Pay-per-Use Billing

Application Scenarios

Pay-per-use billing is good for short-term, bursty, or unpredictable workloads that cannot tolerate any interruptions, such as applications for e-commerce flash sales, temporary testing, and scientific computing.

Billed Items

Central networks are free of charge. The global connection bandwidths used by central networks and the connections between enterprise routers on the central networks support pay-per-use billing.

Billed Usage Period

Global connection bandwidth usage is calculated by the second and billed every hour. The billing starts when a global connection bandwidth is purchased and ends when the bandwidth is deleted.

For example, if you purchased a pay-per-use global connection bandwidth at 8:45:00 and deleted it at 8:55:00, you are billed for the 600 seconds from 8:45:00 to 8:55:00.

Billing Example

Assume that you purchased a 150-Mbit/s global connection bandwidth for a cross-site connection between enterprise routers at 9:30:00 on April 18, 2023.

• You increased the bandwidth to 200 Mbit/s at 11:00:00 on April 18, 2023.
• You deleted the bandwidth at 11:00:00 on April 19, 2023.

Enterprise routers are free of charge, but the connections between enterprise routers are billed by the hour.

In this example, the unit price of the global connection bandwidth is $0.1 USD/Mbit/s per hour, and that of the connection is $0.06 USD/hour.

Figure 1 shows how the total price is calculated.

Figure 1 Example central network price

Price Change After Specification Change

If you change the specifications of a pay-per-use global connection bandwidth, the original order will become invalid and a new order will be placed. You will be billed based on the new specifications.

If you change the specifications within a given hour, multiple records will be generated. Different records record the billing for different specifications.

For example, if you purchase a 150-Mbit/s global connection bandwidth at 9:00:00 and increase the bandwidth to 200 Mbit/s at 9:30:00, two records will be generated between 9:00:00 and 10:00:00.

• From 9:00:00 to 9:30:00: 150 Mbit/s
• From 9:30:00 to 10:00:00: 200 Mbit/s

Impact of Arrears

Figure 2 shows the statuses a pay-per-use resource can have throughout its lifecycle. After a resource is purchased, it enters the valid period and runs normally during this period. If your account goes into arrears, the resource enters a grace period and then a retention period.

Figure 2 Lifecycle of a pay-per-use resource

Arrears Reminder

The system will bill you for pay-per-use resources after each billing cycle ends. If your account goes into arrears, we will notify you by email, SMS, or in-app message.

Impact of Arrears

• If your account is insufficient to pay your amount due, the account will go into arrears and the resource will enter the grace period.

  Pay-per-use resources are not stopped immediately. You are still responsible for expenditures generated during the grace period. You can view the charges on the Billing Center > Overview page and pay any past due balance as needed.

• If you do not bring your account balance current before the grace period expires, the resource status turns to Frozen and it enters a retention period.

• If you do not bring your account balance current before the retention period ends, your resources will be released, and the data cannot be restored.

• For details about the grace period and retention period, see What Is a Grace Period of Huawei Cloud? How Long Is It? and What Is a Retention Period of Huawei Cloud? How Long Is It?
• For details about topping up your account, see Topping Up an Account.