Help Center/ Elastic Load Balance/ Billing/ Billing Items (Dedicated Load Balancers)
Updated on 2023-12-01 GMT+08:00
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Billing Items (Dedicated Load Balancers)

Billing

You will be charged for how many LCUs you use and how long a load balancer is retained in your account, as described in Table 1.

For details about the pricing, see ELB Price Calculator. Resources may vary depend on regions. The actual prices are subject to those displayed on the ELB console.

Table 1 Billing items

Billing Item

Description

Billing Mode

Formula

LCU

You are charged based on the number of LCUs used by a load balancer per hour.

An LCU measures the dimensions on which a dedicated load balancer routes the traffic. See LCU price in LCU Pricing.

Pay-per-use

Unit price x Number of LCUs x Required duration

Load Balancer

You are charged for how long a load balancer is retained in your account. If the load balancer is retained in your account for less than 1 hour, you will be charged for the actual duration, accurate to seconds.

Pay-per-use

Unit price x Required duration

The billing items of dedicated load balancers vary by specification type. For details, see Table 2.

Table 2 Varied billing items by billing mode

Billing Mode

Specifications

LCU

Load Balancer

Pay-per-use

Elastic

√

√

Fixed

√

×
  • √ indicates that the billing item is involved. × indicates that the billing item is not involved.
  • If you bind an EIP to a load balancer, you will also be charged for the EIP and the bandwidth used by the EIP.

    For details about EIP pricing, see Elastic IP Pricing Details.

Constraints

Elastic specifications are available in CN Southwest-Guiyang1, CN East-Shanghai1, CN-Hong Kong, and AP-Singapore. They will soon be available in other regions.

LCU Pricing

An LCU measures the dimensions on which a dedicated load balancer routes the traffic. See LCU price in Table 3.

The unit price of LCU varies depending on the specifications. See the actual price of LCU on the console. LCU price (USD) = Unit price x Number of LCUs x Required duration.

Table 3 LCU pricing

Billing Mode

Specifications

Application Scenario

Description

Pay-per-use

Elastic

For fluctuating traffic

You are charged for how many LCUs you use.

Fixed

For stable traffic

You are charged for the LCUs based on each fixed specification you select.
  • If you deploy a dedicated load balancer in multiple AZs, its performance will multiply as the number of AZs increases. For details about AZs, see Region and AZ.
  • Note the following when calculating the number of LCUs:
    • LCU quantity refers to the number of LCUs corresponding to a specification in a single AZ. For details, see LCU Billing for Fixed Specifications.
    • If you select multiple AZs for a load balancer, the number of LCUs is calculated as follows: Number of LCUs = LCUs of the selected specification x Number of the selected AZs.

LCU Billing for Elastic Specifications

An LCU has four dimensions: new connections, maximum concurrent connections, processed traffic, and rule evaluations.

You can calculate the number of LCUs by taking the maximum LCUs consumed across the four dimensions.

Table 4 LCU dimensions

Dimension

Description

New connections

Number of new connections per second.

Maximum concurrent connections

The maximum number of concurrent connections that a load balancer can handle per minute.

Processed traffic

The amount of data transferred through a load balancer in GBs.

Rule evaluations

(application load balancing)

The product of the number of rules processed by a load balancer and the number of queries per second (QPS).

The first 10 processed rules are free.

  • When there are more than 10 processed rules, the number of rule evaluations is calculated as follows: Rule evaluations = QPS x (Number of processed rules – 10).
  • When there are 10 or less processed rules, the number of rule evaluations is equal to the QPS.

Table 5 lists the LCU performance supported by different protocols.

Table 5 LCU performance supported by different protocols

Protocol

New Connections per Second

Maximum Concurrent Connections per Minute

Processed Traffic

Rule Evaluations per Second

TCP

800

100,000

1 GB

-

UDP

400

50,000

1 GB

-

HTTP/HTTPS

25

3,000

1 GB

1,000

Billing Examples

A pricing example for a network load balancer

Assume your network load balancer establishes 1,000 new TCP connections per second, each lasting for three minutes, and the traffic processed by your load balancer is 1,000 KB per second.

