Overview of Billing Modes

GaussDB(DWS) provides three billing modes: yearly/monthly, pay-per-use, and discount package. The longer you use, the less you pay.

Yearly/Monthly: Recommended for long-term users. You can purchase cloud services in yearly/monthly mode and enjoy a larger discount than in the pay-per-use mode. A purchased cloud service is bound to a cloud service instance that is enabled or used. When the validity period expires, the cloud service enters the retention period (grace period). After the retention period expires, the cloud service is automatically released. You can renew the service to continue using it.
Pay per use (hourly): In this billing mode, you can enable or disable GaussDB(DWS) as you like. You are billed by your use duration on an hourly basis (the time is accurate to minutes) and the system generates a bill every natural hour and deducts fees from your account balance.
Discount package: Prepayment for OBS hot data storage is required either monthly or annually. In contrast to pay-per-use billing, the discount package offers substantial savings, making it ideal for long-term users of DWS 3.0.

**Table 1** Billing modes
Billing Mode	Yearly/Monthly	Discount Package	Pay-per-Use
Payment	Prepaid Billed by the required duration specified in your order	Prepaid Billed by the required duration specified in your order	Postpaid Billed by service duration.
Billing period	Billed by the required duration specified in your order	You are charged based on the subscription period.	Billed by second and settled by hour
Billing items	Data warehouse nodes, snapshot storage space, standard data warehouse storage, public IP address and bandwidth (optional), and database encryption key (optional)	OBS hot data storage	Data warehouse nodes, snapshot storage space, standard data warehouse storage, public IP address and bandwidth (optional), and database encryption key (optional)
Billing mode change	Can be changed to pay-per-use. The change takes effect only after the yearly/monthly subscription expires.	After the validity period expires, the billing mode changes to pay-per-use.	Can be changed to yearly/monthly.
Specification change	Supported	Not supported	Supported
Application scenario	This cost-effective mode is ideal when the duration of ECS usage is predictable. The yearly/monthly mode is recommended for long-term users.	This mode applies to scenarios where DWS 3.0 clusters are planned to be used for a long time.	This mode is ideal when you want more flexibility and control on ECS usage. For example, customers that require early operation tests, proof of concept, and short-term use.