Billing

Does COS have a free tier?

We provide new COS users with a free tier of standard storage capacity with a validity period of 6 months. For more information, see Free Tier.

How is COS billed?

The fees of COS are broken down into four items: storage capacity, requests, data retrievals, and traffic.

For information on billable items in COS and billing rules, see Billing Restrictions.

Why is my account still in arrears (fees are deducted) even if I am entitled to the free tier?

Possible reasons include:

1. Other billable items: COS fees are charged for storage, requests, data retrievals, and traffic. Currently, the free tier is only applicable to standard storage, while other billable items will be billed as incurred.
2. Charges for excessive use of resources. For example, if you are entitled to 50 GB of free standard storage capacity, but your actual storage exceeds 50 GB, the excessive storage will be billed as incurred.
3. Expiration of the free tier. We provide new COS users a free tier of standard storage capacity with a validity period of 6 months. After the expiration of the free tier, storage will be billed as incurred. You can log in to the COS Console to view the validity period for your free tier on the subscription plan management page.

Why is my account still in arrears (or fees are deducted) even if I have purchased a subscription plan?

Possible reasons include:

1. Other billable items: COS fees are charged for storage, requests, data retrievals, and traffic. Currently, COS offers three subscription plans: standard storage capacity plan, archive storage capacity plan, and public network downstream traffic plan, where:
   • The standard storage capacity plan is only applicable to standard storage.
   • The archive storage capacity plan is applicable to data transitioned to archive storage through COS lifecycle and data that is directly uploaded for archiving.
   • The public network downstream traffic plan is only applicable to public network downstream traffic.

Other billable items such as requests, data retrievals, and CDN origin-pull traffic will be billed as incurred.
2. Fees in other regions:

• A subscription plan is only applicable to one region and cannot be used in other regions. For example, if you have purchased a standard storage capacity plan for Chengdu and have also created a bucket in Chongqing, the bucket in Chongqing will be billed separately, while the subscription plan for Chengdu is not applicable to it.
• Currently, subscription plans are only available in regions in Mainland China, and use of resources outside Mainland China will be billed as incurred.
  3. Charges for excessive use of resources. For example, if you have purchased a standard storage capacity plan for 100 GB, but your actual storage exceeds the total of your free tier plus 100 GB, the excessive storage will be billed as incurred.

How can I check my bills?

You can view information about the fees incurred by COS in the Billing Center in the console. For more information, see Viewing Billing Details.

Will fees be charged for requests and traffic generated by data transfer between COS and CVM?

No fees will be charged for traffic that is generated by data transfer between COS and CVM in the same region as the transfer is over the private network. For more information on how to identify private network access, see How to determine an access via private network. If your COS and CVM services are in different regions, the traffic will be billed.

All requests generated by data transfer between CVM and COS will be billed.

How is the public network downstream traffic in COS billed?

Public network downstream traffic is traffic generated by data transfer from COS to the client over the internet. Traffic generated by downloading an object directly through an object link or by browsing an object through a static website access node is public network downstream traffic. For more information on billing for such traffic, see Billing Restrictions and Product Pricing.

How is the CDN origin-pull traffic in COS billed?

CDN origin-pull traffic is traffic generated by data transfer from COS to a CDN edge server. After CDN acceleration is enabled, traffic generated by browsing or downloading COS data in the client is CDN origin-pull traffic. For more information on billing for such traffic, see Billing Restrictions and Product Pricing.

Can I use multiple COS subscription plans together?

Yes.

Will traffic fees be incurred by uploading a file to a COS bucket?

No.

Can I return a COS subscription plan?

No, a subscription plan takes effect upon purchase and cannot be returned.

Can I renew or upgrade my COS subscription plan?

No for the time being; however, we will launch the subscription plan renewal and upgrade features as early as possible.

Will traffic fees be incurred when Tencent Cloud products in the same region access each other?

Tencent Cloud products in the same region access each other over the private network by default and no traffic fees will be incurred. For more information, see How to determine an access via private network.

If my account is in arrears and COS service is suspended, can I still access and download files in the COS Console?

If your COS service is suspended because your account is in arrears, you have no access to the console. Your data will be retained for 120 days. If you fail to top up your account to a positive balance within this period, your data will be destroyed. For more information, see Arrears.

Will traffic fees be incurred when the objects stored in COS are under DDoS attacks?

DDoS attacks on objects do not incur traffic fees. COS buckets come with hotlink protection, which can reduce the impact of DDoS attacks. For more information, see Setting Hotlink Protection.