Alibaba Cloud

Alibaba Cloud is the cloud computing business of Alibaba Group and one of the leading cloud platforms in the Asia-Pacific region. This Alibaba Cloud overview explains its core services, its AI offering built around the Qwen model family, how pricing works and what international users should know. It is most relevant for organizations operating in, or expanding into, mainland China and wider Asian markets.

Regional coverage #

Alibaba Cloud’s strongest footprint is in Asia. It runs many regions in mainland China, along with regions in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, South Korea and several Southeast Asian countries. It also operates regions in Europe, North America and the Middle East, which lets international companies use one provider across markets.

For businesses that need to serve users inside mainland China, having infrastructure there can improve performance and simplify local connectivity. That comes with local regulatory requirements, covered below.

Alibaba Cloud core services #

The comparison column is only a rough guide; features and limits differ. To learn the basics in more depth, see our guide to Alibaba Cloud ECS, OSS and regions.

AI and the Qwen models

Alibaba develops the Qwen family of large language and multimodal models. Developers can access Qwen models through Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, a managed platform for calling models by API, building applications and tuning models. Many Qwen models are also released with open weights, so teams can self-host them on GPU instances. Model availability and features vary by region, so check the Model Studio documentation for your location.

How pricing works #

Alibaba Cloud offers several billing methods, and choosing the right one for each resource affects cost significantly:

• Subscription: prepay for a resource for a month or longer, usually at a lower effective rate. Suited to steady workloads.
• Pay-as-you-go: billed by actual usage with no commitment, useful for testing and variable workloads.
• Preemptible (spot) instances: discounted ECS capacity that can be released when demand rises.
• Savings plans and resource plans: commitments that reduce the cost of eligible usage.
• Free trials: new users can often try selected products for free within limits. Check the current offers on the official site.

Be careful when mixing billing methods. Subscription resources are paid in advance and may not be refundable if you release them early, while pay-as-you-go resources keep accruing charges until you delete them. Outbound internet traffic is billed separately, either by bandwidth or by data volume depending on your choice.

Prices differ between regions, and the mainland China site and the international site have separate pricing and accounts.

Where it fits well #

• Companies serving users in mainland China or across Southeast Asia that want local regions.
• E-commerce and high-traffic consumer applications, an area where Alibaba’s own experience informs many services.
• Teams building with Qwen models who want managed API access alongside compute and storage.
• Multi-region architectures that need one provider across Asia, Europe and North America.

Things to consider #

Regulatory steps in mainland China: websites hosted on servers in mainland China require an ICP filing before they can serve traffic publicly, and some industries need additional licenses. Alibaba Cloud provides an official ICP filing assistance process. Hosting in Hong Kong or other regions avoids ICP requirements, with different latency trade-offs for mainland users.

Two sites: the international site (alibabacloud.com) and the China site (aliyun.com) have separate accounts, verification and documentation. Choose the one that matches where your business operates.

Documentation: English documentation is extensive, but some newer features appear first in Chinese. Real-name verification is required for many services, and default quotas apply to new accounts; request increases through the official quota center.

Getting started the official way #

1. Sign up on the official Alibaba Cloud international website, and complete the identity verification and payment method setup it requests.
2. Enable multi-factor authentication for the main account.
3. Create RAM users (Resource Access Management) with least-privilege policies for daily work.
4. Set spending alerts in the Billing console before launching resources.
5. Use the Alibaba Cloud documentation for product guides and API references.

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