Use and manage coupons

For more information about coupons, seeAnnouncement on the merge and migration of cash coupons and coupons.

Apply a coupon during order payment

When you purchase a prepaid resource, such as a subscription ECS instance, the system matches attributes such as the order product, payment type, and order amount. The system then automatically filters and displays the available coupons on the Confirm Order page. Select one coupon manually to offset the order.

• Usage limit: You can use only one coupon for a single order. Within its validity period, a Cash Coupon can offset multiple orders until its balance is used up, while a Spend and Save Coupon or a Discount Coupon applies to one order only.

• Frozen coupons: After you select a coupon on the Confirm Order page, the coupon in the unpaid order is frozen. Cancel the unpaid order before you use the coupon again. Go to the My Order page, find the associated unpaid order, and then Void it. After the order is canceled, the coupon returns to the Valid state.

• Renewal coupons: When you renew a resource manually, the Confirm Order page of the renewal displays the applicable coupons, and you decide whether to use one. When you enable auto-renewal, the system automatically selects a coupon for the deduction based on the applicable rules.

If no available coupon appears on the Confirm Order page, check whether the coupon applies to the product, the billing method, and the order amount of the current purchase, and whether the coupon conflicts with another discount or campaign. For general causes, see Why can't I use my coupon?. To combine several items in one order from the purchase page, select Add to Cart, and then select the coupon at checkout on the Confirm Order page.

If a coupon that you selected still does not appear or cannot be used, check the following possible causes:

• Multiple account verification: If a coupon that you claimed on a mobile device does not appear on a computer, confirm that both devices are logged on to the same Alibaba Cloud account. If you are unsure, locate the correct account by using the phone number or the identity verification information.

• Mobile entry point: On a mobile device, go to Mine > Expenses and Costs > Cards & Coupons to view your coupons.

• Campaign conflicts: Some coupons conflict with specific campaigns, such as renewal campaigns or first-purchase offers for new users. If the coupon does not appear on the Confirm Order page, check whether another discount already applies, or whether the coupon has a special usage threshold (for example, you must place the order in the student zone).

Automatic deduction for pay-as-you-go bills

For pay-as-you-go resources, the system automatically uses the coupons in effect to offset the charges when the bill is generated.

• Automatic matching: The system first uses the coupons that expire soonest. If several coupons expire at the same time, the system first uses the coupon with the larger balance.

• Multi-coupon deduction: If the balance of one coupon cannot cover the entire bill, the system automatically uses the next available Cash Coupon to continue the deduction, until the bill is fully offset or all available coupons are used.

• Balance payment: If an amount remains on the bill after all coupons are used, pay the remaining amount separately.

Billing delay: Pay-as-you-go (postpaid) bill details are generated in hourly intervals, so a delay is expected. If you just incurred API calls, token consumption, or AI model charges but no deduction record appears, wait and check again later.

Non-adjustable offset order: The system always uses the coupons that expire soonest first. You cannot adjust the offset order manually or set the account balance to be deducted first.

Deduction timing: The pay-as-you-go billing method has no fixed deduction date. If a coupon is valid and applies to the product, the system offsets the charges as each hourly bill is generated, without waiting for a month-end summary.

Coupons cannot offset overdue payments. Top up your account to clear the overdue amount. After you clear the overdue amount, coupons can offset the pay-as-you-go charges that you incur afterwards.

View coupon consumption details (deduction records and charge details): Go to the Coupons page in the Expenses and Costs console and click View Details in the Actions column on the right. You can view the complete deduction records and the consumption history of a single coupon, including why and when the balance decreased.

Cross-check associated bills: On the Bill Details page, use the Coupon Deduction Amount field with a daily or hourly statistical period to check the consumption and the coupon usage of each product.

Investigate a rapidly decreasing balance: If the balance of a coupon decreases faster than expected, check the following pay-as-you-go resources first: Elastic IP Address, the overage part of savings plans, and resource consumption in unexpected high-load scenarios.

Share coupons across multiple accounts

If your enterprise has several Alibaba Cloud accounts, enable Enterprise Account Center and use equity asset sharing to share coupons within the organization and optimize costs.

Prerequisites: The Enterprise Account Center feature is enabled.

Procedure

1. Log on to Expenses and Costs and click Account Sharing.

2. On the Equity Asset Sharing page, view the coupons that you hold.

3. Select the coupon to share, and then click Edit in the Actions column.

4. Configure the sharing settings in the dialog box.

The sharing scope includes Organization and Account. If you share a coupon with an organization, the coupon is shared with all accounts under the organization node, and the scope adjusts automatically as the accounts in the organization change. If you share a coupon with accounts, the selected scope is fixed and does not change automatically.

