RDS Savings Plans help you reduce your RDS usage costs. Purchase an RDS Savings Plan to get a discount on your pay-as-you-go instances. This topic explains how to choose and purchase a plan and answers frequently asked questions.
How to choose an RDS Savings Plan
RDS offers two types of savings plans: the General-purpose Savings Plan and the Elastic Savings Plan (Special Offer).
Differences between the savings plans
The General-purpose Savings Plan and the Elastic Savings Plan (Special Offer) differ in their eligible billable items and discount rules.
Eligible billable items
Elastic Savings Plan (Special Offer): Applies only to Serverless instances. It only covers the RCU fee and storage fee for Serverless instances.
General-purpose Savings Plan: Applies to subscription instances, pay-as-you-go instances, and some pay-as-you-go items for Serverless instances. You can view the full list of eligible billable items.
Discount rules
Elastic Savings Plan (Special Offer): Has no hourly committed spend. Instead, you set and prepay a total committed spend for the plan. The hourly RCU and storage fees are deducted from this prepaid amount at a discounted rate until the amount is depleted or the plan expires.
General-purpose Savings Plan: Requires an hourly committed spend. Your hourly commitment covers eligible usage at a discounted rate. If your usage exceeds the commitment, you are billed for the overage at the regular pay-as-you-go rate.
Purchase recommendations
If you do not have RDS Serverless instances, and your pay-as-you-go costs for RDS instances are consistent and eligible for the General-purpose Savings Plan, we recommend purchasing a General-purpose Savings Plan.
If you only use RDS Serverless instances and your only costs are the RCU fee and storage fee, we recommend purchasing an Elastic Savings Plan (Special Offer).
If you use both RDS Serverless instances and fixed-spec RDS instances, you can purchase both a General-purpose Savings Plan and an Elastic Savings Plan (Special Offer). When you have both, the General-purpose Savings Plan is applied first. You can use the General-purpose Savings Plan to cover your consistent hourly bills. The Elastic Savings Plan (Special Offer) can then be used to cover any remaining Serverless RCU and storage fees that exceed your general-purpose commitment.
Purchase a savings plan
Log on to the ApsaraDB RDS console.
In the upper-right corner of the Instances page, click Elastic Savings Plan (Special Offer).
NoteYou can also click here to purchase a savings plan.
On the Database Savings Plan page, select a plan type and configure the parameters.
To purchase an Elastic plan: Select Elastic Savings Plan (Special Offer) and set the Committed spend (CNY).
To purchase a General-purpose plan: Select General-purpose and configure the following parameters:
Parameter
Description
Committed spend (per hour)
This is the hourly amount you commit to spend, which is applied to your pay-as-you-go bills at a discounted rate. You cannot change the committed spend after purchase.
For information about how to estimate your committed spend, see Estimate committed spend.
For information about how much of your bill can be covered by your committed spend, see Eligible amount.
Payment type
The General-purpose Savings Plan offers three payment types:
All Upfront: You pay the entire fee at the time of purchase. This option offers the highest discount.
Partial Upfront: You pay about 50% of the fee at the time of purchase. The remaining balance is billed hourly over the plan's term. This option offers a medium discount.
No Upfront: You pay nothing at the time of purchase. The full cost is billed hourly over the plan's term. This option offers the lowest discount.
Term
The General-purpose Savings Plan is available for two term lengths. A longer term provides a greater discount:
1 year
3 years
ImportantThe committed spend, payment type, and term cannot be changed after purchase. Savings plans do not support cancellation or renewal.
Review the Total Configuration Fee, Hourly Payment, and Upfront Payment, then click Buy Now to complete the payment.
The Total Configuration Fee is the total committed spend for the entire term. For an Elastic Savings Plan (Special Offer), this amount equals your committed spend. For a General-purpose plan, this amount is calculated as: hourly committed spend × 24 hours × 365 days × 1 or 3 years.
The Upfront Payment is the portion of the committed spend that you pay when you purchase the plan. The amount depends on your chosen payment type and term.
The Hourly Payment is the amount you are billed each hour after purchase. If you choose All Upfront, the hourly payment is zero. If you choose Partial Upfront or No Upfront, you are billed for a portion or all of your hourly committed spend.
After purchase, go to the Savings Plan Overview page to view details about your new plan, including the plan instance ID, type, and start/end times.
View usage details and balance
Item | Actions |
Savings plan usage details | Go to the Usage Details of Savings Plans page to see which billable items your plan covered and the amount of the discount. |
Savings plan balance | Go to the Savings Plan Overview page to see your remaining plan balance. |
Savings plans apply only to pay-as-you-go bills generated after you purchase the plan. After a bill is generated, you can view the usage details for your plan. Wait at least one hour after purchase before checking your usage details.
If you find that your savings plan has not been applied to your bill, first confirm the type of plan you purchased. Then, check if the billable items on your bill are eligible for that plan type. See the eligible items for the General-purpose Savings Plan and the Elastic Savings Plan (Special Offer).
FAQ
For more information, see Savings Plans FAQ.
Related documents
To learn how to check if your savings plan is underutilized or insufficient, see Check the utilization and coverage of your savings plans.
For more information about topics such as the billable items covered by a General-purpose Savings Plan, the covered amount, how to estimate your committed spend, and the deduction order when you purchase multiple plans, see General-purpose Savings Plan.
For more information about an Elastic Savings Plan (Special Offer), including its deductible billable items, deduction rules, and the deduction order for multiple purchases, see Elastic Savings Plan (Special Offer).