Per-second metering

Bulutistan Cloud measures the usage of your resources per second. This article explains how usage becomes the quantities on your invoice. For prices, see Pricing.

How usage is recordedCopy Anchor Link

The platform keeps a usage record for each resource and each hour. A record holds the quantity that the resource used in that hour, in the resource's billing unit.

For time-based units, the quantity comes from the seconds in which the resource was billable during that hour. For example, a volume that exists from 14:20:00 to 15:10:00 has two records: one for 40 minutes in the 14:00 hour, and one for 10 minutes in the 15:00 hour.

The record of the current hour is updated while the hour runs.

Each record is priced on its own: its quantity is multiplied by the unit price, and the amount is rounded to a ten-thousandth of the currency unit (0.0001). Amounts keep this precision up to the invoice total. A record whose item has no price in your region is shown as Free instead of an amount.

Billing unitsCopy Anchor Link

Every metered item is billed in one of these units:

The 730-hour month. A month counts as 730 hours. A 100 GB volume kept for 730 hours bills 100 GB-months; kept for one hour, it bills 100 ÷ 730, about 0.137 GB-months. Where the console shows a monthly price for an item that's billed per hour, that price is the hourly price times 730.

Add-ons and licenses. An add-on or license with an hourly billing period accrues per hour, like compute. One with a monthly or yearly period is charged a full period when the period starts, without proration.

The 60-second minimumCopy Anchor Link

Every time-metered resource is billed for at least 60 seconds over its lifetime. Above that, it's billed per second.

• Once per resource. The minimum applies once, from creation. Stopping and starting, pausing and resuming, or crossing into a new hour doesn't apply it again.
• Only for resources that were billed. A resource that was never billable, such as an instance that failed before it ever ran, isn't charged at all.
• Not for transfer or period charges. Data transfer is measured in GB, not in time, and monthly or yearly add-ons and licenses bill whole periods, so the minimum doesn't apply to them.

For example, a Floating IP that's allocated for 20 seconds and released is billed for 60 seconds. One that's allocated for 90 seconds is billed for 90 seconds.

The top-up to 60 seconds is added to the resource's first usage record. If that record falls in a month that's already invoiced and the resource keeps running into the next month, the invoiced amount stays as it is, and the later usage is billed in full.

When resources are billableCopy Anchor Link

What counts as billable time depends on the resource:

• Virtual machines. Compute is billed while an instance is running or stopped, not while it's paused or in an error state. See Power states and billing.
• Volumes. A volume is billed for its provisioned size for as long as it exists, attached or not.
• Floating IPs. A Floating IP is billed for every hour it's allocated, associated with an instance or not.
• Monitoring. Monitoring of an instance is billed for every hour it's turned on.
• Routers, load balancers, VPN connections, buckets, snapshots, and images. These are billed from creation until they're deleted, once they've been usable. A resource that never became usable isn't billed. Public images aren't billed.
• Object Storage. Stored data is billed by the size of the bucket, measured during each hour.
• Data transfer. Only outbound traffic is metered. Uploads to Object Storage and other inbound traffic aren't counted.

Where you see your usageCopy Anchor Link

• The cost summary and the charges of each resource, under Billing › Summary and Billing › Subscriptions.
• Spend over time, in Cost Explorer. See What is Cost Management?
• The quantities of a closed month, on its invoice. See Invoices and payments.

Related tasksCopy Anchor Link

• How billing works
• Power states and billing
• Subscriptions and currency
• Billing FAQ