Will I Be Billed After ECSs Are Stopped?

ECSs support multiple billing modes. Whether you will continue to be billed after ECSs are stopped depend on the billing mode of the stopped ECSs.

• Yearly/Monthly: a prepaid billing mode. You are billed based on the subscription term you purchase. Stopping ECSs does not affect the billing.
• Spot pricing (for spot block): a postpaid billing mode. You are billed based on the usage duration and predefined duration. After ECSs are stopped, you will continue to be billed.
• Pay-per-use and spot pricing (for spot instances): a postpaid billing mode. You are billed based on the usage duration. Whether you are billed after ECSs are stopped depends on the instance type. For details about the billing policy for stopped ECSs, see Table 1.

  Table 1 Billing for a stopped ECS

  Instance Type	Description	Billed Items	Billed or Not	Action on Resources
  Common instances	Common instances include: Non-bare-metal instance Instances without local disks Instances without FPGA cards	ECS (compute resources including vCPUs and memory)	No	If ECSs are created from public resource pools, basic resources (vCPUs and memory) are no longer retained. The ECS may fail to be started due to insufficient resources. Wait patiently and try again later. If ECSs are created on a DeH or in an edge AZ, basic resources (vCPUs and memory) will be retained.
  		Images	No	Resources are retained but are not billed.
  		GPU	No	After GPU-accelerated ECSs without local disks attached are stopped, GPU resources are no longer retained.
  		EVS disks (system disks and data disks)	Yes	The resources are still billed based on the billing rules.
  		EIP bandwidth	Yes	The resources are still billed based on the billing rules. EIP bandwidth price: pay-per-use EIPs (by bandwidth) Shared bandwidth price For details, see EIP Billing.
  Special instances	Special instances include: Bare metal instances Instances with local disks such as disk-intensive, ultra-high I/O ECSs. ECSs with FPGA cards	ECS (compute resources including vCPUs and memory)	Yes	The ECS resources are still billed based on the billing rules. To stop the billing, you need to delete the instance and its associated resources.
  		Images	Yes
  		GPU	Yes
  		EVS disks (system disks and data disks)	Yes
  		EIP bandwidth	Yes

For a stopped pay-per-use ECS, the startup may fail due to insufficient resources. Please wait for several minutes before attempting another restart or changing the ECS specifications.

For details, see How Can I Stop an ECS from Being Billed?

If you want to use an ECS for a long time, you can change its billing mode from pay-per-use to yearly/monthly to reduce cost. For details, see Changing Pay-per-Use to Yearly/Monthly.