Alibaba Cloud Pricing — Alibaba Cloud ECS, Alibaba Cloud OSS, ApsaraDB RDS & Egress Costs (2026)
Alibaba Cloud is the Asia-Pacific challenger in this catalog, and the only challenger that sells managed SQL Server alongside PostgreSQL and MySQL. Its commitment discounts are the steepest here, which makes the on-demand rate a misleading summary of what a committed customer pays. Every figure below is computed by the same engine as the live estimator.
- Only challenger cloud with full managed SQL Server support alongside Postgres/MySQL.
- Deepest reserved-instance discounts of any provider — up to 60% off 3-year commitments.
What a Alibaba architecture costs
Four reference architectures, priced for Alibaba Cloud alone by the same engine that powers the live estimator — list prices in USD, us-east-1 baseline, on-demand unless noted.
SaaS Starter MVP
Ideal for early-stage startups and production web apps with up to 25k monthly active users.
- Virtual Machines / Compute
- $41.76/mo
- Object & Block Storage
- $10.35/mo
- Managed Relational Database
- $52.19/mo
- Networking & Data Egress
- $138.80/mo
High-Traffic E-Commerce
Engineered for high concurrent checkouts, product catalogs, and intensive flash sales.
- Virtual Machines / Compute
- $300.03/mo
- Object & Block Storage
- $42.10/mo
- Managed Relational Database
- $354.90/mo
- Networking & Data Egress
- $682.60/mo
Enterprise Microservices (K8s)
Multi-service containerized architecture with managed Kubernetes clusters and service mesh.
- Object & Block Storage
- $105.20/mo
- Managed Relational Database
- $709.80/mo
- Networking & Data Egress
- $1013.34/mo
- Managed Kubernetes
- $666.93/mo
AI / ML Inference & Pipeline
Compute and memory-optimized instances designed for low-latency LLM serving and vector retrieval.
- Virtual Machines / Compute
- $1012.66/mo
- Object & Block Storage
- $168.00/mo
- Managed Relational Database
- $609.80/mo
- Networking & Data Egress
- $1221.04/mo
Alibaba Cloud ECS instance pricing
Every published shape in the catalog, priced at 730 hours/month in USD list rates.
| Instance | Shape | On-demand | 1-year reserved | 3-year reserved | Spot / preemptible |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ecs.t6-c1m2.large Burstable (t6) | 2 vCPU / 4 GB | $20.88/mo | $12.56/mo | $8.32/mo | $4.16/mo |
ecs.g7.large General Purpose (g7) | 2 vCPU / 8 GB | $29.78/mo | $17.89/mo | $11.90/mo | $5.99/mo |
ecs.g7.xlarge General Purpose (g7) | 4 vCPU / 16 GB | $83.37/mo | $50.01/mo | $33.36/mo | $16.64/mo |
ecs.g7.2xlarge General Purpose (g7) | 8 vCPU / 32 GB | $238.27/mo | $142.93/mo | $95.34/mo | $47.67/mo |
ecs.c7.4xlarge Compute Optimized (c7) | 16 vCPU / 32 GB | $421.94/mo | $253.16/mo | $168.78/mo | $84.39/mo |
ecs.r7.4xlarge Memory Optimized (r7) | 16 vCPU / 128 GB | $625.46/mo | $375.29/mo | $250.17/mo | $125.12/mo |
ecs.g7.8xlarge High Capacity (g7) | 32 vCPU / 128 GB | $953.09/mo | $571.88/mo | $381.21/mo | $190.60/mo |
Alibaba Cloud OSS storage tiers
| Hot / standard | $0.0200/GB-mo $20.00 per TB-month · $0.0040/10k reads · $0.0500/10k writes |
|---|---|
| Cool / infrequent | $0.0125/GB-mo $12.50 per TB-month · $0.0100/10k reads · $0.1000/10k writes |
| Cold | $0.0033/GB-mo $3.30 per TB-month · $0.0500/10k reads · $0.1300/10k writes |
| Archive | $0.0018/GB-mo $1.80 per TB-month · $0.5000/10k reads · $0.3000/10k writes |
ApsaraDB RDS pricing
| ApsaraDB-2x4 (2 vCPU / 4 GB) | PostgreSQL $42.19/mo · MySQL $42.19/mo · SQL Server $110.45/mo Storage $0.1000/GB-mo · multi-AZ multiplies the instance rate by 2× |
|---|---|
| ApsaraDB-4x16 (4 vCPU / 16 GB) | PostgreSQL $196.08/mo · MySQL $196.08/mo · SQL Server $469.10/mo Storage $0.1000/GB-mo · multi-AZ multiplies the instance rate by 2× |