The unit price of LCU in the current region is $0.00833 USD/hour. The LCU price is calculated as the table shown below.

Table 6 LCU calculation

Dimension

Example

LCUs

New connections per second

1,000 new TCP connections

1,000 ÷ 800 = 1.25

Maximum concurrent connections per minute

The maximum established concurrent connections are calculated as:

1,000 new HTTP/HTTPS connections per second x 60s x 3 minutes = 180,000 connections

180,000 ÷ 100,000 = 1.8

Processed traffic per hour

1,000 KB/s x 60s x 60 minutes = 3.6 GB

3.6 ÷ 1 = 3.6

In this example, the traffic dimension consumes the most LCUs (3.6 LCUs). So the LCU price is calculated based on the LCUs consumed by the processed traffic.

The total LCU price for using this network load balancer for 2 hours is calculated as follows:

LCU price = Unit price x Number of LCUs x Required duration = $0.00833 USD/hour x 3.6 LCUs x 2 hours =$0.059976 USD

A pricing example for an application load balancer

Assume your application load balancer establishes 1,000 new HTTP/HTTPS connections per second, each lasting for three minutes. A client sends an average of 400 requests per second and the traffic processed by this load balancer is 1,000 KB per second. You have configured 20 forwarding rules for your load balancer to route requests.

The unit price of LCU in the current region is $0.00833 USD/hour. The LCU price is calculated as the table shown below.

Table 7 LCU calculation

Dimension

Example

LCUs

New connections per second

1,000 new connections

1,000 ÷ 25 = 40

Maximum concurrent connections per minute

The maximum established concurrent connections are calculated as:

1,000 new HTTP/HTTPS connections per second x 60s x 3 minutes = 180,000 connections

180,000 ÷ 3,000 = 60

Processed traffic per hour

1,000 KB/s x 60s x 60 minutes = 3.6 GB

3.6 ÷ 1 = 3.6

Rule evaluations per second

Rule evaluations are calculated as:

Rule evaluations = QPS x (Number of processed rules – 10) = 400 x (20 – 10) = 4,000

4,000 ÷ 1,000 = 4

In this example, the maximum concurrent dimension consumes the most LCUs (60 LCUs). So the LCU price is calculated based on the LCUs consumed by the maximum concurrent connections.

The total LCU price for using this application load balancer for 2 hours is calculated as follows:

LCU price = Unit price x Number of LCUs x Required duration = $0.00833 USD/hour x 60 LCUs x 2 hours = $0.9996 USD

LCU Billing for Fixed Specifications

You are charged for the LCUs based on each fixed specification you select. You can select either application load balancing (HTTP/HTTPS) or network load balancing (TCP/UDP), or both.

You can refer to Specifications of Dedicated Load Balancers to learn about each fixed specification and select one that best meets your service requirements.

Pay-per-use

The following table lists the number of LCUs of each fixed specification.

Table 8 LCUs of each fixed specification

Tier

LCUs in an AZ (TCP/UDP)

LCUs in an AZ (HTTP/HTTPS)

Small I

10

10

Small II

20

20

Medium I

40

40

Medium II

80

100

Large I

200

200

Large II

400

400
  • LCU quantity refers to the number of LCUs corresponding to a specification in a single AZ.
  • If you select multiple AZs for a load balancer, the number of LCUs is calculated as follows: Number of LCUs = LCUs of the selected specification x Number of the selected AZs.

Load Balancer Pricing

You are charged for how long each load balancer is retained in your account. If the load balancer is used for less than 1 hour, you will be charged for the actual duration, accurate to seconds. The billing cycle is from the time when the dedicated load balancer is created to the time when it is deleted.

Only load balancers with elastic specifications in pay-per-use billing mode are charged.