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Billing and Payment

QWeather Develop Service’s billing system based on the Pay-as-you-go model, it is a more transparent, simple and competitive pricing scheme. This document describes how the billing and payment system works.

Hint: Price calculations in this document are estimates and final costs may vary slightly.

Billing

Standard subscription uses a Pay-as-you-go model, so you don’t need to pay a lot of money up front or for services you don’t use, you only need to pay for the part you actually use. In addition, pay as you go is tiered pricing, with the higher requests, the lower cost per request.

All your requests volume and cost will be listed on the bill and you should send us a payment based on the bill amount. Here are important rules for billing:

  • Billing unit: The billing unit is a single request.
  • Billing cycle: The billing cycle is one month and is generated before the 5th of each month.
  • Accrued charges: Accrued charge is your requests and costs for the previous hour, and the total of all accrued charges in a month is your monthly bill.
  • Payment: When you use Automatic payment mode, we will charge you based on each accrued charge. When you use the Recurring payment model, we will charge you according to your monthly bill. Refer to the Payment section of this document.
  • Tiered price progression cycle: The tiered price progression cycle is one month, which means that at the very beginning of each month, it will start at the first tier of the tiered price.
  • Minimum billing amount: ¥0.01. Under ¥0.01 will be billed as ¥0.01

Note: All bills are automatically generated by the system and do not need to be signed or stamped. It is a legally agreement between you and us, and you should make payment to us based on the bill amount or apply for payment to your organization according to the bill. Therefore we do not provide any other form of contract additionally.

For Pay-as-you-go pricing, please refer to Pricing.

Examples

Here are some examples for billing:

Pay as you go

You requested 2000 real-time weather on August 10 and 1000 weather daily forecast (15 days) on August 20 and stopped using them afterwards, then you only need to pay the following fees and you will not need to pay any fees afterwards.

2000 requests x ¥0.001 + 1000 requests x ¥0.002 = ¥4

Accrued charges

You get 10,000 real-time weather at 13:00-13:59, then after 14:00 an accrued charge bill will be generated that lists the 10,000 requests you made in the previous hour and the amount due is ¥10 (10,000 requests x ¥0.001). After this accrued charge is generated, we will attempt to charge your Balance or Saving Plans.

Tiered Pricing

You have requested a total of 1,000,000 real-time weather in August, and the formula for the tiered price is:

300,000 requests x ¥0.001 + 700,000 requests x ¥0.00088 = ¥916

In September, you retrieved 1,000,000 real-time weather again and the formula is the same as last month.

How can I reduce costs?

Pay-as-you-go model gives you the flexibility to increase or decrease the volume of requests according to your needs and avoid paying large amounts up front. When your request volume is higher or your demand is more stable, you can use Saving Plans to reduce your cost significantly. Refer to Saving Plans.

For users with a large volume of requests (usually million or more requests per day), please contact our business experts for a better solution.

Will I to be charged when I stop using?

One of the advantages of Pay-as-you-go model is that you can start or stop at any time and no hidden fees. So when you stop using our service, you will not be charged again.

Warning: When you stop using our service, please make sure your program has removed the KEY or has stopped sending us requests completely, otherwise you will still need to continue to pay.

Payment

When the bill is generated, we will automatically attempt to make the payment from your account balance. In addition to automatic payments, we also support recurring payments and manual payments.

Automatic Payment

Standard subscription is billed by default using automatic payment. It will automatically deduct your balance from each hourly accrued charges, and your service may be suspended when the balance < 0.

Recurring Payment

Hint: To enable recurring payments you need to contact your Business Manager.

For organizational developers, Standard subscriptions are available with Recurring payments. Recurring payments are a monthly postpaid model where you pay for the previous month’s standard subscription on a regular date (by default, the 10th of each month) each month.

For example: Set the 10th of each month as the payment date, you do not need to pay in advance, just make the payment based on the amount due at the beginning of the next month when the Standard Subscription bill is generated.

Manual Payment

You can make a one-time manual payment, which will increase your balance for unpaid/outstanding bills or other prepaid services. Please refer to Add Balance.

Payment Scenarios

Here are some payment scenarios that you may encounter. For these scenarios, we assume the following preconditions:

  • You have 1000 requests for real-time weather per hour
  • Each month is 30 days (720 hours)
  • Your initial balance is ¥100
  • When using Saving Plans, Your Saving Plans(1 year) commitment amount is ¥500
  • The monthly bill is generated on the 1st of each month
  • The payment date for recurring payment is the 10th of each month

Use Automatic Payment

For each hour, the accrued charge is ¥1 (¥0.001 x 1000 requests) and is charged by your balance. After the 100th hour your balance will be 0 and you should add your balance in time, otherwise after the 101st hour your balance will be -¥1, which will cause your service to be disrupted and go into outstanding status.

