General-purpose Savings Plan

General-purpose Savings Plan for RDS

The General-purpose Savings Plan offsets the pay-as-you-go bills for specific ApsaraDB RDS billable items. It applies to ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL, ApsaraDB RDS for PostgreSQL, and ApsaraDB RDS for SQL Server.

You commit to a specific hourly spend. Based on the plan's term (1 or 3 years—a longer term provides a greater discount) and payment option, the system calculates an hourly deductible amount. This deductible amount is automatically applied to your eligible ApsaraDB RDS pay-as-you-go bills. Any charges that exceed the deductible amount are billed to your account.

By setting an appropriate committed spend, you can reduce your ApsaraDB RDS pay-as-you-go costs by 20% to 70%. To estimate your committed spend, see Estimate the committed spend.

Purchase

Purchase a General-purpose Savings Plan

Deduction rules

Eligible billable items

The General-purpose Savings Plan can offset pay-as-you-go bills for all ApsaraDB RDS products (including subscription instances, pay-as-you-go instances, and serverless instances), with the exception of IO Burst (io_burst), the OSS storage space for data archiving (rds_oss_storage), and the auto-scaling of elastic compute resources (CPU+IOPS) for high-performance local disks.

Deductible amount

The committed spend does not directly offset your ApsaraDB RDS pay-as-you-go bills. The deductible amount, calculated from the committed spend and the discount rate, is then applied to your bills. The formula is: $$Deductible\; Amount\; (per\; hour)=Committed\; Spend\; (per\; hour)/Discount\; Rate$$.

The discount rate depends on the term and the payment option (All Upfront, Partial Upfront, or No Upfront). The longer the term and the higher the upfront payment, the lower the discount rate, which translates to a greater discount.

Stacking rules and deduction order

• You can purchase multiple General-purpose Savings Plans. Discounts are applied based on the plans' expiration dates, with the one expiring soonest applied first. If multiple plans have the same expiration date, the one purchased first is applied first.

• You can purchase both General-purpose Savings Plans and Elastic Savings Plans (Special Offer). When applying discounts, the General-purpose Savings Plan is prioritized.

• You can have both a General-purpose Savings Plan and a resource pack. Discounts from the resource pack are applied first. The General-purpose Savings Plan is then applied to the remaining balance.

Deduction example

Assume you purchase two General-purpose Savings Plans:

• Plan A is valid from 15:00 on August 1, 2024, to 15:00 on August 1, 2025. The hourly committed spend is CNY 5. The term is 1 year with the No Upfront payment option (corresponding to an 80% discount rate). The hourly deductible amount for this plan is CNY 6.25 (CNY 5 / 80%).

• Plan B is valid from 10:00 on August 5, 2024, to 10:00 on August 5, 2025. The hourly committed spend is CNY 2. The term is 1 year with the All Upfront payment option (corresponding to a 50% discount rate). The hourly deductible amount for this plan is CNY 4 (CNY 2 / 50%).

You have two ApsaraDB RDS instances that generate hourly pay-as-you-go bills.

• From 09:00 to 10:00 on August 5, 2024, the total pay-as-you-go bill for eligible billable items is CNY 7. This exceeds the deductible amount of Plan A (CNY 6.25). The overage of CNY 0.75 is charged to your account.

• From 10:00 to 11:00 on August 5, 2024, the total pay-as-you-go bill for eligible billable items is CNY 8. This is within the total deductible amount of both plans (CNY 6.25 + CNY 4 = CNY 10.25). The CNY 8 bill is fully offset, and no additional charges are incurred.

Estimate the committed spend

• Use the Savings Plan Calculator provided by Alibaba Cloud. This tool provides recommendations based on your historical usage data using consumption prediction and optimization algorithms. The results are for reference only. For more information about the calculator, see Optimize billing - Savings plans.

  On the calculator page, in the Select Calculation Conditions section, set Savings Plan Name to Database Savings Plan, Savings Plan Type to General-purpose, Term to 3 Years, Payment Option to All Upfront, Applicable Products to All Applicable Products (Recommended), and Historical Period to Last 30 Days. Then, click Calculate.

• If your ApsaraDB RDS instances have a stable hourly bill, you can calculate the average hourly cost and estimate the committed spend using the formula: Average hourly cost * discount rate.

  Example: Assume the average hourly bill for your ApsaraDB RDS instances is CNY 10. If you choose a 1-year term with the All Upfront payment option (50% discount rate), you can set the committed spend to CNY 5 (CNY 10 * 50%). If you choose a 3-year term with the Partial Upfront payment option (43% discount rate), you can set the committed spend to CNY 4.3 (CNY 10 * 43%).

• If your hourly instance costs fluctuate, or if you are unsure about the hourly cost, you can start with a low committed spend and observe its effectiveness. If the plan's utilization is high but its coverage is low, this indicates potential for greater savings. You can purchase an additional savings plan to stack with the existing one and increase your total deductible amount. To learn how to check the utilization and coverage of your savings plan, see View the utilization and coverage of a savings plan.

Change, renew, and unsubscribe

You cannot change the committed spend, term, or payment option of a General-purpose Savings Plan. Additionally, plans cannot be renewed or canceled.

You can purchase a new General-purpose Savings Plan if your current one expires or if its deductible amount is insufficient to cover your hourly bill.