Pay-per-Use

Application Scenario

Pay-per-use is a postpaid mode and is useful when application instances do not need to run 24/7, or only for a short period of time.

Billing Items

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

The price includes:

• vCPU: calculated by your vCPU configuration.
• Memory: calculated by your memory configuration.
• Traffic: calculated by your traffic volume.

Billing Cycle

In pay-per-use mode, fees are calculated in minutes and billed by the hour (GMT+08:00:00). Once settlement is complete, a new billing cycle starts. Billing starts when a CAE instance is created and ends when it is deleted.

For example, if you deployed an application at 08:45:30 to provide services using compute resources (vCPUs and memory) and traffic, and then deleted it at 08:55:00, the billing cycle was from 08:00:00 to 09:00:00 with fees generated from 08:45:30 to 08:55:00. You were billed for 10 minutes.

Billing Example 1

You created an application and configured a 4 vCPU | 8 GiB component at 09:59:30 on Jun 05, 2025, and then deleted the application at 10:45:46 on the same day, using 0.8 GB of traffic data during application running. You were billed for:

• Usage of 1 minute from 09:59:30 to 10:00:00
• Usage of 46 minutes from 10:00:00 to 10:45:46

You were billed for each usage duration. CAE resources are billed individually as described in Table 2. You can choose to display either per-minute or per-hour prices in the pricing details.

Table 2 lists the three types of instance specifications when you use CAE. For details, see Minimum Specifications.

Figure 1 shows how the total price is calculated.

• The prices in the figure are for reference only. The actual calculation is subject to the prices in CAE Pricing Details.
• In this example, the vCPU and memory specifications did not exceed the minimum specifications. So they were billed based on the minimum specifications (8 vCPU | 32 GiB) using the premium unit price.

Figure 1 Total price for a pay-per-use CAE instance

Billing Example 2

You created an application and configured a 12 vCPU | 40 GiB component at 09:59:30 on Jun 05, 2025, and then deleted the application at 10:45:46 on the same day, using 0.8 GB of traffic data during application running. You were billed for:

• Usage of 1 minute from 09:59:30 to 10:00:00
• Usage of 46 minutes from 10:00:00 to 10:45:46

You were billed for each usage duration. CAE resources are billed individually as described in Table 3. You can choose to display either per-minute or per-hour prices in the pricing details.

Table 3 lists the three types of instance specifications when you use CAE. For details, see Minimum Specifications.

Figure 2 shows how the total price is calculated.

• The prices in the figure are for reference only. The actual calculation is subject to the prices in CAE Pricing Details.
• In this example, the vCPU and memory specifications (12 vCPU | 40 GiB) exceed the minimum specifications. You were billed for:
  1. Specifications at or below the minimum specifications (8 vCPU | 32 GiB). This portion is billed based on the premium unit price.
  2. Specifications in excess of the minimum specifications. This portion (4 vCPU | 8 GiB) is billed based on the general unit price.

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

Price Change After Specification Change

If you change the specifications of a pay-per-use CAE 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 billing records will be generated. The start and end times of each record correspond to when different specifications took effect within the hour.

For example, if you created an application and configured a 4 vCPU | 8 GiB component at 09:00:00 and upgraded to 12 vCPU | 40 GiB at 09:30:00, two billing records would be generated for the period from 09:00:00 and 10:00:00.

• There would be one record for 9:00:00 to 9:29:59, for the original specifications.
• Then there would be a second record for 09:30:00 to 10:00:00, for the new specifications. You would be billed for:
  • Specifications at or below the minimum specifications (8 vCPU | 32 GiB). This portion is billed based on the premium unit price.
  • Specifications in excess of the minimum specifications. This portion (4 vCPU | 8 GiB) is billed based on the general unit price.

For details about the CAE minimum specifications, see Minimum Specifications.

Impact of Arrears

Figure 3 shows the statuses a pay-per-use CAE resource can go through throughout its lifecycle. After an instance is created, it enters a valid period and runs normally during this period. If your account falls into arrears, the resource enters a grace period and then a retention period.

Figure 3 Lifecycle of a pay-per-use CAE resource

Arrears Alert

The system will deduct fees for pay-per-use resources at the end of each billing cycle. When your account is in arrears, we will notify the Huawei Cloud account creator by email, SMS, and internal message.

Impact of Arrears

If your account balance is insufficient, your account falls into arrears. However, your pay-per-use resources will not be stopped immediately. There will be a grace period before they are stopped. You are still responsible for expenditures generated during the grace period. You can view the charges on the Billing Center > Overview page and pay any past due balances as needed.

If you do not settle your account balance before the grace period ends, the resource enters a retention period and its status becomes Frozen. You cannot perform any operations while it is in the retention period.

If you do not settle your account balance before the retention period ends, the resource will be released and data cannot be restored.

• For details about how to top up your account, see Topping Up an Account.