Billing

Billing Items

ECSs are billed based on ECS specifications and service duration.

**Table 1** Billing details
Billing Item	Description
ECS	ECSs are billed by instance type and flavor (vCPUs and memory), service duration, and purchased ECS quantity. For pricing details, see Elastic Cloud Server Price Calculator.
Image	Public images of the community edition, such as Linux, are free of charge. Other commercial images, such as Windows images, are billed.
EVS disk (mandatory)	EVS disks are billed by disk capacity on a pay-per-use basis. For pricing details, see Elastic Volume Service Price Calculator. You are advised to select the same duration of EVS disks as ECSs.
EIP (optional)	A public IP address is required for public accessibility. For pricing details, see Elastic IP Price Calculator.
Bandwidth (optional)	An EIP can be billed by bandwidth or traffic. For pricing details, see Bandwidth Price Calculator.

Billing Modes

An ECS can be billed on a pay-per-use or reserved instance (RI) basis.

Pay-per-use: a flexible mode with the billing accurately down to the second.
An ECS is billed from the time when it is provisioned to the time when it is deleted.
Common ECSs refer to ECSs without local disks or FPGAs attached. After a common ECS is stopped, it is billed as follows:
- Basic resources (vCPUs, memory, and image) are not billed. Associated resources such as its EVS disks, EIPs, and bandwidth are billed.
- When you try to start the ECS the next time, the system will allocate vCPUs and memory again, but if resources are insufficient, the startup may fail. In this case, you can try again later or resize the ECS specifications before attempting to start it.
Special pay-per-use ECSs will continue to be billed after being stopped. After a special ECS is stopped, its resources such as vCPUs and memory will be retained.
Special ECSs include:
- Bare metal ECSs
- ECSs attached with local disks, such as disk-intensive ECSs and ultra-high I/O ECSs
- FPGA-based ECSs
To stop billing for special ECSs, delete them and their associated resources.
RI: ECSs will be billed for one year, two years, three years, five years, without or with all upfront payment. For pricing details, see Elastic Cloud Server Price Calculator and obtain it from the O&M personnel.

Billing Examples

In the pay-per-use billing mode, ECSs are billed by the second. The price per second of each type of ECS can be obtained by dividing their hourly price by 3,600. Obtain the hourly price on the Product Pricing Details page.

For example, if you purchase a pay-per-use ECS priced €0.0160 EUR/hour, the ECS will be billed based on the usage duration by the second.

If you use the ECS for 30 minutes, you need to pay for €0.008 EUR (0.0160/3,600 x 30 x 60).
If you use the ECS for 1 hour and 30 minutes, you need to pay for €0.024 EUR (0.0160/3,600 x 90 x 60).
- If the usage duration is less than 650 hours, the ECS will be billed by the actual usage duration.
- If the usage duration exceeds 650 hours, the ECS will still be billed by 650 hours. The exceeded duration is not billed.

Configuration Changes

Changing the billing mode
- Changing from pay-per-use to RI: After you purchase an RI with the same specifications as the pay-per-use ECSs, the billing mode changes to RI without affecting the created ECSs. The new billing mode takes effect in the current or next month.
- Changing from RI to pay-per-use: After the billing mode of an ECS is changed from RI to pay-per-use, the new billing mode takes effect only after the reservation has expired. If early termination is required, early termination fee shall be paid.
Modifying ECS specifications
ECSs billed on a pay-per-use basis support specification modification, while ECSs purchased using RIs do not support specification modification.