WAF Billing Modes

WAF supports yearly/monthly (prepaid) and pay-per-use (postpaid) billing. For cloud WAF, both billing modes are supported. For dedicated WAF instances, only pay-per-use billing is supported. For details about different billing modes, see WAF Pricing Details.

Yearly/monthly billing: The longer you use, the more you save. You need to pay the bill for the required duration.
- After buying cloud mode WAF, you still need to submit a service ticket to enable the load balancer access method. For details about supported regions, see Function Overview.
- To use Cloud Mode - Load balancer access, you need to buy the standard, professional, or enterprise edition first.
  Cloud Mode - Load balancer shares its domain name, QPS, and rule expansion package quotas with Cloud Mode - CNAME, and the service specifications are the same as those of the basic package for cloud mode you buy.
Pay-per-use billing: This billing mode allows you to make a subscription or unsubscription at any time.

Dedicated WAF instances billed on a pay-per-use basis are not available in some regions. For details, see Notice on Web Application Firewall (Dedicated Mode) Discontinued.
- For a pay-per-use cloud WAF instance, you are billed for the number of added domain names, number of customized rules, and number of forwarded requests.
- For a pay-per-use dedicated WAF instance, you are billed for the required duration (accurate to second), which starts when the instance is created and ends when the instance is deleted.

**Table 1** Differences between billing modes
Billing Mode	Yearly/Monthly	Pay-per-use
Payment Method	Prepaid	Postpaid
Metering Period	Billed by the purchase period specified in the order	Cloud mode: The bills for protected domain names are settled on an hourly basis. The bills for custom protection rules are settled every 24 hours. The bills for requests are settled monthly. Dedicated mode: Instances are billed by the second, and bills are settled on an hourly basis.
Billing Item	Cloud mode: the service edition, domain expansion packages, QPS expansion packages, and rule expansion packages Content moderation check: Text check	Cloud mode: the number of domain names, the number of custom rules, and the number of requests Dedicated mode: the number of instances
Changing the Billing Mode	This billing mode cannot be directly switched to pay-per-use billing mode. You can purchase a pay-per-use cloud WAF instance after the yearly/monthly WAF instance expires or has been unsubscribed from.	This billing mode cannot be directly switched to pay-per-use billing mode. You can disable pay-per-use billing and purchase a yearly/monthly WAF instance.
Application Scenario	This billing mode is cost-effective and suitable when the duration of resource usage is predictable. The yearly/monthly mode is recommended for long-term users.	This mode is ideal when you want more flexibility and control on WAF usage.