Billing Modes

Yearly/Monthly
A prepaid mode, in which you need to pay first and are billed based on the required duration in your order.
Pay-per-use
A postpaid mode. You can pay after using the service, and will be billed for your usage duration. The fees are calculated in seconds and settled by hour.

**Table 1** Differences between the two billing modes
Billing Mode	Yearly/Monthly	Pay-per-Use
Payment	Prepaid Billed by the required duration specified in your order	Postpaid Based on the usage duration of your Kafka instance.
Billing Period	Billed by the subscription term of the order.	Billed by second and settled by hour.
Billing Items	Instance and storage space	Instance and storage space
Billing Mode Change	Can be changed to pay-per-use. The change takes effect only after the yearly/monthly subscription expires.	Can be changed to yearly/monthly.
Specification Change	Supported	Supported
Fees of Instances in Recycle Bin	Yearly/Monthly instances with recycling policies enabled will be moved to Recycle Bin upon unsubscription. After that, they will not generate fees, but their storage will. Yearly/Monthly instances will be changed to pay-per-use upon successful recovery.	Pay-per-use instances with recycling policies enabled will be moved to Recycle Bin upon deletion. After that, they will not generate fees, but their storage will.
Scenario	Recommended for long-term use. Suitable and price-friendly for scenarios where the resource usage duration can be estimated.	Recommended if you want more flexibility. Suitable for scenarios where resource demands fluctuate.

When you purchase a yearly/monthly Kafka instance, you make a one-time up-front payment. By default, billing automatically stops when the purchased subscription expires. If a yearly/monthly resource is no longer needed before the subscription expires, you can unsubscribe from the resource. The system will return a certain amount of money to your account based on whether cash coupons or discount coupons are used. For details, see Unsubscriptions. Note: If recycling policies are enabled for yearly/monthly instances, the instances will be moved to Recycle Bin upon unsubscription. After that, they will not generate fees, but their storage will. To stop billing, delete them permanently in Recycle Bin.
If a pay-per-use Kafka instance is no longer needed, you can delete it to stop billing. Note: If recycling policies are enabled for pay-per-use instances, the instances will be moved to Recycle Bin upon unsubscription. After that, they will not generate fees, but their storage will. To stop billing, delete them permanently in Recycle Bin.