Pay-per-Use Billing

Application Scenarios

Pay-per-use billing is good for short-term or unpredictable workloads.

Billed Items

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

The billed items marked with asterisks (*) are mandatory.

If you want to purchase an RDS for MySQL 8.0 general-purpose primary/standby DB instance with 2 vCPUs, 4 GB of memory, a cloud SSD, and 40 GB of storage, you will see the following prices (excluding the backup space fee):

Figure 1 Example prices

The price includes:

• The instance class (vCPUs and memory)
• The storage space

The backup space pricing is not included. For details about the backup fees, see the Product Pricing Details page of the price calculator.

Billed Usage Period

Pay-per-use DB instance usage is calculated by the second and billed every hour. The billing starts when the DB instance is created and ends when the instance is deleted.

It takes a certain time to create a DB instance. The billing starts from the Completed time on the Instant Tasks page in the task center.

For example, if you purchased a pay-per-use DB instance at 8:45:30 and deleted it at 8:55:30, you are billed for the 600 seconds from 8:45:30 to 8:55:30.

Billing Examples

Suppose you purchased an RDS for MySQL 8.0 primary/standby DB instance (instance class: general-purpose, 2 vCPUs | 4 GB; storage: cloud SSD, 40 GB; backup space: 50 GB (40 GB for free); bandwidth: 6 Mbit/s; one-second monitoring) on April 18, 2023, 9:59:30, and deleted it on April 18, 2023, 10:45:46. Two usage periods will be billed:

• Usage of 30 seconds from 9:59:30 to 10:00:00 (between 9:00:00 and 10:00:00)
• Usage of 2,746 seconds from 10:00:00 to 10:45:46 (between 10:00:00 and 11:00:00)
  • From April 18, 2023, 10:00:00 to April 18, 2023, 10:45:00, 20 GB of free backup space was used.
  • From April 18, 2023, 10:45:00 to April 18, 2023, 10:45:46, another 10 GB of backup space was used, which was billed for 46 seconds.
  • Monitoring by Seconds was enabled at 10:10:00 on April 18, 2023. Fees were generated from 10:10:00 on April 18, 2023 to 10:45:46 on April 18, 2023 (2,146 seconds).

The price displayed in the pricing details is per hour, so you need to divide it by 3,600 to obtain the price for each second and then multiple the per-second price by the total number of seconds. RDS resources are billed individually as follows:

Figure 2 shows how the total price is calculated.

The prices in the figure are just examples. The actual prices are those displayed on RDS Pricing Details.

For pay-per-use billing, decimal numerals on the price calculator are rounded off and are accurate to two decimal places. If the fee is less than $0.01 USD (after rounding off), $0.01 USD will be displayed.

Figure 2 Total price for a pay-per-use DB instance (taking RDS for MySQL in CN-Hong Kong as an example)

Price Change After Instance Class Change

If you change the instance class of a pay-per-use DB instance, the original order will become invalid and a new order will be placed. You will be billed based on the new instance class.

If you change the instance class within a given hour, multiple records will be generated. Different records record the billing for different instance classes.

For example, if you purchased a pay-per-use DB instance (2 vCPUs | 4 GB) at 9:00:00 and changed the instance class to 4 vCPUs | 8 GB at 9:30:00, the following items will be billed:

• DB instance (2 vCPUs | 4 GB) usage from 9:00:00 to 9:30:00
• DB instance (4 vCPUs | 8 GB) usage from 9:30:00 to 10:00:00

Impact of Arrears

Figure 3 shows the statuses a pay-per-use DB instance can have throughout its lifecycle. After a DB instance is purchased, it enters the valid period and runs normally during this period. If your account goes into arrears, the DB instance enters a grace period and then a retention period.

Figure 3 Lifecycle of a pay-per-use DB instance

Arrears Reminder

The system will bill you for pay-per-use resources after each billing cycle ends. If your account goes into arrears, we will notify you by email, SMS, or in-app message.

Impacts of Arrears

If your account is insufficient to pay your amount due, your account goes into arrears, and the pay-per-use DB instance enters the grace period. 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 balance as needed.

If you do not bring your account balance current before the grace period expires, the DB instance turns to Frozen and enters a retention period. You cannot access or use the DB instance while it is in the retention period, but the data stored in it can be retained.

If you do not bring your account balance current before the retention period ends, the corresponding resources will be released and the data stored in the resources will be deleted.

• During the retention period, you cannot access or use your DB instance but the data stored in it can be retained. The retention period for the Huawei Cloud International website is 15 days.
• During the grace period, you can access and use only some resources of your DB instance. The grace period for the Huawei Cloud International website is 15 days.
• For details about top-up, see Topping Up an Account.