Overview

There are yearly/monthly and pay-per-use billing modes. Each one has different advantages and disadvantages.

Yearly/Monthly is a prepaid billing mode. 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 mode. You pay as you go and pay for what you use. The load balancer usage is calculated by the second but billed every hour. Pay-per-use billing is a good option for scenarios where there are sudden traffic bursts, such as e-commerce promotions.

Table 1 lists the differences between the billing modes.

**Table 1** Billing modes
Billing Mode	Yearly/Monthly	Pay-per-use
Payment	Prepaid	Postpaid
Billing Usage Period	Billed by the subscription term you purchase. You make a one-off payment for using the load balancer for a certain period of time.	Calculated by the second but billed every hour. You are charged for how long you use each load balancer.
Specification Type	Fixed	Elastic Fixed
Changing the Specifications	Supported	Supported
Application Scenarios	Recommended for resources expected to be in long-term use. A cost-effective option for scenarios where the resource usage duration is predictable.	Recommended when the resource demands are likely to fluctuate and you want more flexibility.

The billing items of load balancers vary by specification type. For details, see Table 2 and Table 3.

**Table 2** Billing items of dedicated load balancers
Billing Mode	Specification Type	LCU	Load Balancer
Pay-per-use	Elastic	√	√
Pay-per-use	Fixed	√	×
Yearly/Monthly	Fixed	√	×

**Table 3** Billing items of shared load balancers
Billing Mode	Specification Type	LCU	Load Balancer
Pay-per-use	-	×	√

√ 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.

Parent topic: Billing Mode