Use Automatic Payment and Saving Plans

For each hour, the accrued charge is ¥0.60 (¥0.001 x 0.6 saving rate x 1000 requests) and is charged by your Saving Plans. After the commitment amount of the Saving Plans is used up, the accrued charge per hour will be paid from your balance instead.

Use Recurring Payment

For each hour, the accrued charge is ¥1 (¥0.001 x 1000 requests) and you do not need to make the payment now. The monthly bill generated on the 1st of the following month will look like:

  • Billing amount: ¥669.6 (¥0.001 x 300000 requests + ¥0.00088 x 420000 requests)
  • Amount due: ¥669.6
  • Status: Unpaid

Now, your balance will be -¥569.6 (¥100 balance - ¥669.6 amount due). You can pay ¥569.6 anytime before 23:59:59 on the 10th, otherwise on the 11th, your service will be disrupted and go into outstanding status.

Use Recurring Payment and Saving Plans

For each hour, the accrued charge is ¥0.6 (¥0.001 x 0.6 saving rate x 1000 requests) and will be paid by Saving Plans. Your monthly bill will look like:

  • Billing amount: ¥401.76 (¥0.001 x 0.6 saving rate x 300000 requests + ¥0.00088 x 0.6 saving rate x 420000 requests)
  • Amount due: ¥0
  • Status: Paid

Now, your balance will be ¥100 and remaining commitment amount in Saving Plans is ¥98.24 (¥500 Saving Plans - ¥401.76 due amount). You do not need to make any further payments on this monthly bill.

In the second month, your monthly bill will look like:

  • Billing amount: ¥607.48 (¥0.001 x 0.6 saving rate x 155,334 requests + ¥0.001 x 144,666 requests + ¥0.00088 x 4,200,000 requests)
  • Amount due: ¥509.24（¥607.48 billing amount - ¥98.24 saving plans）
  • Status: Unpaid

Now, your balance will be -¥409.24 (¥100 balance - ¥509.24 amount due). You can pay ¥409.24 anytime before 23:59:59 on the 10th, otherwise on the 11th, your service will be disrupted and go into outstanding status.

Payment Methods

We offer a variety of payment methods.

  • Alipay: We recommend using Alipay for payment, it support credit and debit cards.
  • Bank Transfer: For organization developers in China, we support using bank transfer for payment. Please note that bank transfers require a 24-72 hour review time (which may be delayed in case of holidays), and real-time payment is not possible.
  • Credit Card: If you wish to pay by credit card, please use the credit card in Alipay.

Outstanding

If a bill is not paid on the payment date, the bill will become outstanding. You need to complete the payment of the outstanding bill as soon as possible.

WARNING: When you have an outstanding bill, you will be temporarily unable to use our services. Your account will be suspended if the “outstanding” over 30 days.

Refund

Standard and Pro subscriptions are postpaid, so you can’t request a refund for a service you’ve already used.

For your balance, see Withdraw Balance.

For other one-time prepaid services, we support refunds when the following conditions are met:

  • haven’t started using it yet
  • no VAT invoice issued
  • purchase within 60 days

5% processing fee will be charged when you refund. For a refund, please submit a ticket.

Balance

The balance is used to pay bills.

On the billing payment date, your balance should be positive, means balance ≥ 0.

Note: When using the standard subscription for the first time, your balance must ≥ 10.

Add Balance

You can add balance with multiple payment methods. To add balance is also for paying unpaid/outstanding bills.

The minimum amount for payment is ¥0.01 or the amount of unpaid/outstanding billing.

Example: When you have a bill of ¥123 to be paid, and you choose to add a balance of ¥200, there will be ¥123 to pay the bill, and your balance now is ¥200 - ¥123 = ¥77.

Withdraw Balance

You can withdraw the balance at any time, just follow these conditions:

  • Balance greater than ¥1.
  • There are no Standard or Pro Subscription in your account, or have purchased a Saving Plan/Resource Plan that can be used to pay for a Standard/Pro Subscription.
  • No unpaid bills or outstanding bills.
  • Account is not suspended.

5% processing fee will be charged when withdrawing the balance. To withdraw the balance, please submit a ticket.

Value added tax

For purchases made by users in mainland China, the bill amount already includes VAT. To apply a VAT invoice, please refer to the VAT Invoice.

For purchases made by users in other countries, the billed amount does not include any taxes.

Suspension

When the status of a bill is outstanding, you will be temporarily unable to use our services. If the outstanding bill is more than 30 days old, your account will be suspended and you will still have to pay your outstanding amount. See Account Suspension.