Yearly/Monthly Billing

Application Scenarios

If you want to ensure resource stability over a certain period of time, yearly/monthly billing is a good choice for the following types of workloads:

• Long-term workloads with stable resource requirements, such as official websites, online malls, and blogs
• Long-term projects, such as scientific research projects and large-scale events
• Workloads with predictable traffic bursts, for example, e-commerce promotions or festivals
• Workloads with high data security requirements

Billing Items

Yearly/monthly public NAT gateways are billed based on the public NAT gateway specifications and the usage duration.

Billed Usage Period

A yearly/monthly public NAT gateway is billed for the purchased duration. The billing starts when you activated or renewed the subscription, and ends at 23:59:59 of the expiry date.

For example, if you purchased a one-month public NAT gateway on March 08, 2023, 15:50:04, the billed usage period is from March 08, 2023, 15:50:04 to April 08, 2023, 23:59:59.

Billing Examples

Suppose you purchased a small public NAT gateway for a month on March 08, 2023, 15:50:04, and renewed the subscription for one more month before the initial subscription expired. The following usage periods would be billed.

The prices are just examples. The actual prices are those displayed on .

Price Change After Specification Change

If the specifications of a yearly/monthly public NAT gateway no longer meet your needs, you can change the specifications on the console. The system will recalculate the price and either bill or refund you the difference.

• If you upgrade your NAT gateway specifications, the billing will be based on the more robust specifications used on the same day, and you need to pay the difference in price.

• The specifications of a yearly/monthly public NAT gateway cannot be downgraded.

Suppose you purchased a one-month, small public NAT Gateway on April 08, 2023 and upgraded the specifications to medium on April 18, 2023. The price for the original specification was $73.31 USD/month, and that for the new specifications was $137.79 USD/month. The price difference will be calculated as follows:

Specification upgrade fee = New specification price × Remaining period – Original specification price × Remaining period

In this example,

Remaining period = 12 (Remaining days in April)/30 (Maximum number of days in April) + 8 (Remaining days in May)/31 (Maximum number of days in May) = 0.6581

Cost of specifications upgrade = $137.79 x 0.6581 - $73.31 x 0.6581 = $42.434

For more information, see Pricing of a Changed Specification.

Impact of Expiration

Figure 1 shows the statuses a yearly/monthly NAT gateway can go through throughout its lifecycle. After a NAT gateway is purchased, it enters the valid period and runs normally during this period. If the NAT gateway is not renewed after it expires, before being deleted, it first enters a grace period and then a retention period.

Figure 1 Lifecycle of a yearly/monthly NAT gateway