Overview

CSS provides two billing modes: yearly/monthly and pay-per-use, meeting your requirements in different scenarios. For more information, see Cloud Search Service Pricing Details.

Yearly/Monthly is a prepaid billing. 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. This mode is a good option for long-term, stable services.
Pay-per-use is a postpaid billing mode. You only pay for what you use. The cluster usage is counted in seconds but billed every hour. This mode allows for flexible resource adjustment without the risk of over- or under-provisioning. This mode is a good option if the demands are unpredictable.

Table 1 compares the two billing modes.

**Table 1** Billing modes
Billing Mode	Yearly/Monthly	Pay-per-use
Payment Method	Prepaid	Postpaid
Billed Usage Period	Billed by the subscription term you purchase	Billed by second and settled by hour Billed by your actual usage duration
Billing Item	Node specifications (vCPUs and memory), node storage, and public network bandwidth	Node specifications (vCPUs and memory), node storage, and public network bandwidth
Billing Mode Change	Yearly/monthly can be changed to pay-per-use. The change takes effect only upon expiration of the yearly/monthly subscription. From Yearly/Monthly to Pay-per-Use	Pay-per-use can be changed to yearly/monthly. After you pay for the order, the yearly/monthly subscription takes effect immediately. From Pay-per-Use to Yearly/Monthly
Node Specifications Change	Supported	Supported
Application Scenarios	This mode is cost-effective and suitable when the duration of resource usage is predictable. This mode is recommended for long-term users.	This mode is ideal when you want more flexibility and control on compute resource.