Pay-per-Use Billing

Overview

Pay-per-use billing means you pay nothing up front and are not tied into any contract or commitment.

Application Scenarios

Pay-per-use billing is good for short-term, bursty, or unpredictable workloads that cannot tolerate any interruptions, such as applications for e-commerce flash sales, temporary testing, and scientific computing.

Billed Items

You are billed for pods on a pay-per-use basis.

Assume that you plan to purchase a general-computing pod. At the bottom of the page for you to purchase a pod, you can view price details.

Figure 1 Example price

The price covers the vCPUs and memory.

Billed Usage Period

The usage of pay-per-use pods is calculated by the second but billed every hour. Billing starts when a pod is created and ends when the pod is deleted.

For example, if you purchased a general-computing pod at 08:45:30 and deleted it at 08:55:30, you are billed for the 600 seconds from 8:45:30 to 8:55:30.

Billing Example

Assume that you purchased a pay-per-use general-computing pod (2 vCPUs and 4 GiB of memory) at 9:59:30 on April 18, 2023 and deleted it at 10:45:46 on April 18, 2023. Two usage periods are billed:

• 9:59:30 to 10:00:00: 30 seconds
• 10:00:00 to 10:45:46: 2,746 seconds

You need to pay for each period. Table 2 describes how vCPUs and memory are billed.

Impact on Billing After Specifications Change

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

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

For example, if you purchased a pay-per-use pod with 2 vCPUs and 4 GiB of memory at 9:00:00 and upgraded the pod to 4 vCPUs and 8 GiB of memory at 9:30:00, the following items will be billed:

• Usage of 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of memory from 9:00:00 to 9:30:00
• Usage of 4 vCPUs and 8 GiB of memory from 9:30:00 to 10:00:00

Impacts of Arrears

Figure 2 shows the statuses that a pay-per-use pod can have throughout its lifecycle. After a pod is purchased, it enters the valid period and runs normally during this period. If your account goes into arrears, the pod enters a grace period and then a retention period.

Figure 2 Lifecycle of a pay-per-use pod

Arrears Alert

The system will bill you for pay-per-use pods 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. Pay-per-use pods are not stopped immediately. 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 pay the arrears within the grace period, your resources will enter the retention period and become frozen. You cannot perform any operations on the pay-per-use resources during this period.

If you do not bring your account balance current before the retention period ends, the compute resources (vCPUs and memory) will be released and data cannot be restored.