Overview

This article introduces the billing components and payment methods for the AutoMQ Cloud product.

In this article, the terms AutoMQ product service provider, AutoMQ service provider, and AutoMQ specifically refer to AutoMQ HK Limited.

Subscription Plans

AutoMQ for Kafka On-Prem is a version of AutoMQ tailored for financial, government, and enterprise customers. It meets the needs of these customers who are highly sensitive to data security, have strict compliance requirements, and require strong isolation in on-premises IDC environments. This version provides privatized software deployment and services.

The commercial paid version of AutoMQ for Kafka offers a standard series of subscription services. Compared to the open-source version of AutoMQ Kafka, it has significantly enhanced and improved high availability and disaster recovery architecture, elasticity, observability, and operations for enterprise-level scenarios. The specific categories are detailed in the table below:

Capability Group	Capability Item	Open Source Version (Free)	Standard Edition (Paid Software)
Cloud-native architecture core	Second-level partition reassignment	✅	✅
	Automatic traffic self-balancing	✅	✅
	Minute-level smooth scaling	✅	✅
	Single replica high availability	✅	✅
	100% compatible with Apache Kafka	✅	✅
Enterprise-level disaster recovery capability	Disaster Recovery for Compute Nodes	❌ Relies on EC2 recovery, takes several seconds	✅ Multiple mount points, recovery within seconds
	Multi-AZ Disaster Recovery	❌ Requires manual cross-AZ scheduling for recovery	✅ Cross-AZ scheduling and recovery based on Regional EBS
	Disaster Recovery for Object Storage	❌ Requires manual S3 disaster recovery link implementation	✅ Supports cross-region write disaster recovery for S3, with automatic failover
	Block storage disaster recovery	❌ Requires manual implementation of disaster recovery for EBS link restoration	✅ Supports rapid persistence of hot data to disaster recovery EBS
	Multi-cloud disaster recovery	❌ Requires manual implementation of cross-cluster routing disaster recovery, including solving offset and consumption state mapping	✅ Supports cross-cluster routing disaster recovery, including message offset and consumption state reassignment
Elasticity & Cost Optimization	Storage Elasticity	✅ Kernel natively supports pay-as-you-go with S3	✅ Kernel natively supports pay-as-you-go with S3
	Traffic Follows Elastic Scaling	✅ Quick setup based on ASG	✅ Out-of-the-box
	Multi-Metric Linked Elasticity	❌ Requires kernel-level secondary packaging	✅ Supports multi-metric coordinated elasticity, including CPU, memory, and network throughput, offering better adaptability to complex stress scenarios
	Scheduled elasticity scaling	❌ Requires kernel-level secondary packaging	✅ Out-of-the-box
	Large-scale Spot instances	❌ Requires addressing the risk of forced Spot instance reclamation	✅ Out-of-the-box, with business-customized allocation of Spot instance ratios and scales
Observable operations and maintenance	Cluster Smooth Reassignment Tool	❌ Uses open-source MirrorMaker	✅ Provides managed reassignment tool
	Web Console	❌ Uses open-source management	✅ Provides out-of-the-box console One-click cluster scaling and configuration changes CRUDL management for topics, groups, and clusters Status queries for backlog, traffic hotspots, and more
	Metrics Dashboard	❌ Provides open-source Grafana templates for self-hosting	✅ Provides out-of-the-box visual dashboard
	Monitoring and Alerts	❌ Build monitoring and alerting infrastructure based on metrics	✅ Provides out-of-the-box monitoring and alerting templates, simplifying configuration Operational anomaly alerts Backlog alerts, etc.
	Event Auditing	❌	✅ Provides out-of-the-box event auditing features (based on operational S3 bucket) Operational event auditing Self-balancing events Anomalous events
Enterprise Integration	Operational API Integration	❌	✅ Provides OpenAPI integration
	Event Integration	❌	✅ Provides event push and dump functions
	Metrics Integration	❌	✅ Provides custom metrics store dump functions
	SSO/LDAP/AD Integration	❌	✅
Expert Services	Support Channels	Community Help	Enterprise Ticket Service
	Expert Priority Support	❌	Product Integration Consultation Business Architecture Consultation Cluster Risk Assessment Critical Business Window Support

Billing Components

All products and instances of AutoMQ Cloud are deployed within the environment. Refer to the definitions and classifications of the AutoMQ Cloud environments. There are differences in the ownership and maintenance methods of underlying resources between SaaS and BYOC environments. Therefore, the billing components for users vary depending on the environment type.

The fees incurred by using AutoMQ Cloud are categorized as follows:

Fee Type	Coverage	Applicable Environment Type	Payment Relationship
Software Service Fees	Technical service for the commercial paid version provided by AutoMQ	SaaS Environment BYOC Environment	User pays AutoMQ
Basic Cloud Resource Fees	Fundamental cloud resources consumed by the environment, including but not limited to: Virtual Hosts Block Storage Network Traffic, etc.	Applicable only to BYOC environments	Users pay Public Cloud providers directly

Therefore, the final billing composition varies based on the type of environment selected by the user.

Payment Methods

Leveraging the robust elasticity and scalability of cloud-native infrastructure, AutoMQ Cloud products offer highly flexible payment methods, specifically Pay-As-You-Go and Prepaid subscription options.

Pay-As-You-Go Model

The Pay-As-You-Go model is the default recommended mode. Users do not need to reserve a large amount of resources and costs in advance. After activating AutoMQ Cloud products, billing is based on real-time resource consumption, ensuring no idle or wasted resources.

AutoMQ Cloud's Pay-As-You-Go model defaults to hourly granularity for periodic statistics. It calculates and reports real-time consumption of instances across environments within the last period and bills accordingly. Specific details depend on the implementation by various cloud providers.

Prepaid Model

For special scenarios where the default recommended billing items and billing methods are insufficient, AutoMQ Cloud also supports a prepaid subscription model. In this model, you pay for a subscription plan in advance on a monthly or yearly basis, and no additional software service fees are required during actual usage.

Depending on the customer's needs, subscription plans can be purchased through the following channels:

• Purchase subscription plans via the cloud marketplace.

• Purchase subscription plans through offline business contracts.

Under the prepaid model, you need to purchase a subscription plan first, then use the relevant LicenseCode to activate the environment before you can use AutoMQ Cloud.