Updated on 2025-08-04 GMT+08:00

Yearly/Monthly Billing

Yearly/Monthly is ideal for users who are confident in their long-term needs and want to secure a lower price. You will enjoy a discount on a yearly/monthly instance. This section describes the billing rules of a yearly/monthly GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible instance.

Application Scenarios

If you want to ensure resource stability over a certain period of time, yearly/monthly billing is a good choice for the following types of workloads:

  • Long-term workloads with stable resource requirements, such as official websites, online malls, and blogs.
  • Long-term projects, such as scientific research projects and large-scale events.
  • Workloads with predictable traffic bursts, for example, e-commerce promotions or festivals.
  • Workloads with high data security requirements.

Billing Items

You are billed for the following items on a yearly/monthly basis.

Table 1 Items billed on a yearly/monthly basis

Billing Item

Description

Instance specifications

vCPUs and memory

Storage

If the actual storage usage exceeds your purchased storage, you will be billed for additional storage on a pay-per-use basis.

Backup storage

GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible API provides free backup storage equal to the amount of storage you purchased.

After the free backup storage is used up, additional usage will incur bills based on the backup storage pricing details. These fees are settled by the hour. If it has been used less than one hour, you will be billed based on the actual duration.

(Optional) EIP bandwidth

You will be billed for the bandwidth you use to access GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible instances over a public network. Accessing the instances over a private network will not be billed.

Assume that you want to buy a three-node GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible instance with 2 vCPUs, 8 GB of memory, and 100 GB of storage. At the bottom of the page for buying an instance, price details (excluding the backup storage fee) will be displayed.

Figure 1 Example price

You are billed for:

  • Selected specifications
  • Storage

The backup space fee is not included. For details about the backup price, see Product Pricing Details.

Billing Cycle

The billing cycle of a yearly/monthly GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible instance is determined by the duration (UTC+8) you commit to the subscription. The billing starts from when you activated or renewed the subscription and ends at 23:59:59 of the expiry date.

For example, if you bought a GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible instance for one month at 15:50:04 on March 8, 2023, the billing cycle is from 15:50:04 on March 8, 2023 to 23:59:59 on April 8, 2023.

Billing Examples

Assume that you bought a three-node GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible instance with 2 vCPUs, 8 GB of memory, 100 GB of storage, 110 GB (100 GB for free) of backup storage for one month at 15:50:04 on March 8, 2023 and renewed the subscription for another month before the instance expired.

  • 15:50:04, March 8, 2023 to 23:59:59, April 8, 2023
  • 23:59:59, April 8, 2023 to 23:59:59, May 8, 2023
    • From 23:59:59 on April 8, 2023 to 23:59:59 on May 1, 2023, 50 GB of free backup storage was used.
    • From 23:59:59 on May 1, 2023 to 23:59:59 on May 8, 2023, another 10 GB of backup storage was used, which was billed for 168 hours.

You will be billed for each billing cycle. Resources of the GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible instance are billed separately.

Table 2 Formulas for billing yearly/monthly resources

Resource

Formula

Unit Price

Instance specifications (including vCPUs and memory)

Unit price of the instance specifications x Required duration x Number of nodes

See the estimated price of a cluster instance in GeminiDB Price Calculator.

Storage space

Storage space unit price x Required duration x Storage space (GB)

See the estimated price of a cluster instance with specified storage in GeminiDB Price Calculator.

Backup storage

Backup storage unit price x Required duration x (Backup storage – Storage) (GB)

NOTE:

The billed duration refers to the length of time the billed backup storage was used for.

See the estimated price of an instance with specified backup storage in GeminiDB Price Calculator.

Public network bandwidth

Billed by fixed bandwidth

For details, see EIP Price Calculator.

Figure 2 shows how the total price is calculated.

The prices in the following figure are for reference only. For the actual prices, see GeminiDB Price Calculator.

Figure 2 Pricing example of a yearly/monthly GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible instance

Impact on Billing After Specification Changes

You can change the specifications on the console to meet your service requirements. The system will recalculate the price and either bill or refund you the difference.

  • If you upgrade instance specifications, you need to pay the difference in price.
  • If you downgrade instance specifications, Huawei Cloud will refund you the difference.

Downgrading instance specifications will affect instance performance. You are not advised to do so. Assume that you bought a yearly/monthly three-node GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible instance with 2 vCPUs and 8 GB of memory on April 8, 2023 and upgraded its specifications to 4 vCPUs and 16 GB of memory on the same day. The old specifications cost USD587.06/month and the new specifications USD981.62/month. The calculation formula is as follows:

Price difference for the specification upgrade = Price for the new specifications × Remaining period - Price for the original specifications × Remaining period

The remaining period in the formula is the number of remaining days in each calendar month divided by the maximum number of days in the calendar month. In this example, the remaining period is 0.6581 (12/30 + 8/31). The upgrade fee is USD259.66 (981.62 x 0.6581 – 587.06 x 0.6581).

For more details, see Pricing of a Changed Specification.

Impact of Expiration

Figure 3 shows the statuses of a yearly/monthly GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible instance. After an instance is purchased, it enters the valid period and runs normally during this period. If the instance is not renewed after it expires, before being deleted, it first enters a grace period and then a retention period.

Figure 3 Lifecycle of a yearly/monthly GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible instance

Expiration reminder

From the 7th day before a yearly/monthly GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible instance expires, the system will send an expiration reminder to the creator of the Huawei Cloud account by email, SMS, and in-app message.

Impact

If your yearly/monthly instance is not renewed after it expires, its status changes to Expired and it enters a grace period. During the grace period, you can access the instance but cannot:

  • Change instance specifications.
  • Change the billing mode from yearly/monthly to pay-per-use.
  • Unsubscribe from the instance.

If the yearly/monthly instance is not renewed after the grace period ends, its status turns to Frozen and it enters a retention period. You cannot perform any operations on the instance while it is in the retention period.

If the yearly/monthly instance is not renewed by the time the retention period ends, it will be released and data cannot be restored.

  • For details about the renewal, see Overview.