Pay-Per-Use

Pay-per-use billing is a postpaid mode in which you pay for what you use. This billing mode requires no upfront or long-term commitments. This document describes the billing rules of pay-per-use APIs (data masking and watermarking APIs).

Application Scenario

Pay-per-use billing is suitable for applications or services that cannot be interrupted but have unpredictable or sudden traffic surges, such as flash sale activities on e-commerce platforms, temporary testing, and scientific computing.

Applicable Billing Items

Watermark APIs
Data masking APIs

Constraints

If you purchase the DSC professional edition, you can enjoy over 1 million watermark API calls free of charge every month.

Billing Period

Pay-per-use DSC API calls are charged by month. The fee is settled once a month (calendar month). After the settlement is complete, a new billing period starts. The billing start time is the time when the API is successfully called for the first time, and the end time is the time when the API is called for the last time in the month.

For example, if you call the watermarking API for the first time at 2023/03/08 15:50:04 and then call the watermark API for the last time at 2023/04/08 23:59:59, the billing period is from 2023/03/08 15:50:04 to 2023/04/08 23:59:59. During this period, no fee is generated for 0 to 1 million API calls. If the number of API calls exceeds 1 million, you will be charged by the extra number of calls.

Billing Examples

If you call the watermarking API for the first time at 2023/03/08 15:50:04 and then for the last time at 2023/04/08 23:59:59, the billing period is from 2023/03/08 15:50:04 to 2023/04/08 23:59:59.

The first billing period is 0 to 1 million calls.
The second billing period is 1 million to 1.1 million calls, which cost 34.6 USD.

Figure 1 shows the billing calculation.

Figure 1 Pay-per-use DSC fee

Impact of Arrears

Figure 2 describes the status of pay-per-use DSC resources in different periods. After you purchase DSC resources, the period during which the resources run properly within the billing period is the validity period. If your account is in arrears due to failed payments for the pay-per-use DSC resources, the resources enter the grace period and then retention period.

Figure 2 Life cycle of DSC resources charged in pay-per-use mode

Arrears notifications

The system deducts fees from your account balance for pay-per-use resources at the end of each billing cycle. If your account is in arrears, we will notify you by email, SMS, or internal message.

Arrears impacts

Your account may fall into arrears after pay-per-use fees for DSC are deducted from the account balance. If you are in arrears, you cannot call APIs for updating operations but can call APIs for viewing information. You need to pay the fees of your pay-per-use resource incurred during the grace period. To view the fees, go to the Billing Center > Overview page. Huawei Cloud will deduct the fees after you top up your account.

If you do not pay arrears within the grace period, the resource enters the retention period and its status changes to Frozen. In this case, you cannot call APIs for updating operations but can call APIs for viewing information.

If you do not pay arrears after the retention period expires, the data will be deleted and cannot be restored.