |
Calculation |
Monthly fee |
|
Basic metrics |
Free (unlimited ingestion) |
USD 0 |
|
Custom metrics |
5,760,000 / 1,000,000 = 6 (rounded) x USD 0.176 x 30 days |
USD 31.68 |
|
Total ingestion |
USD 31.68 |
Step 3: Calculate monthly data retention fee
Daily retained volume:
(1,152,000 + 5,760,000 samples) x 0.5 KB x 90 days = 311,040,000 KB = 296.6 GB
Monthly retention fee: 296.6 GB x USD 0.00022/GB x 30 days = USD 1.95756
Monthly total
|
Cost component |
Amount |
|
Data ingestion |
USD 31.68 |
|
Data retention (archival storage) |
USD 1.95756 |
|
Monthly total |
USD 33.63756 |
Activate the service
To activate, choose billing by or .