ALB billing-Server Load Balancer(SLB)-阿里云帮助中心

Pay-as-you-go billing

Feature	Pay-as-you-go
Billing rule	Charges are based on your actual usage. A bill is generated each billing cycle, and fees are deducted from your account balance.
Purchase requirements	Your account must have a positive balance to create an ALB instance. If your account has an overdue payment, you cannot create new instances until you top up your account.
Billing cycle and bill generation	The instance fee and load balancer capacity unit (LCU) fee for ALB are billed hourly. Bills are typically generated within one hour after a billing cycle ends. The exact bill generation time may vary. An Internet-facing ALB instance incurs an Internet data transfer fee. This fee is charged through an associated Elastic IP Address (EIP). The billing cycle, fee deduction, and bill generation for this fee follow the same rules as a pay-as-you-go EIP. For more information, see Billing cycle.

Billable items

ALB currently supports pay-as-you-go. The fees for ALB consist of three parts: instance fee, load balancer capacity unit (LCU) fee, and Internet data transfer fee.

Network type	Instance fee	LCU fee	Data transfer fee
Public	Charged	Charged	Charged
Private	Charged	Charged	Not applicable

Instance fee

The ALB instance fee is billed hourly. Usage for less than an hour is rounded up to one hour. Billing starts when the instance is created and ends when it is released.

Instance fee = Unit price per instance (CNY/hour) × Billed duration (hours)

The prices in the following table are for reference only. For the actual price, see the buy page.

Edition	Unit price (CNY/hour)
Basic	0.049
Standard	0.147
WAF-enabled	0.245

Load balancer capacity unit (LCU) fee

A load balancer capacity unit (LCU) is the smallest unit used to measure the resources consumed by a load balancer.

LCU dimensions

The ALB LCU fee is billed hourly. Usage for less than an hour is rounded up to one hour.

LCU fee per hour = max(LCUs for new connections, LCUs for concurrent connections, LCUs for data transfer, LCUs for rule evaluations) × LCU unit price

Each hour, LCU consumption is calculated across four dimensions. You are billed based on the dimension with the highest consumption.

Dimension	Description	Measurement interval	LCU coefficient	Hourly LCU calculation
New connections	The number of new connections processed per second.	Per second	25	Each hour, the system finds the peak number of new connections per second and divides this value by the LCU coefficient to calculate the LCUs for this dimension. The formula is as follows: `Number of LCUs = Peak new connections / LCU coefficient`
Concurrent connections	The number of concurrent connections per minute.	Per minute	3,000	Each hour, the system finds the peak number of concurrent connections per minute and divides this value by the LCU coefficient to calculate the LCUs for this dimension. The formula is as follows: `Number of LCUs = Peak concurrent connections / LCU coefficient`
Data transfer	The volume of data in GB that ALB processes for HTTP and HTTPS requests and responses.	Per hour	1 GB	During each billing cycle, the system totals the volume of data processed for requests and responses and divides it by the LCU coefficient to determine the number of LCUs for this dimension. The formula is as follows: `Number of LCUs = Total data transfer / LCU coefficient`
Rule evaluations	The product of the total number of rules that ALB processes and the queries per second (QPS). If the number of processed rules is within the free quota: Rule evaluations = QPS If the number of processed rules exceeds the free quota: Rule evaluations = QPS × (Number of forwarding rules over the quota + Number of AScript lines over the quota + Number of additional certificates over the quota) Important Each of these three metrics includes a free quota of 25. You are charged only for usage that exceeds this quota. Effective March 22, 2022, the free quota for forwarding rules was increased from 10 to 25.	N/A	1,000	During each billing cycle, the system calculates rule evaluations based on the total number of forwarding rules and the peak QPS. The result is divided by the LCU coefficient to determine the number of LCUs for this dimension. The formula is as follows: `Number of LCUs = Rule evaluations / LCU coefficient`

For each listener, the hourly LCU consumption is based on the dimension with the highest usage. The total LCU fee for an ALB instance is the sum of the LCU fees for all its listeners.

LCU unit price

For billing purposes, the highest LCU value calculated among the four dimensions in a given hour is used. The minimum precision is 0.000001 LCU. For example, if you consume 0.1 LCU in an hour, the LCU fee for that hour is 0.1 × 0.049 = CNY 0.0049.

The prices in the following table are for reference only. For the actual price, see the buy page.

