Alibaba Virtual Private Cloud

Pricing model: Pay-as-you-go (usage-based). Core VPC resources (VPCs, vSwitches, route tables, etc.) are provided at no charge; specific VPC features and associated network/data-transfer services are billed as usage.

Free tier / free allowances: VPC core is free. Flow Logs: each Alibaba Cloud account receives a free quota of 5 GB/month per region. Cloud Data Transfer (CDT) provides a free quota (220 GB/month total: 20 GB for regions in the Chinese mainland + 200 GB for regions outside the Chinese mainland) for Internet data transfers over BGP (Multi-ISP) lines.

Example costs / billable items (official vendor prices):

• Flow Logs (VPC flow log generation fee, billed by VPC) — tiered monthly pricing (USD/GB):

  • 0 TB to 10 TB (inclusive): $0.37/GB
  • 10 TB to 30 TB (inclusive): $0.185/GB
  • 30 TB to 50 TB (inclusive): $0.074/GB
  • More than 50 TB: $0.037/GB (Plus Simple Log Service (SLS) usage fees for log delivery/storage.)

• Traffic Mirroring (VPC traffic mirroring):

  • Instance fee: $0.014 USD per traffic-mirror-source count per hour (USD/count/hour)
  • Data processing fee: $0.007 USD per GB (USD/GB). (Note: data processing fees were documented as waived before March 31, 2026 in the official doc.)

• VPC Peering (intra-region): Free of charge.

• VPC Peering (inter-region): Charged via Cloud Data Transfer (CDT) for outbound traffic. CDT uses tiered per-GB pricing that varies by region group. Example CDT Internet (BGP Multi-ISP) tiered prices (USD/GB):

  • Chinese mainland: 0–10 TB: $0.118; 10–50 TB: $0.111; 50–150 TB: $0.103; >150 TB: $0.096
  • Asia Pacific (outside China mainland): 0–10 TB: $0.100; 10–50 TB: $0.070; 50–150 TB: $0.065; >150 TB: $0.055
  • Europe: 0–10 TB: $0.074; 10–50 TB: $0.065; 50–150 TB: $0.060; >150 TB: $0.040
  • North America: 0–10 TB: $0.074; 10–50 TB: $0.065; 50–150 TB: $0.060; >150 TB: $0.040 (Actual unit price depends on the specific source/destination regions and link type; Platinum/Gold link types are available for inter-region links and affect pricing/quality.)

Other notes / examples:

• Many other network resources (EIP, NAT gateway, NAT Gateway bandwidth, CLB, etc.) are billed separately and may be consolidated under CDT for Internet/cross-region transfer billing.
• CDT offers resource/data-transfer plans and subscription options that can offset Tier 1 usage and provide discounts for committed/packaged transfer — see CDT resource/data-transfer plans for details.

Discount options: Volume tiered discounts (CDT tiered pricing reduces unit price as monthly transfer increases). CDT resource plans / data-transfer packages may provide lower effective cost (vendor docs show examples of discounted resource plans).

Key official pages used: VPC billing overview; VPC flow logs billing; Traffic Mirroring billing; VPC peering docs; Cloud Data Transfer (CDT) pricing and free-quota notices.