This topic introduces the types of bills available in Alibaba Cloud and how to use them to analyze your spending.
How bills are generated
Before working with bills, make sure to familiarize yourself with the Alibaba Cloud billing models. Bills are generated differently for each model:
Pay-as-you-go: Pay for resources after you use them (for example, a pay-as-you-go Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance). Different products generate detailed data based on billing cycles such as hourly, daily, or monthly. The system creates a final bill after processing all charges.
Subscription: Pay for resources before you use them (for example, a subscription, Savings Plan, or resource package). A bill is generated after you place and pay for an order.
Bills also include other item types, such as refunds and adjustments:
Refunds: When you unsubscribe from a resource, Alibaba Cloud refunds the corresponding payment according to its refund rules. This refund appears on your bill.
Adjustments: In rare cases, Alibaba Cloud makes adjustments to previous bills, which creates incremental data.
View bills
Alibaba Cloud provides the Overview, Transactions, Details, and Usage views for managing your cloud spending from multiple perspectives.
Type | Use case | Timeliness |
Overview | View a summary of your spending for a specific billing cycle. A summary is generated for each settlement currency to help with reconciliation. | Data is continuously generated and updated throughout the month. The final monthly summary is available at 12:00 PM on the 2nd day of the following month. |
Transactions | View data for each order or bill. Use this view to look up specific spending or payment records. | Updated continuously throughout the month. |
Details | View granular information on billing items, usage, and pricing for multi-dimensional analysis. | The complete detailed bill for the current month is generated at 12:00 PM on the 3rd day of the following month. |
Usage | Review the raw usage details of your cloud resources. Use this for usage analysis, capacity planning, and cost verification. | Updated continuously throughout the month. The final usage data for the current month is available after 12:00 PM on the 2nd day of the following month. |
Bill data for the current month is continuously updated and for reference only. Do not use it for final reconciliation or settlement.
The Alibaba Cloud Account has bill management permissions by default. The Alibaba Cloud Account must grant permissions to a RAM User, such as AliyunBSSFullAccess for the Expenses and Costs center. You can also create custom policies for more granular permission control, such as the bss:DescribeBillList permission to query bills.
View monthly spending overview
Log on to Expenses and Costs and go to the Overview page.
Search for bills using custom criteria:
Billing Cycle: You can select multiple months, up to a maximum range of 12 months.
Account: In an enterprise financial management context, the primary account can view bill data for associated member accounts.
Status: The current month's bill shows a status of Billing in Progress, because data is continuously updated. Historical bills can have statuses of Unpaid, Paid, or Suspended.
Unsettled: An estimated bill that has not been officially generated.
Unpaid: An officially generated bill that has not been paid.
Paid: An officially generated bill that has been paid. After you pay an
Unpaidbill, the status may take up to 5 hours to update.
The monthly bill overview includes the following information:
Account: Your Alibaba Cloud Account. If you use enterprise financial management features, this also includes associated financially managed accounts.
Amount Information: This primarily includes the Pretax Amount (the amount for the month after discounts), Tax, and Amount After Tax. The settlement status is broken down into Paid Amount and Overdue Amount (billed but not yet paid). Amount information is displayed in the settlement currency.
You can click View Details to understand the product spending breakdown for the month. For historical bills that are Unpaid, you can choose to pay the outstanding fees. After payment, you can download the invoice.
Query transactions (legacy console)
The Transactions page includes every subscription order and pay-as-you-go bill. You can check the amount, coupon usage, and discount details for each transaction, along with records for refunds and adjustments.
Log on to the Expenses and Costs console and go to the Transactions page.
Search by Billing Cycle, Account, or Order/Bill No.
Use Customize Columns to select which data fields to display.
