Help Center> Elastic Cloud Server> Billing> Billing Overview
Updated on 2024-04-23 GMT+08:00
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Billing Overview

In this document, you will learn about how ECSs are billed, how you can renew subscriptions and manage costs, and what happens if your account goes into arrears.

  • Billing Modes

    There are yearly/monthly, pay-per-use, and spot pricing billing modes. Each one has different advantages and disadvantages.

    • Yearly/Monthly: You pay upfront for the amount of time you expect to use the ECS for. You will need to make sure you have a top-up account with a sufficient balance or have a valid payment method configured first.
    • Pay-per-use: You can start using the ECS first and then pay as you go.
    • Spot pricing: ECS prices are adjusted gradually based on long-term trends in supply and demand for spot instance capacity.

    For details about the three billing modes, see Overview. You can also change the billing mode later if it no longer meets your needs. For details, see Overview.

  • Billed Items

    You will be billed for instance flavors, images, EVS disks, and EIPs.

    Figure 1 ECS billing items

    For details about the billing factors and formulas for each billed item, see Billing Items.

    For more information about the billing samples and the billing for each item, see Billing Examples.

  • Renewing Subscriptions

    After a yearly/monthly ECS expires, it cannot run properly. If you want to continue using an ECS after it expires, you need to renew the ECS subscription within the specified period. Otherwise, resources, such as vCPUs, memory, and EVS disks, will be automatically released, and data may be lost. You can renew your subscriptions manually or automatically. For more details, see Overview.

  • Viewing Bills

    You can choose Billing & Costs > Bills to check the ECS transactions and bills. For details, see Bills.

  • Arrears

    If there is not a sufficient account balance to pay for your bill and there is no other payment method configured, your account will go into arrears. If you want to continue using your cloud services, you will need to top up your account in a timely manner. For details, see Arrears.

  • Stopping Billing

    If you no longer need to use your cloud service, you can unsubscribe from or delete it to stop the billing. For details, see Billing Termination.

  • Managing Costs

    You can allocate, analyze, and optimize costs to save more money. For details, see Cost Management.