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Message Queue for Kafka

Product Billing

Description of arrears or expiration

This topic describes arrears or expiration for Kafka instances billed by pay-as-you-go and subscription methods.

Description of arrears

VolcanoEngine periodically checks if your account balance on the platform is sufficient to cover all your product/service orders and bill payments. If the balance is insufficient or becomes negative, it is considered arrears. When your account becomes overdue, VolcanoEngine will send you notes through various means including, but not limited to, on-site messages and emails.

Once your account is in arrears, we recommend that you recharge and settle the outstanding bills promptly. Otherwise, you will not be able to use Message Queue for Kafka resources. Beyond the retention period for arrears, resources will be compulsorily reclaimed and related data will be unrecoverable. Regardless of whether your instance resources are frozen or released, you should settle the issued bills as per actual.

Pay-as-you-go instance

For pay-as-you-go instance, the platform issues hourly bills and settles payments in real-time upon billing. If the credits in your account (including balance and vouchers) are less than the outstanding balance, your account is overdue. You will receive notifications about insufficient balance via SMS or email.

Resource status at various stages after arrears is as follows:

Overdue duration	Description	How to operate
Within 2 hours of instance arrears	The instance is usable.	Recharge the account.
Two hours after the instance is overdue	The instance is unavailable and shut down. In shutdown status, the instance is read-only and can not be operated on.	After recharging the account, once the overdue bill is cleared and the available credit is greater than 0, the instance status will automatically return to Running.
Instance shuts down after 7 days	The instance is forcibly deleted.	Unable to retrieve.

tip

Two hours after the account is in arrears, in the instance list, pay-as-you-go instances under Billing type will show the phrase Service suspended due to arrears. At this point, the instance only supports the operation of deletion.

Subscription instances

Even if your account is in arrears, you can still use the purchased subscription instances as normal. However, until the overdue fees are paid off, you can not purchase new instances or renew existing ones.

Expiration description

Only annual and monthly instances are affected by expiration. Pay-as-you-go instances have no usage duration limit. You just need to ensure a sufficient balance in your account.

Resource status at various stages after expiration is as follows:

Due time	Results	How to operate
Until 12:00 AM on the second day after expiration	Billing method will display Expired, but the instance status remains Running. The instance can be used normally.	Renew the instance.
Within 7 days after expiration	Billing type will show Expired, the instance status will be Stopped, and the instance will be unavailable.	You need to Renew your instance. After renewal, the instance status will automatically return to Running.
Shut down after 7 days	The instance will be forcibly deleted.	Unable to retrieve.

Last updated: 2025.08.08 16:58:35