Key fields on the Transactions page
Field Name | Description |
Billing Cycle | The period for bill settlement, which is typically monthly. |
Account Name | The account that needs to settle the bill. |
Owner Account Name | The account that owns the resource. |
Order No./Bill No. | The number for a Subscription order or a Pay-as-you-go bill. |
Product Name/Product Detail | The cloud product (such as ECS) and the specific item (such as ECS - Pay-as-you-go). |
Subscription Type | Subscription or Pay-as-you-go. |
Payment Time | The payment time for Subscription orders, or the billing start and end time for Pay-as-you-go bills. |
Item | Subscription order, Pay-as-you-go bill, Refund, or Adjustment. |
Pretax Gross Amount | The consumption amount calculated based on the list price of the product. |
Invoice Discount | Discounts from contracts, official promotions, and other offers. |
Deducted By Coupons | The amount deducted using coupons. |
Round Down Discount | The amount rounded down due to billing precision (amounts beyond the second decimal place). |
Pretax Amount | The Pretax Gross Amount after deducting the Invoice Discount and Round Down Discount. |
Payment Amount | The amount paid through the account balance or online payment channels. |
Status | Paid (officially billed and settled), Unpaid (officially billed but not settled), or Unsettled (an estimated bill that has not been officially generated). |
Query detailed bills
You can use the detailed bill to understand your spending information, including the billing items, list price, usage, cost, and any applied discounts for your products.
Log on to the Expenses and Costs console and go to the Details page.
You can filter by criteria such as Billing Cycle, Account, Resource Group, Instance Name, and Product. You can aggregate data by Billable Item, Instance, Product, Account, or Cost Center. It also provides aggregated data for different periods, such as Billing Period, Day, and Details (Billing Period).
Use Customize Columns to select which data fields to display.
Key fields in the detailed bill
Info category | Field Name | Description |
Basic | Billing Cycle | The period for bill settlement, typically monthly. |
Cost Center | The cost center to which the resource belongs, primarily used for cost allocation. | |
Account Name | The account that must settle the bill. | |
Owner Account Name | The account that owns the resource. | |
Product | Product Name/Product Code | The cloud product and its corresponding code. |
Product Detail/Product Type | The specific item under the cloud product and its corresponding code. | |
Subscription Type | Subscription or Pay-as-you-go. | |
Resource | Instance ID/Instance Name | The ID used for billing granularity and the user-defined name of the instance. |
Resource Group | The user-defined resource group for the resource. | |
Instance Tag | The resource attributes set by the user. | |
Internet IP/Intranet IP | The public IP or private IP information of the instance. | |
Region/Zone | The region and zone information of the instance. | |
Billing | Billing Item | The specific billable item. |
List Price/List Price Unit | The unit price and unit of the product or service. | |
Usage/Usage Unit | The usage amount and unit of the product or service. | |
Deducted By Resource Package | The amount of usage deducted by a resource package. | |
Deducted By Reserved Instance | The amount of usage deducted by Reserved Instances (RI) and other similar items. | |
Amount | Pretax Gross Amount | The consumption amount calculated based on the list price of the product. |
Invoice Discount | The discounts from contracts, promotions, and other offers. | |
Deducted By Coupons | The amount deducted using coupons. |
View usage details
You can export detailed resource usage data by product to analyze the usage of specific resources. This data, combined with historical trends, can help you optimize utilization, forecast future needs, and plan capacity.
Log on to the Expenses and Costs console and click View Usage Details.
Select a product and a time range to export usage data in CSV format, with either hourly or daily granularity.
Download or subscribe to bills
You can download monthly summary bills, transaction records, and detailed bills from the console. The following section describes how to download a monthly summary bill.
Download monthly summary bill (new console)
Go to the Overview page. Click Export Bill and select criteria such as account and billing cycle to export the corresponding monthly bill data.
If the export scope is Current Account, the file will only include data for the selected accounts. If the scope is All Accounts, it will include data for all financially managed accounts.
The monthly summary bill is a PDF file containing a monthly statistical summary for settlement.
On the Export Details page, you can download the successfully exported file.
Download monthly summary bill (legacy console)
Go to the Overview page. In the upper-right corner, click Export Bill File and select criteria such as account and billing cycle to export the corresponding monthly bill data. You can export a maximum of 12 months at a time.
If the export scope is Current Account, the file will only include data for the selected accounts. If the scope is All Accounts, it will include data for all financially managed accounts.
