Pricing

Direct Connect helps establish private connectivity between your on-premises data center and the cloud. If you want to have a dedicated port for exclusive use, you need to request a standard connection.

Billing Items

The following figure shows the fees that you need to pay for a standard connection.

**Table 1** Standard connection pricing
Payee	Billing Items	Description
G42	Port	The port is billed based on its specifications.
G42	One-time setup	Currently, you will not be billed for the one-time setup.
Non-G42	Leased line	To connect your on-premises data center to the cloud, you need to lease a line from the carrier.
Non-G42	In-building cabling	If you lease a line from a carrier, you also need to pay for the cabling inside the carrier's equipment room.

Billing Mode

Direct Connect provides two billing options: pay-per-use or reserved instance (RI).

What Is an RI?

Reserved instances (RIs) help you save money by committing to one-year or three-year plans for resources. RIs provide you with a significant discount but do not affect the runtime state of your resources. After you purchase an RI, the discount automatically applies to matched resources.. You can pay for the entire reserved instance term with full upfront or on a monthly basis, and you will get more discounts if you choose full upfront payment.

Purchasing an RI

Go to the cloud service portal and click Reserved Instance.

Select the specifications that match the desired pay-per-use instance specifications.
Select the validity period and payment method.
Confirm and submit the purchase information.

RI Billing Description

Before ordering RIs, you can first understand the matching rules and billing rules of RIs.

Matching dimensions
The matching dimensions of RI orders and pay-per-use instance consumption bills include region, account name, cloud service, resource type, and specifications.
Matching rules
After ordering RIs, the system will automatically match the pay-per-use instance at 04:00 am on the 1st of each month starting from the next month of the RI subscription month to match the highest resource utilization rate of the previous month's pay-per-use instance, that is, the most costly pay-per-use instance for the same specifications. If the number of RIs within the validity period is no less than the number of pay-per-use instances that have the same specifications as the RIs, all instances of this specification will be matched with RIs. Otherwise, the bill consumption amount of each instance is sorted from largest to smallest, and the largest amount is matched first, and the remaining unmatched instances are billed on a pay-per-use basis.

After the RIs are successfully matched, associate pay-per-use instances with RIs and update the usage of the RIs in the order. When the number of unused RIs is 0, the match will stop.
Billing rules
At the beginning of each month, you can view the consumption records of the last month from the user center. After an RI is purchased successfully, regardless of whether it can be matched to a pay-per-use instance, you need to pay for the RI according to the payment type within the validity period.

If the RI is successfully matched with a pay-per-use instance, the pay-per-use instance fee is zero. If the RI does not match any pay-per-use instances, the instances are still billed on a pay-per-use basis.