| ApsaraDB-8x32 (8 vCPU / 32 GB) | PostgreSQL $392.16/mo · MySQL $392.16/mo · SQL Server $938.20/mo Storage $0.1000/GB-mo · multi-AZ multiplies the instance rate by 2× |
| ApsaraDB-8x64 (8 vCPU / 64 GB) | PostgreSQL $526.18/mo · MySQL $526.18/mo · SQL Server $1072.22/mo Storage $0.1000/GB-mo · multi-AZ multiplies the instance rate by 2× |
Networking & egress
| Internet egress | $0.0810/GB (first 10 TB) Then $0.0750/GB up to 40 TB. No standing free allowance. |
|---|---|
| Load balancer | $13.65/mo |
| Static IPv4 address | $3.65/mo |
Alibaba Cloud ACK
| Control plane (first cluster) | Free Billed at $0.000/hr; the first cluster is waived. |
|---|
Where Alibaba ranks
- Entry-level compute: #2 of 10 ($20.88/mo (ecs.t6-c1m2.large))
- Egress at 20 TB/month: #6 of 10 ($1597.44/mo)
Full ranked tables live in the cost guides.
Lowering a Alibaba bill
Alibaba Cloud Deep Commitments
Alibaba offers the steepest reserved-instance discounts in this comparison — up to 60% off on 3-year terms — plus full SQL Server support other challengers lack.
Preemptible instances price as low as 20% of on-demand for fault-tolerant batch jobs.
- ACK Basic clusters have no control-plane fee — upgrade to Pro only when you need SLA-backed masters.
- Route traffic via Alibaba Cloud CDN to cut egress costs by 30-50%.
Compare Alibaba with other providers
Cost guides featuring Alibaba
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Alibaba Cloud pricing — frequently asked questions
Is Alibaba Cloud cheaper than AWS?
At list prices it generally undercuts the hyperscalers, and its three-year reserved discounts are the deepest in this comparison — up to 60% off on-demand — which is where the real gap opens up. Treat the three-year figures with the usual care: they are a commitment, and the workload totals below are scored at on-demand rates unless you change the commitment in the live configurator.
What is the cheapest way to run a workload on Alibaba Cloud?
Commit if your capacity is stable: no other provider in this catalog discounts three-year terms as deeply. For fault-tolerant batch work, preemptible instances price as low as a fifth of on-demand. Keep Kubernetes on ACK Basic clusters, which carry no control-plane fee, and route outbound traffic through Alibaba Cloud CDN, since internet egress is metered.
Who is Alibaba Cloud the right choice for?
Teams serving users in Asia-Pacific, where its region footprint and network paths are the differentiator, and organizations that need managed SQL Server outside the three US hyperscalers. Two caveats are worth weighing honestly: the pricing in this catalog is a reconciled benchmark rather than a live sync — see the freshness note below — and its western-region service catalog is narrower than AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
What does the cheapest comparable instance cost on Alibaba?
For a 4 vCPU / 16 GB Linux instance at 730 hours a month on demand, the engine matches Alibaba Cloud ECS to ecs.g7.xlarge at $83.37/month. Instance shapes differ between providers, so the matched shape matters as much as the price — the compute table below lists every published shape with its reserved and spot rates.
How does Alibaba charge for data transfer?
Internet egress is metered from the first gigabyte — there is no standing free transfer allowance. Load balancers bill at $13.65/month and static IPv4 addresses at $3.65/month in this catalog, both metered hourly.
What storage tiers and managed database engines does Alibaba offer?
Object storage is available in 4 tiers (hot, cool, cold, archive) — see the storage table for per-GB rates. Managed databases cover POSTGRES, MYSQL, SQL SERVER. The managed Kubernetes control plane is free on the first cluster.
Provenance for every figure on this page is listed on the methodology page.