Updated on 2023-12-28 GMT+08:00

Overview

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

  • 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. A pay-per-use NAT gateway can be billed by day or by hour. This mode allows you to adjust resource usage easily. You do not need to prepare resources in advance, and will not have excessive or insufficient preset resources.
Table 1 Differences between billing modes

Billing Mode

Yearly/Monthly

Pay-per-use

Payment

Prepaid

Billed by the subscription term you purchase.

Postpaid

Billed by the usage duration

Billing Method

Billed by the subscription term you purchase.

Billed by day or hour (calculated by the second but billed every hour)

Billing Items

NAT gateway type and specifications

NAT gateway type and specifications

Changing the Billing Mode

Yearly/Monthly can be changed to pay-per-use.

The change takes effect only after the yearly/monthly subscription expires.

For details, see Yearly/Monthly to Pay-per-Use.

Pay-per-use can be changed to yearly/monthly.

For details, see Pay-per-Use to Yearly/Monthly.

Changing the Specifications

Public NAT gateway can only be upgraded to a gateway of more robust specifications.

Supported

Application Scenarios

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.

Yearly/monthly NAT gateways are only available in the AP-Bangkok and AP-Singapore regions.