Alibaba Cloud International
- Free allowance
- On 2026-10-23 the international free-trial documentation describes product trials as per-product resource quotas and solution trials as points: 'Points are deducted from the actual cloud-resource bills generated by the trial resources, at 1 point : USD 1.' The initial claim is 50 points, with 5...
- Verdict
- triala time-boxed or one-time trial, not a recurring allowance
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- cardcard required, phone required
- Binding limit
- volume-quota50 initial points at 1 point to USD 1, plus 5 points per additional solution up to 10 solutions, valid for one year, with any single solution trial capped at 168 hours
- Evidence
- documented13 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-12-05checked 2026-11-04 (live); stale on 2026-12-05
| Free tier | On 2026-10-23 the international free-trial documentation describes product trials as per-product resource quotas and solution trials as points: 'Points are deducted from the actual cloud-resource bills generated by the trial resources, at 1 point : USD 1.' The initial claim is 50 points, with 5 points per additional solution up to 10 solutions, valid for one year, and any single solution trial is capped at 168 hours. A separate promotion offers USD 200 on approval of a business use case. unit mixed; metered on wall-clock; points at 1 point to USD 1 |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
the product trials are per-product resource quotas and the solution trials are points; the help page states no blanket signup credit |
| Binding | volume-quota the 168-hour per-solution cap stops any single long run first, and the 50-point initial claim plus the one-year validity bound the whole lane |
| Identity | card card at signup; a USD 1.00 pre-authorisation verifies the card; debit accepted if enabled for international payments; prepaid, gift, virtual and UnionPay-only cards refused because they cannot pass pre-authorisation; PayPal also supported; a verified phone number, and one identity may hold one account |
| Egress | inbound traffic is free and only outbound traffic is charged, by bandwidth or by traffic, at a region-dependent unit price (reference example USD 0.123 per GB in China (Hangzhou)); with CDT enabled on pay-by-traffic the free quota is 220 GB of Internet transfer a month (20 GB mainland regions, 200 GB regions outside the Chinese mainland); the CDT tiered overage price is not stated on the pages read free allowance: 220 GB per month with CDT enabled (200 GB for regions outside the Chinese mainland, 20 GB for mainland regions) |
| Interface | cli the Alibaba Cloud CLI is documented; the ECS OpenAPI also has SDKs for common programming languages |
| Tooling | the provider documents its own command-line tool, Alibaba Cloud CLI, per https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/cli/what-is-alibaba-cloud-cli: "Alibaba Cloud CLI is an open-source, cross-platform command-line tool that lets you do everything the Alibaba Cloud console does" |
| Composes with | The money-denominated lane is now points at 1 point to USD 1, capped at an initial 50 points with one year of validity, so it buys a small trial rather than a season of compute. The earlier 200 GB a month of non-mainland egress is the term that would survive a quiet account if it still exists. |
| Reliability | no reliability event recorded |
| Notes | Two offers sit behind one brand and they are not the same door. The international lane takes a Visa or Mastercard and needs no national document, which is why this record is trial-only rather than fails-identity; the mainland lane at CNY 300 needs Chinese identity verification and is the one a user cannot open. The vendor's own community post says USD 90. The free trial page at alibabacloud.com/free is login-gated and served no content to any reader route, so the per-product list could not be read directly. Corrected on 2026-10-23: the earlier USD 90 over 3 months came from a localised page that the international help documentation no longer states. The money-denominated lane is now points at 1 point to USD 1 plus a USD 200 application. It is published: USD 1.00, on the payment FAQ. The refusal of prepaid, gift and virtual cards is confirmed there too, which is why prepaid counts as refused for this vendor. |
| Evidence note | documented Payment facts re-read on 2026-10-24: the card types, the hold and the identity gate each come from a first-party page quoted in evidence[]. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 13
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-22 | www.alibabacloud.com/blog/599911 | ' USD 90.00 3 ', ' USD 0.25/ ECS + ', ' 220 GB 200 GB + 20 GB ', quoted from Alibaba Cloud's own community post |
| 2026-10-22 | www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/user-center/product-overview/le | eligibility needs 'a verified phone number and a payment method', and the accepted methods are 'Credit card (Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, or JCB with international payment enabled)', debit card of the same networks, or 'PayTM (available for users in India)'; 'PayPal is not supported'; and a risk-control block requires KYC, quoted |
| 2026-10-22 | buildaicurrent.com/credits/alibaba-cloud-free-credits/ | a third party correcting the widely repeated USD 300 figure: 'As of 2026-08-21 that is not the current official model. The official free page lists per-product trials instead, with the ECS USD 90 for 3 months as the compute-relevant one', reported |
| 2026-10-22 | help.aliyun.com/en/ecs/user-guide/ecs-free-trial | the mainland site's parallel offer: 'a total free quota of CNY 300 for ECS instances and system disks', 4 vCPU and 8 GiB maximum, seven regions including Hong Kong, and the same 220 GB split of monthly traffic, quoted. |
| 2026-10-23 | www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/user-center/product-overview/le | 'Points are deducted from the actual cloud-resource bills generated by the trial resources, at 1 point : USD 1.', quoted; the same page states the 50-point initial claim, the one-year validity and the 168-hour per-solution cap |
| 2026-10-24 | www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/user-center/support/payment-faq | quoted: 'Only Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, or JCB credit or debit cards enabled for international payments are accepted. Prepaid, gift, virtual, and UnionPay-only cards are not supported.' |
| 2026-10-24 | www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/user-center/support/payment-faq | quoted, the hold: 'Pre-authorization failure: A USD 1.00 pre-authorization (or local currency equivalent) verifies your card.' |
| 2026-11-04 | www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/cdt/product-overview/what-is-cd | with CDT enabled the free Internet transfer is 220 GB a month: 20 GB in mainland regions, 200 GB in regions outside it |
| 2026-11-04 | www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/ecs/product-overview/public-ban | outbound unit price example of USD 0.123 per GB in China (Hangzhou) |
| 2026-11-04 | www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/ecs/product-overview/public-ban | only outbound traffic is charged; inbound is free |
| 2026-11-04 | www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/cli/what-is-alibaba-cloud-cli | a CLI exists |
| 2026-11-04 | www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/ecs/developer-reference/api-ecs | SDKs exist for the ECS OpenAPI |
| 2026-11-04 | www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/cli/what-is-alibaba-cloud-cli | the provider documents its own CLI |
More fields 2
| facets | {"class": "regional","free_tier_kind": "trial-credit","shape": {"vcpu": 2,"ram_gib": 4,"gpu_class": null,"gpu_count": 0}} |
|---|---|
| payment methods | {"card_at_signup": "yes","debit": "accepted-with-condition","prepaid": "refused","virtual": "refused","hold_amount": "USD 1.00","hold_detail": "pre-authorisation to verify the card","identity": "verified phone number; KYC only on a risk-control block","source_url": "https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/user-center/support/payment-faq","read_on": "2026-10-24"} |
Unknown values 3
- per object cap stated: the field does not apply to this kind of offer
- reliability note: nothing of this kind was observed
- retention stated: the field does not apply to this kind of offer
Corrections
- 2026-10-23 Corrected on 2026-10-23: compute/alibaba-cloud-international, compute/amd-developer-cloud, compute/blaxel and 5 more records