Overview

GaussDB provides two billing modes, yearly/monthly billing and pay-per-use billing, to meet requirements in different scenarios.

Yearly/Monthly is a prepaid billing mode. 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. Yearly/Monthly billing is a good option for long-term, stable services.
Pay-per-use is a postpaid billing mode. You pay as you go and just pay for what you use. The DB instance usage is calculated by the second but billed every hour. This allows you to adjust resource usage easily. You neither need to prepare for resources in advance, nor end up with excessive or insufficient preset resources. Pay-per-use billing is a good option for scenarios where there are sudden traffic bursts, such as e-commerce promotions.

**Table 1** Billing modes
Billing Mode	Yearly/Monthly	Pay-per-Use
Payment	Prepaid Billed by the subscription term you purchase.	Postpaid Billed by service duration.
Billing Method	Billed by the subscription term you purchase.	Calculated by the second but billed every hour.
Billed Items	Instance specifications (vCPUs and memory), storage space, backup space, and EIPs	Instance specifications (vCPUs and memory), storage space, backup space, and EIPs
Changing the Billing Mode	Yearly/Monthly can be changed to pay-per-use. The change takes effect only after the yearly/monthly subscription expires. Yearly/Monthly to Pay-per-Use	Pay-per-use can be changed to yearly/monthly. Pay-per-Use to Yearly/Monthly
Changing the Specifications	Supported	Supported
Application Scenario	Recommended for resources expected to be in use long-term. A cost-effective option for scenarios where the resource usage duration is predictable.	Recommended when the resource demands are likely to fluctuate and you want more flexibility.