Help Center/ Elastic Load Balance/ Billing/ Billing Items (Dedicated Load Balancers)
Updated on 2025-09-16 GMT+08:00
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Billing Items (Dedicated Load Balancers)

Billing

You will be charged for how many LCUs you use and how long a load balancer is retained in your account, as described in Table 1.

For details about the pricing, see ELB Price Calculator. Resources may vary depending on regions. The actual prices are subject to those displayed on the ELB console.

Table 1 Billing items

Billing Item

Description

Billing Mode

Formula

LCU

You are charged based on the number of LCUs used by a load balancer per hour.

An LCU measures the dimensions on which a dedicated load balancer routes the traffic. See LCU prices in LCU Pricing.

Pay-per-use and yearly/monthly

Unit price × Number of LCUs

Load Balancer

You are charged for how long a dedicated load balancer is retained in your account. If the load balancer is retained in your account for less than 1 hour, you will be charged for the actual duration, accurate to seconds.

Pay-per-use

Unit price × Required duration

The billing items of dedicated load balancers vary by specification type. For details, see Table 2.

Table 2 Billing items

Billing Mode

Specification Type

LCU

Load Balancer

Pay-per-use

Elastic

√

√

Fixed

√

×

Yearly/Monthly

Fixed

√

×
  • √ indicates that the billing item is involved. × indicates that the billing item is not involved.
  • If you bind an EIP to a load balancer, you will also be charged for the EIP and the bandwidth used by the EIP.

    For details about EIP pricing, see Elastic IP Pricing Details.

LCU Pricing

An LCU measures the dimensions on which a dedicated load balancer routes the traffic. See LCU price in Table 3.

The unit price of LCU varies depending on the specifications. See the actual price of LCU on the console. LCU price (USD) = Unit price × Number of LCUs.

Table 3 LCU pricing

Billing Mode

Specification Type

Application Scenario

Description

Pay-per-use

Elastic

For fluctuating traffic

You are charged for how many LCUs you use.

Fixed

For stable traffic

You are charged for the LCUs based on each fixed specification you select.

Yearly/Monthly

Fixed

For stable traffic

You are charged for the LCUs based on each fixed specification you select.
  • If you deploy a dedicated load balancer in multiple AZs, its performance will multiply as the number of AZs increases. For details about AZs, see Region and AZ.
  • Note the following when calculating the number of LCUs:
    • LCU quantity refers to the number of LCUs corresponding to a specification in a single AZ. For details, see LCU Billing for Fixed Specifications.
    • If you select multiple AZs for a load balancer, the number of LCUs is calculated as follows: Number of LCUs = LCUs of the selected specification × Number of the selected AZs.

LCU Billing for Elastic Specifications

An LCU has four dimensions: new connections, maximum concurrent connections, processed bytes, and rule evaluations.

You can calculate the number of LCUs by taking the maximum LCUs consumed across the four dimensions.

The number of LCUs is rounded up to the nearest integer.

Table 4 LCU dimensions

Dimension

Description

New connections

Number of new connections per second.

Maximum concurrent connections

The maximum number of concurrent connections that a load balancer can handle per minute within one hour.

Processed bytes

The number of bytes processed by a load balancer in GB.

Rule evaluations

(application load balancing)

The product of the number of rules processed by a load balancer and the number of queries per second (QPS).

The first 10 processed rules are free.

  • When there are more than 10 processed rules, the number of rule evaluations is calculated as follows: Rule evaluations = QPS × (Number of processed rules – 10).
  • When there are 10 or fewer processed rules, the number of rule evaluations is equal to the QPS.

Table 5 lists the LCU performance supported by different protocols.

Table 5 LCU performance supported by different protocols

Protocol

New Connections per Second

Maximum Concurrent Connections per Minute

Processed Bytes

Rule Evaluations per Second

TCP

800

100,000

1 GB

N/A

UDP

400

50,000

1 GB

N/A

TLS

50

3,000

1 GB

N/A

HTTP/HTTPS

25

3,000

1 GB

1,000

Billing Examples

A pricing example for a network load balancer

Assume your network load balancer establishes 1,000 new TCP connections per second and handles a maximum of 180,000 concurrent connections per minute. The bytes processed by your load balancer are 1,000 KB per second.

