Help Center/ Host Security Service/ Billing/ Billing Modes/ Overview
Updated on 2025-07-07 GMT+08:00
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Overview

HSS provides two billing modes, yearly/monthly and pay-per-use billing, to meet requirements in different scenarios. To quickly learn about the price of HSS in different billing modes, visit HSS Pricing Details.

  • 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.
  • Pay-per-use: You can start using HSS first and then pay as you go. With the pay-per-use billing mode, you can easily adapt to resource requirement changes, reducing the risk of over-provisioning resources or lacking capacity. In this mode, there are no upfront commitments required.

Table 1 describes the differences between the billing modes.

Table 1 Billing modes

Billing Mode

Yearly/Monthly

Pay-per-Use

Payment

Prepaid

Billed by the subscription term you purchase

Postpaid

Billed by usage

Billing Items

Protection quotas: basic, professional, premium, Web Tamper Protection (WTP), and container editions
  • Protection quotas: professional, premium, WTP, and container editions
  • Value-added services: pay-per-use container image scans

Billing Period

Billed for the required duration specified in your order.
  • Protection quotas: Billed by the second and settled by the hour.
  • Value-added services: billed per use.

Billing for Stopped Protection

Billed for the required duration specified in your order. Disabling protection for servers and containers does not affect yearly/monthly billing.
  • Protection quotas: You will not be billed for a quota after it is disabled.
  • Value-added services: Pay-per-use billing. Enabling or disabling HSS protection does not affect it.

Changing the Billing Mode

Can be changed to pay-per-use.

For details, see Yearly/Monthly to Pay-per-use.

The billing mode can be changed to yearly/monthly for protection quotas.

For details, see Pay-per-Use to Yearly/Monthly.

Upgrading Quotas

The basic and professional editions can be upgraded to higher editions.

Specifications cannot be upgraded.

Application Scenarios

A cost-effective option for scenarios where the resource usage duration is predictable. Recommended for resources expected to be in long-term use.

Recommended when the demands for server or container protection are likely to fluctuate and you want more flexibility.
Parent topic: Billing Modes