Overview

There are yearly/monthly and pay-per-use billing modes.

Yearly/Monthly is a prepaid billing. You pay in advance for a subscription term, and in exchange, you get a discounted rate. The longer the subscription term, the bigger the discount. Yearly/Monthly billing is a good option for long-term, stable services.
Pay-per-use is a postpaid billing. You pay as you go and just pay for what you use. The resource usage is calculated by the second but billed every hour. This mode allows you to flexibly adjust resource usage. You neither need to prepare for resources in advance, nor end up with excessive or insufficient preset resources. Pay-per-use billing is a good option for scenarios where there are sudden traffic bursts, such as e-commerce promotions.

You can select different billing modes for your clusters or nodes on the CCE console. You can, for example, select pay-per-use for your nodes running in a cluster which is billed on the yearly/monthly basis.

However, on the CCE console, the related billed items (Billed Items) cannot be billed on the yearly/monthly basis. These resources are billed on the pay-per-use basis by default if they are automatically created on the CCE console. To purchase yearly/monthly cloud service resources, go to their respective consoles. For details, see their billing descriptions.

**Table 1** Differences between the billing modes of a cluster
Billing Mode	Yearly/Monthly	Pay-per-use
Payment	Prepaid Billed by the subscription term you purchase	Postpaid Billed by your actual usage duration
Billed Usage Period	Billed by the subscription term you purchase	Calculated by the second but billed every hour
Billing for a Hibernated Cluster	A cluster billed on the yearly/monthly basis cannot be hibernated.	You do not need to pay for the management of a hibernated cluster, but the cloud service resources used in the cluster, such as EVS disks, EIPs, and bandwidths will be charged in their own billing modes like yearly/monthly or pay-per-use. NOTE: In a hibernated cluster, the worker nodes (ECSs) will not be stopped. To stop all nodes, select Shut down all nodes in the cluster. You can also stop a node on the ECS console after hibernating a cluster. For details, see Stopping a Node.
Changing the Billing Mode	Yearly/Monthly can be changed to pay-per-use only after the yearly/monthly subscription expires.	Pay-per-use can be changed to yearly/monthly.
Modifying Specifications	Supported	Supported
Application Scenarios	A cost-effective option for scenarios where the resource usage duration is predictable. Recommended for resources expected to be used for a long-term.	Recommended when the resource demands are likely to fluctuate and you want more flexibility.

**Table 2** Differences between the billing modes of a node
Billing Mode	Yearly/Monthly	Pay-per-use
Payment	Prepaid Billed by the subscription term you purchase	Postpaid Billed by your actual usage duration
Conditions for Purchase	N/A	N/A
Billed Usage Period	Billed by the subscription term you purchase	Calculated by the second but billed every hour
Billing for Stopped ECSs	Billing stops after the subscription expires. Billed by the subscription term you purchase	After a common ECS is stopped, basic resources (vCPUs, memory, image, and GPUs) will not be billed. Other resources (such as EVS disks, EIPs, and bandwidth) associated with the ECS will continue to be billed. If your ECS contains local disks (such as disk-intensive or ultra-high I/O disks), basic resources (vCPUs, memory, and images) and other resources (EVS disks and bandwidth) are still billed after the ECS is stopped. To avoid any additional expenditures, delete the ECS and all its resources.
Changing the Billing Mode	Yearly/Monthly can be changed to pay-per-use.	Pay-per-use can be changed to yearly/monthly.
Modifying Specifications	Supported	Supported
Conditions for Reclaiming	N/A	N/A
Application Scenarios	A cost-effective option for scenarios where the resource usage duration is predictable. Recommended for resources expected to be used for a long-term.	Recommended when the resource demands are likely to fluctuate and you want more flexibility.