Billable item	LCU unit price (CNY/LCU/hour)
Load balancer capacity unit (LCU)	0.049

LCU billing example

Dimension	Example scenario	Calculation	LCU consumption
New connections (per second)	Within a specific hour, the peak number of new connections created in a single second is 100.	In this example, the peak is 100 new connections per second. Each LCU provides 25 new connections per second. The number of LCUs is: `100 / 25 = 4.0`	4.0
Concurrent connections (per minute)	The peak number of concurrent connections within that hour is 18,000.	In this example, the peak number of concurrent connections within the hour is 18,000. The number of LCUs is: `18,000 / 3,000 = 6.0`	6.0
Data transfer (per hour)	1,000 KB per second	The data transfer rate is 1,000 KB per second. The total data processed per hour is: `1,000 KB × 60 × 60 = 3,600,000 KB = 3.6 GB` Each LCU provides 1 GB of data transfer per hour. The number of LCUs is: `3.6 / 1 = 3.6`	3.6
Rule evaluations (per second)	30 forwarding rules 20 lines of AScript 32 additional certificates	In the hour with the peak of 100 new connections per second, each connection sends 4 requests per second. The QPS is: `100 × 4 = 400` In this example, the number of forwarding rules and additional certificates exceeds the free quotas. The number of billable rule evaluations per second is: `[(30 - 25) + (32 - 25)] × 400 = 4,800` Each LCU provides 1,000 rule evaluations per second. The number of LCUs is: `4,800 / 1,000 = 4.8`	4.8

In this example, the dimension with the highest LCU consumption is concurrent connections (6.0 LCUs). Therefore, the LCU fee is calculated based on this dimension.

LCU fee per hour = CNY 0.049/LCU × 6.0 LCUs = CNY 0.294
Based on this usage, the estimated average monthly LCU fee is: CNY 0.294 × 24 hours × 30 days = CNY 211.68

Estimate LCU consumption

You can use the ALB LCU Calculator to estimate your LCU consumption.

Internet data transfer fee

An internal-facing ALB instance does not incur an Internet data transfer fee. This fee applies only to an Internet-facing ALB instance. Internet-facing ALB instances use Elastic IP Addresses (EIPs) to provide services over the internet. Using an Internet-facing ALB instance incurs both EIP instance fees and data transfer fees. For more information, see Pay-as-you-go.

FAQ

Will an ALB instance still incur fees when it has no backend servers attached, has no traffic, or is idle?

Yes. As long as the ALB instance is not released, the instance fee continues to accrue. The idle billing behavior of each ALB billable item is as follows:

Instance fee: As long as the ALB instance is not released, the instance fee is charged hourly, regardless of whether ECS instances are attached, all backend servers are removed, or the instance is idle.
LCU fee: The LCU fee is charged based on actual usage. If no traffic passes through the ALB instance (that is, no new connections, concurrent connections, data transfer, or rule evaluations occur), no LCU fee is incurred.
Internet data transfer fee: An internal-facing ALB instance does not incur an Internet data transfer fee. An Internet-facing ALB instance still incurs a public IP retention fee if an EIP is bound to it, even when there is no business traffic.

If you no longer need the ALB instance, we recommend that you release it promptly to stop billing.

Does ALB support subscription (annual/monthly) billing or auto-renewal? What happens after the free trial expires?

ALB currently supports only the pay-as-you-go billing model and does not support subscription (annual/monthly) billing. Therefore, there is no auto-renewal option. The system automatically deducts fees from your account balance based on actual usage, so you do not need to manually renew.

After the free trial expires, the service is not interrupted. The instance automatically switches to the standard pay-as-you-go billing model. As long as your account balance is sufficient, you can continue to use the ALB service.

How do I view the monthly ALB billing traffic and fee breakdown?

Log on to the Billing and Cost Management console. On the Bill Details page, filter by the ALB service to view the hourly LCU consumption and fee breakdown.

If the EIP bound to an Internet-facing ALB instance uses Cloud Data Transfer (CDT) billing, the data transfer fee generated by the EIP is settled through the CDT bill. In this case, view the related traffic data and fees in the CDT bill in the Expenses and Costs console.

How do I analyze an abnormal increase in fees?

Use the CloudMonitor console to view the trends of metrics such as traffic and request count for the ALB instance, and identify the time point when the fee increase started.
Check the ALB access logs (which must be enabled in advance) and the backend service logs to analyze whether abnormal traffic or malicious attacks exist.
In the Billing and Cost Management console, compare historical bills to identify the specific billable item that caused the fee increase.
You can configure fee alerts. When the fee exceeds a threshold, a notification is automatically sent so that you can detect anomalies in a timely manner.

Cost comparison between multiple instances and a single instance

ALB uses the LCU billing model. Forwarding rules occupy control plane resources and are counted in rule evaluations for LCU billing even when no traffic passes through them. Distributing the forwarding rules of a single instance across multiple ALB instances can spread out the number of rules, but each ALB instance independently incurs a fixed instance fee. As a result, the overall cost is not necessarily lower, and operational complexity increases. We recommend that you evaluate your actual business scale and rule count comprehensively, and plan the number of instances reasonably.

Relationship between ALB fees and the number of Ingresses

ALB fees are not directly related to the number of Ingresses. In Kubernetes scenarios, multiple Ingresses can share the same ALB instance, and adding an Ingress does not increase the instance fee. Fees are incurred through the corresponding LCU metrics only when Ingress forwarding generates actual traffic (new connections, concurrent connections, or data transfer), or when the number of added forwarding rules exceeds the free quota (25 rules).