An RDS General-purpose savings plan is a discount plan for ApsaraDB RDS that helps you offset your pay-as-you-go bills. You can commit to a consistent amount of usage per hour to receive a discount on your bill. If your ApsaraDB RDS instances have stable hourly pay-as-you-go costs, you can purchase an RDS General-purpose savings plan to save money.
Introduction to RDS General-purpose savings plans
An RDS General-purpose savings plan offsets pay-as-you-go bills for specific billable items of ApsaraDB RDS. It applies to RDS for MySQL, RDS for PostgreSQL, and RDS for SQL Server.
You can set and pay for an hourly committed spend. The system calculates your hourly deductible amount based on the savings plan's subscription duration (1 year or 3 years) and payment option. A longer subscription duration results in a greater discount. The deductible amount directly offsets the pay-as-you-go bills for specific ApsaraDB RDS billable items. If the deductible amount is not enough to cover the bill, the remaining balance is charged to your account.
Hourly deductible amount: This amount offsets the pay-as-you-go bills that your instances generate. The actual deductible amount is calculated as: Committed Spend ÷ Discount.
By setting a reasonable committed spend, you can reduce your ApsaraDB RDS pay-as-you-go costs by 30% to 80%. To estimate your committed spend, see Estimate your committed spend.
Purchase
Offset rules
Eligible billable items
A General-purpose savings plan can offset pay-as-you-go bills for any ApsaraDB RDS product, including subscription instances, pay-as-you-go instances, and Serverless instances. The following billable items are exceptions and cannot be offset: IO performance burst (io_burst), OSS bucket (rds_oss_storage) for data archiving, or elastic computing resources (CPU+IOPS) for the automatic performance scaling of instances with Premium Local SSDs.
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For backup storage fees from cross-region backups: The billable item for ApsaraDB RDS instances with Premium Local SSDs is Geo-redundant Backup Storage (DdrOssStorageSize). The product on the bill is RDS. Therefore, an RDS General-purpose savings plan can offset the cost. The billable item for ApsaraDB RDS cloud disk instances is Cloud Database Backup Storage (BackupStorageSize). The product on the bill is Database Backup (DBS). Therefore, an RDS General-purpose savings plan cannot offset the cost.
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In addition to cross-region backup storage fees, some features used in ApsaraDB RDS are billed under Database Backup (DBS) or Database Autonomy Service (DAS). Bills for these items cannot be offset by an RDS General-purpose savings plan.
Deductible amount
The committed spend does not directly offset ApsaraDB RDS pay-as-you-go bills. The deductible amount, which is calculated from the committed spend and the discount, is the amount that can offset your pay-as-you-go bills. The formula is:
The discount is determined by the subscription duration and the payment option (All Upfront, Partial Upfront, or No Upfront). A longer subscription duration and a higher upfront payment result in a better discount.
|
General-purpose savings plan payment option |
Discount |
|
3-year, All Upfront |
30% |
|
3-year, Partial Upfront |
43% |
|
3-year, No Upfront |
50% |
|
1-year, All Upfront |
50% |
|
18-month prepayment |
70% |
|
1-year, No Upfront |
80% |
Stacking rules and offset order
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You can purchase multiple General-purpose savings plans. During offset, plans are applied based on their expiration date, with the earliest expiring plan applied first. If plans share the same expiration date, the one purchased first is applied first.
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You can purchase General-purpose and Elastic (Special Offer) savings plans concurrently. During offset, General-purpose savings plans are applied first.
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You can purchase General-purpose savings plans and resource plans concurrently. During offset, resource plans are applied first. The General-purpose savings plan then offsets any remaining costs.
Offset example
Assume you purchased two General-purpose savings plans:
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Savings Plan A is valid from 15:00 on August 1, 2024, to 15:00 on August 1, 2025. It has an hourly committed spend of CNY 5. The subscription duration is 1 year with the No Upfront payment option, which corresponds to a discount of 80%. The hourly deductible amount for this plan is CNY 6.25 (CNY 5 ÷ 80%).
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Savings Plan B is valid from 10:00 on August 5, 2024, to 10:00 on August 5, 2025. It has an hourly committed spend of CNY 2. The subscription duration is 1 year with the All Upfront payment option, which corresponds to a discount of 50%. 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.
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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 CNY 6.25. The remaining CNY 0.75 is charged to your account.
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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 amount is within the total deductible amount of CNY 10.25 (CNY 6.25 + CNY 4). The CNY 8 is fully offset, and no extra fees are charged.
Estimate your committed spend
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You can use the Savings Plan Purchase Recommendation tool provided by Alibaba Cloud. This tool uses consumption prediction and optimization suggestion algorithms based on your historical usage data to provide recommendations. The results are for reference only. For more information about the tool, see Billing method optimization - Savings plan.
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If your ApsaraDB RDS instances have stable hourly billing costs, you can calculate the average hourly cost. Then, you can estimate the committed spend using the formula: Average hourly cost × Discount.
Example: Assume the average hourly bill for your ApsaraDB RDS instances is CNY 10. If you purchase a 1-year, All Upfront General-purpose savings plan (which has a 50% discount), you can set the committed spend to CNY 5 (CNY 10 × 50%). If you purchase a 3-year, Partial Upfront plan (which has a 43% discount), you can set the committed spend to CNY 4.3 (CNY 10 × 43%).
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If the hourly billing costs for your ApsaraDB RDS instances fluctuate or are uncertain, you can start by setting a low committed spend and monitor the offset effect. If the savings plan shows high utilization but low coverage, there is more potential for savings. You can purchase another savings plan to stack with the existing one and increase your total deductible amount. To learn how to view savings plan utilization and coverage, see How to view savings plan usage.
Changes, renewals, and cancellations
General-purpose savings plans do not support changes to the committed spend, subscription duration, or payment option. They also do not support renewals or cancellations.
If a General-purpose savings plan expires or its deductible amount is insufficient to cover your hourly bills, you can purchase a new General-purpose savings plan.