Overview

WAF supports yearly/monthly (prepaid) and pay-per-use (postpaid) billing. For cloud WAF, both billing modes are supported. For dedicated WAF instances, only pay-per-use billing is supported.

Yearly/monthly billing: You need to pay the bill for the required duration.
Pay-per-use billing: You are billed for the number of protected domain names, number of customized rules, and number of forwarded requests.

**Table 1** Differences between billing modes
Billing Mode	Yearly/Monthly	Pay-per-use
Payment Method	Prepaid	Postpaid
Metering Period	Billed by the purchase period specified in the order	Cloud mode: The bills for protected domain names are settled on an hourly basis. The bills for custom protection rules are settled every 24 hours. The bills for requests are settled monthly. Dedicated mode: Instances are billed by the second, and bills are settled on an hourly basis.
Billing Item	Cloud mode: service edition, domain expansion package, QPS expansion package, and rule expansion package	Cloud mode: the number of domain names, the number of custom rules, and the number of requests Dedicated mode: the number of instances
Application Scenario	This billing mode is cost-effective and suitable when the duration of resource usage is predictable. The yearly/monthly mode is recommended for long-term users.	This mode is ideal when you want more flexibility and control on WAF usage.