The price per LCU in the current region is $0.00833 USD. The LCU price is calculated as the table shown below.

Table 6 LCU calculation

Dimension

Example

LCUs

Rounded Up LCUs

New connections per second

1,000 new TCP connections

1,000 ÷ 800 = 1.25

2

Maximum concurrent connections per minute

180,000 maximum concurrent connections

180,000 ÷ 100,000 = 1.8

2

Processed bytes per hour

1,000 KB/s × 60s × 60 minutes = 3.6 GB

3.6 ÷ 1 = 3.6

4

In this example, the processed bytes dimension consumes the most LCUs (4 LCUs). Therefore, the LCU price is calculated based on the number of LCUs consumed by processed bytes.

The total LCU price for using this network load balancer for one hour is calculated as follows:

LCU price = Unit price x Number of LCUs = $0.00833 USD x 4 = $0.03332 USD

A pricing example for an application load balancer

Assume your application load balancer establishes 1,000 new HTTP/HTTPS connections per second and handles a maximum of 180,000 concurrent connections per minute. A client sends an average of 400 requests per second and the bytes processed by this load balancer is 1,000 KB per second. You have configured 20 forwarding rules for your load balancer to route requests.

The price per LCU in the current region is $0.00833 USD. The LCU price is calculated as the table shown below.

Table 7 LCU calculation

Dimension

Example

LCUs

Rounded Up LCUs

New connections per second

1,000 new connections

1,000 ÷ 25 = 40

40

Maximum concurrent connections per minute

180,000 maximum concurrent connections

180,000 ÷ 3,000 = 60

60

Processed bytes per hour

1,000 KB/s × 60s × 60 minutes = 3.6 GB

3.6 ÷ 1 = 3.6

4

Rule evaluations per second

Rule evaluations are calculated as:

Rule evaluations = QPS × (Number of processed rules – 10) = 400 × (20 – 10) = 4,000

4,000 ÷ 1,000 = 4

4

In this example, the maximum concurrent connection dimension consumes the most LCUs (60 LCUs). So the LCU price is calculated based on the LCUs consumed by the maximum concurrent connections.

The total LCU price for using this application load balancer for one hour is calculated as follows:

LCU price = Unit price x Number of LCUs = $0.00833 USD x 60 = $0.4998 USD

LCU Billing for Fixed Specifications

You are charged for the LCUs based on each fixed specification you select. You can select either application load balancing (HTTP/HTTPS) or network load balancing (TCP/UDP/TLS), or both.

You can refer to Specifications of Dedicated Load Balancers to learn about each fixed specification and select one that best meets your service requirements.

Pay-per-use

The following table lists the number of LCUs of each fixed specification.

Table 8 LCUs of each fixed specification

Specification

LCUs in an AZ (TCP/UDP/TLS)

LCUs in an AZ (HTTP/HTTPS)

Small I

10

10

Small II

20

20

Medium I

40

40

Medium II

80

100

Large I

200

200

Large II

400

400

Yearly/Monthly

The following table lists the number of LCUs of each fixed specification.

Table 9 LCUs of each fixed specification

Specification

LCUs in an AZ (TCP/UDP/TLS)

LCUs in an AZ (HTTP/HTTPS)

Small I

10

10

Small II

20

20

Medium I

40

40

Medium II

80

100

Large I

200

200

Large II

400

400
  • LCU quantity refers to the number of LCUs corresponding to a specification in a single AZ.
  • If you select multiple AZs for a load balancer, the number of LCUs is calculated as follows: Number of LCUs = LCUs of the selected specification × Number of the selected AZs.

Load Balancer Pricing

You are charged for how long each load balancer is retained in your account. If the load balancer is used for less than 1 hour, you will be charged for the actual duration, accurate to seconds. The billing cycle is from the time when the dedicated load balancer is created to the time when it is deleted.

Only load balancers with elastic specifications in pay-per-use billing mode are charged.