Cancel sharing: In the Actions column, you can cancel sharing for a shared coupon.

If an order that used a shared coupon is later canceled or unsubscribed from, see What are the coupon refund, unsubscription, and exchange rules? for the coupon return rules.

Why can't I use my coupon?

Coupons have specific usage rules and deductible scopes. To view the details, log on to the Coupons management page or the campaign page. Common causes include:

• Product restrictions: The coupon does not apply to the product that you are purchasing.

• Validity period: The coupon has expired.

• Transaction scenario: The order type is outside the applicable scope of the coupon.

• Duration restrictions: The order duration does not meet the condition that the coupon requires.

• Order amount: The order amount does not meet the usage condition of a Spend and Save Coupon.

• Promotion conflicts: Another discount or campaign offer already applies.

• Device: If you cannot use a coupon on a mobile device, switch to another browser or use a computer.

• Campaign restrictions: For example, the CNY 300 student coupon is used only on the campaign page, so go to the Student Coupon Center to use it. Even in the Student Coupon Center, the coupon applies only to the designated products that the page marks as eligible, so check the coupon details to confirm the applicable products. For example, this coupon offsets only the bills of the Model Studio models listed on the "AI Model Services" tab of the Student Coupon Center. It does not offset the bills of all model services on the Model Studio platform.

The following scenarios are the common cases in which general-purpose coupons do not apply:

• Domain name registration, renewal, or transfer-in: General-purpose coupons explicitly do not support domain name registration, renewal, or transfer-in.

• Alibaba Cloud Marketplace and SaaS products: Third-party Alibaba Cloud Marketplace products, such as Qoder Credits, and Software as a Service (SaaS) renewals are not supported.

• Bundled purchase: If you purchase several products at the same time and the coupon applies to only one of them, place separate orders to use the coupon.

• Prepaid and postpaid type mismatch: Some general-purpose coupons apply only to prepaid orders and cannot offset pay-as-you-go bills. Other coupons apply only to postpaid bills and cannot be used for order payment. Before you use a coupon, check the Order Type label on the coupon to confirm its applicable scope.

How do I use student and university coupons (Cloud Craftsman/CNY 300 coupon), and what is their applicable scope?

Student coupons, such as the CNY 300 coupon of the Cloud Craftsman cloud support program, are issued to university students. Their usage rules differ significantly from those of general-purpose coupons.

Usage entry point: Use these coupons to place orders only in the Student Coupon Center. They are neither displayed nor deductible on the ECS custom purchase page, standard product purchase pages, or other campaign pages. If a coupon does not appear on a standard purchase page, switch to the Student Coupon Center.

Applicable products and scenarios:

• Supports the purchase of the designated prepaid products that the Student Coupon Center page marks as eligible, such as ECS instances with designated configurations and Simple Application Server.

• Supports offsetting the postpaid bills of the designated pay-as-you-go products that you activate in the Student Coupon Center, such as designated AI model services. The system offsets the bill automatically when the bill is generated, so you do not select a coupon manually.

• Does not support domain name registration, renewal, or transfer-in; CWH (Cloud Web Hosting); third-party Alibaba Cloud Marketplace products; or models outside the designated list of the Student Coupon Center. Coupons also cannot be used together with product discounts. The purchase requirements of each product prevail.

AI model and API call deduction: API calls to AI models such as Model Studio use the postpaid (pay-as-you-go) mode. You do not purchase tokens in advance, and the system offsets the coupon balance automatically when the bill is generated. If the page indicates that the coupon cannot be used, the product might use the postpaid mode. The coupon still offsets the bill that actual consumption generates, and you do not select the coupon manually in advance.

Common misconceptions:

• The coupon is not a computing power credit dedicated to experiments, and it is not deposited into your account balance or token balance.

• After you unsubscribe from a resource, you usually cannot purchase the same type of product again on the same discount terms.

• Claiming a coupon does not incur any fees, and no amount is deducted if you do not use the coupon.

Appeal channel: If you are eligible but cannot claim or use the coupon, submit your appeal materials through the Self-Service Tool.

Which products are ineligible for general-purpose coupons?

General-purpose coupons do not support the following products and commodities. The exclusions are organized by product code, by commodity code, and for physical goods and third-party Alibaba Cloud Marketplace products.

• By product: All commodities under the following product codes cannot use general-purpose coupons.

Alibaba Cloud Marketplace featured second-party products cover a large number of commodities. For the complete list, see Notice: general-purpose coupons cannot be used for any commodity under Alibaba Cloud Marketplace featured second-party products.

