Feature Request: Billing and Cost Management Support in Alibaba Cloud CLI

[PYTHON01100100]

Summary

I would like to request billing and cost management functionality within Alibaba Cloud CLI.

Currently, the CLI provides excellent resource management capabilities through OpenAPI integration. However, there is no simple way to retrieve billing information, pricing details, subscription status, or cost reports directly from the command line.

Adding billing-related commands would significantly improve the experience for DevOps, Cloud Engineers, Platform Engineers, and FinOps teams that rely heavily on automation and terminal-based workflows.

---

Proposed Features

1. Resource Billing Discovery

Allow users to retrieve all billable resources associated with their account.

Example:

aliyun billing list-resources

Output:

Resource ID	Resource Name	Product	Region	Billing Type
i-xxxxx	production-web	ECS	me-central-1	Subscription
d-xxxxx	data-disk	ESSD	me-central-1	Pay-As-You-Go
lb-xxxxx	prod-alb	ALB	us-east-1	Pay-As-You-Go

---

### 2. Billing Type Information

Display whether each resource is:

- Pay-As-You-Go
- Subscription
- Savings Plan (if applicable)
- Reserved Capacity (if applicable)

Example:

```bash
aliyun billing resource-info --resource-id i-xxxxx

Output:

{
  "resourceId": "i-xxxxx",
  "product": "ECS",
  "region": "me-central-1",
  "billingType": "Subscription",
  "expireTime": "2027-01-01T00:00:00Z"
}

---

3. Cost and Pricing Information

Provide pricing details directly from the CLI.

Example:

aliyun billing price --resource-id i-xxxxx

Output:

{
  "resourceId": "i-xxxxx",
  "billingType": "Subscription",
  "monthlyCost": 120,
  "currency": "SAR"
}

---

4. Region-Aware Currency Support

Display prices using the local currency associated with the selected region whenever available.

Examples:

Region	Currency
Saudi Arabia (me-central-1)	SAR
UAE	AED
United States	USD
Europe	EUR
United Kingdom	GBP

Example:

aliyun billing cost-summary --region me-central-1

Output:

Current Month Cost: 425.75 SAR

---

5. Cost Reports and Summaries

Provide monthly and daily cost reporting.

Examples:

aliyun billing cost-summary
aliyun billing cost-summary --month 2026-06
aliyun billing cost-summary --daily

Output:

{
  "month": "2026-06",
  "currency": "SAR",
  "totalCost": 425.75,
  "products": [
    {
      "name": "ECS",
      "cost": 250.00
    },
    {
      "name": "RDS",
      "cost": 100.00
    },
    {
      "name": "ALB",
      "cost": 75.75
    }
  ]
}

---

6. Cost Breakdown by Service

Allow users to analyze spending by product.

Example:

aliyun billing breakdown --group-by product

Supported grouping:

• Product
• Region
• Resource
• Billing Type

---

7. Export Functionality

Support exporting billing information for automation and reporting.

Examples:

aliyun billing export --format json
aliyun billing export --format csv
aliyun billing export --format table

---

8. Budget and Cost Monitoring

Optional future enhancement:

aliyun billing budget create \
  --amount 1000 \
  --currency SAR

aliyun billing budget list

aliyun billing alerts enable

---

Example End-to-End Workflow

aliyun billing list-resources

aliyun billing cost-summary --month 2026-06

aliyun billing breakdown --group-by product

aliyun billing export --format csv

---

Benefits

For DevOps Teams

• Visibility into infrastructure costs directly from the terminal.
• Easier integration with CI/CD pipelines.
• Simplified cloud cost audits.

For FinOps Teams

• Quick cost reporting.
• Automated budget tracking.
• Resource-level spending visibility.

For Multi-Cloud Users

Many engineers use Alibaba Cloud alongside AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Having billing visibility through Alibaba Cloud CLI would make it easier to integrate with existing automation and cost-management workflows across multiple cloud providers.

---

Suggested Command Namespace

aliyun billing list-resources
aliyun billing resource-info
aliyun billing cost-summary
aliyun billing breakdown
aliyun billing price
aliyun billing budget
aliyun billing export

---

Thank You

Thank you for maintaining Alibaba Cloud CLI.

This feature would greatly improve operational visibility, FinOps adoption, and automation capabilities for engineers managing cloud infrastructure through the command line.

[LCLSpring]

Thanks for the detailed and well-structured proposal — this is exactly the kind of feedback that helps us prioritize.

Some of what you're asking for is already possible today, and part of it just shipped. Let me break it down:

Available today: querying bills and billing info via BssOpenApi

The CLI can already call the full Billing (BssOpenApi) product. The output is raw JSON rather than the friendly aliyun billing namespace you proposed, but the data for your items 1, 2, 5 and 6 is there:

# Monthly cost summary, grouped by product (your item 5/6)
aliyun bssopenapi QueryAccountBill --BillingCycle 2026-06

# All billable resources with billing type and expiry (your items 1/2)
aliyun bssopenapi QueryAvailableInstances --PageSize 50

# Per-resource bill breakdown (your item 6)
aliyun bssopenapi QueryInstanceBill --BillingCycle 2026-06

Bills are returned in your account's settlement currency. For CSV/table export (your item 7) you can pipe the JSON through jq or the CLI's built-in --output cols=... rows=... flag as a workaround for now.

Just shipped: pre-execution cost estimation

Related to your item 3, but answering a different question — "how much will this operation cost" rather than "how much did it cost". As of v3.4.2, the CLI supports an --estimate-cost flag on product commands: it returns the exact quote (including discounts) for the operation without executing it:

# Quote a subscription ECS instance before buying it
aliyun ecs run-instances --instance-type ecs.e-c1m1.large \
  --instance-charge-type PrePaid --period 1 --period-unit Month \
  ... --estimate-cost

# Quote a config upgrade — returns the prorated delta you'd actually pay
aliyun ecs modify-prepay-instance-spec --instance-id i-xxx \
  --instance-type ecs.e-c1m2.large --estimate-cost

In our verification, quoted amounts match the resulting bill exactly (same pricing source as the trade system). Coverage is per-API and expanding — currently 18 products including ECS, RDS, SLB, OSS and CDN. To see the full list of supported APIs:

aliyun list-supported-pricing-apis

Your aliyun billing namespace proposal

A first-class, human-friendly billing namespace (cost summaries, breakdowns, export, budgets) is a bigger piece of work — we're taking it as roadmap input, and this issue is a good reference for the use cases. Budget/alert management (your item 8) additionally depends on the corresponding server-side APIs.

Leaving this issue open to track the namespace proposal. If the BssOpenApi commands above unblock your immediate reporting needs, feedback on what's still missing would be very welcome.