The monthly summary bill is a PDF file containing a monthly statistical summary for settlement.
On the Export History page, you can view a list of exported files and download them.
You can also subscribe to or query data by calling bill-related APIs.
API | Title | API overview |
Set up OSS subscription for bill files | Subscribes to bill files using OSS, allowing you to store bill data in a specified OSS bucket. | |
Query bill overview | Queries the overview information of a user's bill for a specific billing cycle. | |
Query bills | Queries a user's settlement bill for a specific billing cycle. | |
Query instance bills | Queries the consumption summary for all product instances or billable items within a user's specific billing cycle. |
Billing FAQ
What's the difference between an "order" and a "bill" in Alibaba Cloud?
In Alibaba Cloud, an order and a bill serve different purposes for tracking your spending.
An order is a record of a single transaction, such as purchasing a new subscription or renewing an existing one. It contains the specific details of that one-time purchase, including the product, configuration, price, and payment information.
A bill is a periodic summary of all charges to your account within a billing cycle. It consolidates costs from multiple sources, including pay-as-you-go usage, subscription payments from orders, refunds, and adjustments, providing a comprehensive overview of your total spending.
Why does my monthly bill in the Alibaba Cloud console always show the status "Billing in Progress"?
This status indicates that you are viewing the bill for the current, ongoing month. The bill is not yet final and is continuously updated as you use resources.
The final, settled bill for a given month is generated only after the month ends, specifically after 12:00 PM on the 2nd day of the following month. Until then, any view of the current month's bill is considered an accumulating estimate.
In the detailed bill, what's the difference between the "By Billable Item + Day" and "By Billable Item + Details" views?
The main difference is the level of granularity. The Day view provides a daily summary, while the Details view shows each individual transaction.
By Billable Item + Day: This view aggregates all costs for a specific billable item into a single total for each day. It is useful for quickly tracking daily spending trends.
By Billable Item + Details: This view lists every single consumption record within its billing period. It includes more granular data, such as the exact time of consumption and any discounts applied to that specific record, making it ideal for in-depth auditing.
Why am I still being charged for an Alibaba Cloud resource after I've deleted or released it?
You may see charges after deleting a resource for one of the following reasons:
Billing Cycle Delays for Pay-as-you-go: Pay-as-you-go resources are billed at the end of a cycle (such as hourly). A final bill for the last usage period is generated after deletion. For example, if you release a resource at 10:08, the bill for the 10:00-11:00 cycle will still be generated after 11:00.
Associated Resources Were Not Deleted: Deleting a primary resource (like an ECS instance) may not automatically delete its associated components (like snapshots or Elastic IP addresses). These leftover resources will continue to incur charges.
The Deletion Failed: The resource might not have been successfully released.
Go to the respective product console to verify that the resource and all its associated components have been fully deleted or released.
How do I identify the source of unexpected daily charges in my Alibaba Cloud account?
Unexpected daily charges are typically caused by active pay-as-you-go resources that have been overlooked.
Common scenarios include:
Resources in an Unused Region: You may have active resources in a region you don't check regularly.
Resources Created by Another User: If your account is shared, another user may have provisioned the resources.
To find the charges:
Go to the Details page in the Expenses and Costs console.
Aggregate your bill by instance to identify which specific resources are incurring charges.
Be sure to check all regions in your account for active resources.
What is the most common reason for a sudden spike in my Alibaba Cloud bill?
A sudden cost increase is usually due to a change in usage patterns, an automatic renewal, or a new purchase.
Check for these common causes:
Increased Usage of Pay-as-you-go Services: A spike in business traffic can increase costs for usage-based billing. Key examples include:
Outbound network traffic from ECS instances.
Public outbound traffic from Object Storage Service (OSS) when files are accessed from the Internet.
Outbound traffic from Content Delivery Network (CDN).
Automatic Subscription Renewals: If auto-renewal is enabled for a subscription product, the system will charge you for the renewal before it expires.
New Resources: Check if you or another user on your account recently purchased new resources.
Use the Details bill view to analyze your spending and identify the specific services or resources responsible for the cost spike.