NAT Gateway:NAT Gateway billing

Billing methods

Internet NAT gateways and VPC NAT gateways support the following billing methods.

NAT gateways are post-paid and use the pay-as-you-go billing method. After you purchase a resource plan, usage is deducted from the resource plan. This does not change the billing method of the NAT gateway.

• Pay-as-you-go (post-paid): Use resources first and pay for them later. Bills are generated for each billing cycle based on the actual usage of billable items, and the fees are deducted from your account.

• Resource plan: A prepaid plan. You purchase a NAT Gateway resource plan in advance. When fees are settled, usage is first deducted from the resource plan.

  • Resource plans offer discounts compared to the pay-as-you-go billing method.

  • Usage that exceeds the quota of a resource plan is automatically billed on a pay-as-you-go basis.

You can use the NAT CU Estimator to estimate the required number of CUs and the associated costs based on your business traffic. This helps you select a suitable billing method.

Billing cycle

The billing cycle for Internet NAT gateways and VPC NAT gateways is 1 hour. Fees are settled on the hour based on the actual usage of billable items within that billing cycle.

• If you use a resource for less than 1 hour in a billing cycle, the usage duration is rounded up to 1 hour.

• Bills are typically generated within one hour after a billing cycle ends. The actual time that bills are generated is subject to the system.

For example, you purchase an instance at 09:10:00 and release it at 10:50:00 on the same day. The usage duration is 2 hours.

• The period from 09:00:00 to 10:00:00 is one billing cycle. The bill for this cycle is generated after 10:00:00, and the corresponding fees are deducted from your account.

• The period from 10:00:00 to 11:00:00 is another billing cycle. The bill for this cycle is generated after 11:00:00, and the corresponding fees are deducted from your account.

Billable items and pricing

Instance fee = Unit price of instance (USD/hour) × Usage duration (hours)

Capacity Unit (CU) fee

A Capacity Unit (CU) is a performance metric used to measure the traffic processing capabilities of a NAT gateway. CU fees are charged hourly based on the following metrics.

CU fee per hour = Unit price of CU (USD/CU) × Number of CUs per hour
Number of CUs per hour = max{Number of CUs for new connections in the hour, Number of CUs for concurrent connections in the hour, Number of CUs for processed traffic in the hour}

Number of CUs per hour

Unit price of a CU

The prices in the table are for reference only. For actual prices, see the buy page.

Region	Unit price of a CU (USD/CU/hour)
China (Hangzhou), China (Shanghai), China (Qingdao), China (Beijing), China (Zhangjiakou), China (Hohhot), China (Ulanqab), China (Shenzhen), China (Heyuan), China (Guangzhou), China (Chengdu)	0.034
China (Hong Kong), Japan (Tokyo), South Korea (Seoul), Singapore, Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Indonesia (Jakarta), Philippines (Manila), Thailand (Bangkok), Germany (Frankfurt), UK (London), US (Silicon Valley), US (Virginia), UAE (Dubai)	0.043
SAU (Riyadh - Partner Region) Important The SAU (Riyadh - Partner Region) region is operated by a partner.	0.052

Billing example

Assume that you created two NAT gateway instances in the Germany (Frankfurt) region at 08:10:00 on June 13, 2025, and deleted them at 08:50:00 on June 13, 2025.

The data for maximum new connections, maximum concurrent connections, and maximum processed traffic is for example purposes only. Billing is based on the actual statistics collected by the system.

Query bills and usage

You can go to the Expenses and Costs - Billing Details page. Set Product Name to NAT Gateway to view your spending and billing information.

Stop billing

After you delete a NAT gateway instance, billing stops.

• If you use an Internet NAT gateway for Internet access, you must release the EIP to stop EIP billing. Only pay-as-you-go EIPs can be released. The service for subscription EIPs stops automatically upon expiration.

• Detaching an EIP from an Internet NAT gateway does not stop billing for either resource.

Overdue payments and top-ups

Your account has an overdue payment if its available balance, including cash, vouchers, coupons, or pre-authorizations, is insufficient to cover a generated bill and any purchased resource plans cannot cover the fees.

The system determines if your account balance is sufficient to cover the next three billing cycles based on the average payable amount of your NAT gateway bills over the last 24 hours. If the balance is insufficient, you will receive a notification by text message or email.

• Within 15 days after a payment becomes overdue, your NAT gateway instance continues to provide services.

• If the bill is not paid within 15 days, the instance is stopped. In this state, you cannot perform any operations on the NAT gateway instance.

• If you top up your account and pay the overdue amount within 15 days after the instance is stopped, the instance is automatically enabled and you can continue to use it.

• If the service remains suspended for 15 days and the bill is still not paid, the instance is automatically deleted. You will receive an email notification one day before the instance is deleted. After an instance is deleted, its configurations and data are erased and cannot be recovered.

FAQ