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

You are billed for the following items on a pay-per-use basis.

Suppose you want to purchase a pay-per-use distributed DB instance with general-enhanced II specifications, 8 vCPUs, and 64 GB of memory, and the instance contains 1 shard, 3 replicas, 1 CN, and 160 GB of storage. At the bottom of the Buy DB Instance page, you can view pricing details (excluding the backup space prices).

Figure 1 Example prices

The backup space price is not included. For details about the backup price, see the Product Pricing Details page of the price calculator.

Billed Usage Period

Pay-per-use DB instance usage is calculated by the second and billed every hour. The billing starts when the DB instance is launched and ends when the instance is deleted.

It takes a certain time to create a GaussDB instance. The billing starts from the time when the instance was successfully created.

For example, if you purchased a pay-per-use DB instance at 8:45:30 and deleted it at 8:55:30, you are billed for the 600 seconds from 8:45:30 to 8:55:30.

Billing Examples

Suppose you purchased a pay-per-use distributed DB instance on April 18, 2023, 9:59:30 with general-enhanced II specifications, 8 vCPUs, and 64 GB of memory, and the instance contains 1 shard, 3 replicas, 1 CN, and 160 GB of storage. Then you deleted it on April 18, 2023, 10:45:46. The following usage periods will be billed:

• April 18, 2023, 9:00:00 to April 18, 2023, 10:00:00

  Usage of 30 seconds from 9:59:30 to 10:00:00

• April 18, 2023, 10:00:00 to April 18, 2023, 11:00:00

  Usage of 2,746 seconds from 10:00:00 to 10:45:46

  • From April 18, 2023, 10:00:00 to April 18, 2023, 10:45:00, free backup space was used.
  • From April 18, 2023, 10:45:00 to April 18, 2023, 10:45:46, an extra 10 GB of backup space was used, which was billed for 46 seconds.

Figure 2 shows how the total price is calculated.

The prices in the figure are just examples. The actual prices are those displayed on GaussDB Pricing Details.

For pay-per-use billing, decimal numerals on the price calculator are rounded off and are accurate to two decimal places. If the fee is less than $0.01 USD (after rounding off), $0.01 USD will be displayed.

Figure 2 Total price for a pay-per-use DB instance

Price Change After Specification Change

If you change the specifications of a pay-per-use instance, 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 instance specifications within a given hour, multiple records will be generated. Different records record the billing for different specifications.

For example, if you purchased a pay-per-use DB instance (8 vCPUs | 64 GB) at 9:00:00 and changed the instance specifications to 16 vCPUs | 128 GB at 9:30:00, the following items will be billed:

• DB instance (8 vCPUs | 64 GB) usage from 9:00:00 to 9:30:00
• DB instance (16 vCPUs | 128 GB) usage from 9:30:00 to 10:00:00

Impact of Arrears

Figure 3 shows the statuses a pay-per-use DB instance can have throughout its lifecycle. After a DB instance is purchased, it enters the valid period and runs normally during this period. If your account goes into arrears, the DB instance enters a grace period and then a retention period.

Figure 3 Lifecycle of a pay-per-use DB instance

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, your account goes into arrears, and the pay-per-use instance enters the grace period. You are still responsible for expenditures generated during the grace period. You can view the charges on the Billing & Costs > 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 DB instance turns to Frozen and enters a retention period.

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

• The grace period and retention period are both 15 days.

• For details about top-up, see Topping Up an Account.