• By commodity: All of the following commodity codes cannot use general-purpose coupons.

• Physical goods and third-party Alibaba Cloud Marketplace products: Physical goods, which are hardware devices or accessories related to cloud computing, such as server hardware and network devices, and all third-party products in Alibaba Cloud Marketplace cannot use general-purpose coupons.

Why can't my coupon offset AI model (Model Studio/Qwen/text-to-image) or token fees?

Whether a coupon offsets AI model fees and API call fees depends on the type of coupon that you hold:

General-purpose coupons: Offset the postpaid bills (pay-as-you-go and API calls) of cloud products and AI model services, such as Model Studio, TINGWU, and Object Storage Service (OSS). Only the charges that you incur after the coupon is issued are deductible. Commodities outside the applicable scope, such as AI text-to-image services, are not supported.

Student coupons (Cloud Craftsman/CNY 300 coupon): Offset only the bills of the models in the designated list of the Student Coupon Center. These coupons cannot be used together with product discounts. The purchase requirements of each product prevail.

Amount-based coupons: Some coupons, such as an all-model deduction coupon, provide a monetary credit instead of a fixed number of tokens. The volume that you can call depends on the unit price of the model that you select.

Troubleshooting suggestions: If a coupon does not offset the bill, check the following items in order:

• Check whether the Applicable Commodity scope of the coupon covers the target product. Check the applicable commodity details on the coupon.

• Check whether the coupon is already Expired.

• Check whether the target product uses the postpaid (pay-as-you-go) mode. A coupon dedicated to prepaid orders cannot offset postpaid bills, and a coupon dedicated to postpaid bills cannot be used for order payment.

• Check whether you placed the order on the designated campaign page, such as the Student Coupon Center.

Do coupons support account top-up?

Coupons do not support account balance top-up. Use them only to offset order payments and to offset pay-as-you-go bills automatically.

Can coupons be cashed out, converted to balance, extended, or reissued?

No conversion to balance or cash-out: A coupon is not account balance. You cannot convert it to cash, deposit it into your account balance, or add it to your account credit. Use a coupon only to offset order payments or to offset pay-as-you-go bills automatically.

No extension or reissue: After a coupon expires, it cannot be restored, reissued, or extended, and you cannot void it manually to claim it again. Use coupons within their validity period.

Unavailable when payments are overdue: Coupons cannot offset historical overdue payments. Top up your account and clear the overdue amount first. After you clear the overdue amount, coupons can offset the new pay-as-you-go charges.

No charge when unused: Claiming a coupon does not incur any fees. A deduction is triggered only when you purchase a product or call a resource.

What are the coupon refund, unsubscription, and exchange rules?

If an order is canceled, a resource is unsubscribed from, or another exception occurs, whether the used coupon is returned depends on the scenario.

Return rules for unsubscription:

• If you cancel an order with a selected coupon before payment, the coupon is returned.

• If provisioning fails after you place the order, or a bill is rolled back and corrected: Cash Coupons and Spend and Save Coupons are returned, and Discount Coupons cannot be returned.

• If you unsubscribe from a resource or a bill is adjusted: the system evaluates whether to return the consumed coupon based on system rules, and a full return is not guaranteed.

• Exceptions for special products: Coupons are not returned for domain names and CWH (Cloud Web Hosting) if the order fails or the resource fails to be created.

Unsubscription after you use a new user or campaign coupon: After you unsubscribe from a resource such as an ECS instance, the new user coupon that the original campaign granted might become invalid. You might then be unable to purchase the same type of product again on the same discount terms. Confirm the impact before you unsubscribe.

Coupon exchange application: If your business requires an exchange, such as exchanging a general-purpose coupon for a domain-specific coupon, submit an application through a ticket or contact customer service. Processing takes 1 to 3 business days, and self-service exchange is not supported.

Price difference compensation: If the price increases when you place a new order because the original order was voided, apply for a coupon that covers the price difference. After you apply, go to Expenses and Costs > Coupons to view the issuance result.

What should I do if the coupon usage details do not show specific products or order and bill numbers?

The coupon usage details do not include specific products or order and bill numbers. To confirm the coupon usage of each product under your account, export the billing data in Bill Details and filter the entries whose Coupon Deduction Amount is not 0.

How do I check the expiration time of a Cash Coupon?

The system sets the expiration time of a Cash Coupon when it issues the coupon, and the calculation method differs by issuance scenario. The definitive expiration time is the "Expiry Time" that the coupon shows on the Expenses and Costs > Coupons page.