Hourly
Hourly billing (also pay-as-you-go or PAYG) charges customers only for the time a service is actually running.
| Duration | Per hour |
| Also called | PAYG, pay-as-you-go |
| Best for | Variable workloads, dev/test, short-lived services |
Configure: Settings → Billing Setup → Rate Cards → [Rate Card] → Packages → [Service Type] → Billing cycle and pricing
| Rule | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Billing start | Exact creation time |
| Billing stop | Deletion or service end |
| Invoice timing | End of month — all hourly usage consolidated into one invoice |
| Early deletion | Customer pays only for hours used ✅ |
| Minimum billable unit | 1 hour — partial hours are rounded up to a full hour |
| Postpaid | ✅ Recommended — one of two cycles suitable for postpaid (with monthly) |
How hourly billing works
- Billing starts at the exact creation time
- Billing stops at deletion (or when the service ends)
- Minimum billable unit is 1 hour — usage is charged in whole-hour increments. If a service runs for 15 minutes, CMP still bills one full hour
- No minimum monthly commitment
- Applies to prepaid, postpaid, and manual accounts
Example: VM created Monday 10:00, deleted Wednesday 14:00 → customer pays only for those hours (each partial hour counts as a full hour). Invoice generated at month end (or 1st of the following month).
The smallest billing increment is one hour. A service used for 15 minutes is billed as 1 hour, not as a fraction of an hour.
Billing rule
| Rule | Supported? |
|---|---|
| FIXED_PRORATA | ✅ Always enforced — even if another rule is configured globally, hourly services use fixed pro-rata |
See Billing Rules for rule definitions.
Payment modes
| Mode | Supported? |
|---|---|
| Prepaid | ✅ Wallet deducted continuously; month-end invoice per prepaid model |
| Postpaid | ✅ Recommended — usage at month end; see Billing Cycles — postpaid |
| Manual | ✅ Invoice generated; offline payment |
Invoice timing
For hourly services, invoices are generated at the end of the month or on the 1st of the following month — regardless of payment mode. All hourly usage during the month is consolidated into a single invoice.
Stoppable services
Whether compute charges pause while a VM or Kubernetes cluster is stopped is controlled by enable_stoppable_service_billing.
When the flag is ON and a customer stops a VM (or K8s):
| Component | Hourly billing while stopped? |
|---|---|
| CPU / memory (compute) | ❌ Stops |
| Volumes (storage) | ✅ Continues |
| IP address | ✅ Continues |
When the flag is OFF, compute and storage both continue billing while stopped.
Full detail: Stoppable Services.
Mandatory hourly services
The following service types always use hourly billing — monthly and longer cycles are not available:
| Service type | CMP package |
|---|---|
VM_SNAPSHOT | VM Snapshot |
BS_SNAPSHOT | Volumes Snapshot |
BACKUP | VM Backup |
BS_BACKUP | Block storage backup |
BANDWIDTH | Unit Pricing |
ACCOUNT_TEMPLATE | Template |
ISO | ISO |