Understand BYOC Billing

Contact Sales to Enable BYOC

BYOC billing is based on committed vCPU capacity. When you purchase BYOC, you sign a contract for a certain amount of committed vCPU capacity, which defines the licensed capacity available to your BYOC organization.

Zilliz Cloud supports two BYOC purchase options: Commit only and Commit + on-demand.

This guide explains how BYOC purchase options and how billing works in Zilliz Cloud.

BYOC purchase options

Zilliz Cloud supports two BYOC purchase options: Commit only and Commit + on-demand. Choose the option that best matches how predictable your BYOC workload is.

Purchase option	Best for	How billing works
Commit only	Stable and predictable workloads	You purchase committed vCPU capacity through a contract. Usage does not generate monthly invoices in Zilliz Cloud. Payment is handled according to your contract, such as through Advance Pay or a cloud marketplace private offer. If you need more capacity, contact your account executive team to renew or expand your contract. You can view your licensed capacity on the License page.
Commit + on-demand	Workloads with a predictable baseline and occasional usage spikes	Your committed vCPU capacity is the minimum committed usage and is handled through your contract. Usage that exceeds the committed capacity is charged as on-demand usage. Zilliz Cloud generates monthly invoices for the on-demand portion, and you must add a supported payment method to pay these invoices. Supported payment methods include cloud marketplace subscription, credit card, and Advance Pay, depending on your contract and account setup.

Committed vCPU

Committed vCPU is the vCPU capacity included in your BYOC contract. Your committed capacity defines the licensed usage baseline for your BYOC organization.

Committed vCPU pricing is contract-based and may use tiered pricing. Larger committed capacities may unlock lower unit prices.

For exact pricing, refer to your contract or contact your executive account team.

On-demand vCPU

On-demand vCPU applies only to the Commit + on-demand purchase option. You can contact your account executive team to enable on-demand usage for your BYOC deployments.

If on-demand usage is enabled and your actual BYOC usage exceeds your committed vCPU capacity, Zilliz Cloud records the exceeded portion as on-demand vCPU usage.

On-demand usage is measured in vCPU-minute.

The following formula explains how the on-demand unit price is calculated:

On-demand per-minute unit price = applicable committed vCPU unit price / (365 × 24 × 60)

The applicable unit price is based on the pricing tier unlocked by your committed vCPU capacity or contract terms. The exceeded usage is accumulated and displayed by billing period.

Example

Suppose your applicable committed vCPU unit price is $900 / vCPU / year. The per-minute On-Demand unit price is calculated as follows:

$900 / (365 × 24 × 60) ≈ $0.0017 / vCPU / minute

If your usage exceeds the committed capacity by 600 vCPU-minute in a billing period, the estimated On-demand vCPU usage cost is:

600 × $0.0017 = $1.02

When licensed capacity is reached

If your current BYOC usage reaches the licensed capacity and on-demand usage is not enabled, Zilliz Cloud may block operations that would further increase usage.

Operation	Behavior
Create cluster	Creating new clusters may be blocked.
Scale Query CU	Increasing Query CU may be blocked. Increasing the minimum or maximum Query CU for auto scaling may also be blocked.
Scale replica	Increasing replicas may be blocked. Increasing the minimum or maximum replica count for auto scaling may also be blocked.

If an operation is blocked, you may see the message "Current usage has reached the limit. Please contact us to expand your licensed capacity."

To continue expanding resources, contact your executive account team to increase your committed capacity or enable on-demand usage, depending on your contract.

Invoices

For Commit + on-demand, Zilliz Cloud generates monthly invoices for on-demand usage that exceeds your committed vCPU capacity. You must add a supported payment method to pay these invoices.

For BYOC on-demand usage, the invoice period and payment schedule may vary depending on your contract terms. Refer to your contract for details.

For details about managing your invoices, see Manage Invoices.

📘Note

If an invoice becomes overdue, operations that increase resource usage may be blocked, including creating clusters, increasing query CUs or replicas, and enabling or using autoscaling.

Usage page

The Usage page helps you review BYOC usage against your committed capacity.

When on-demand usage is enabled, the page can show daily overage usage in vCPU-minute. The committed portion is shown as the baseline capacity, and only usage beyond the commitment is counted as on-demand usage.

Use this page to understand when overage occurred, which projects or regions contributed to the overage, and how much usage exceeded your committed capacity.

For details, see Analyze Cost.

Best practices

• Choose committed vCPU capacity based on your expected baseline production usage.

• Enable on-demand usage if your workload may occasionally exceed the committed capacity.

• Review the Usage page regularly to identify recurring overage patterns.

• Increase committed capacity if overage becomes frequent or predictable.

• Before large scaling events, confirm whether your licensed capacity and on-demand settings can support the target configuration.