Akamai delivery billing is the set of measurement and invoicing rules that apply to Akamai’s content delivery, media delivery, storage and edge compute services. These services are not licensed per installation. A customer commits to a monthly volume or a monthly fee in a Transaction Document, and Akamai measures actual use on its own platform. The Services Billing Terms, part of the Services Page incorporated into the Akamai Terms & Conditions, define the units and the treatment of overage.[1][2] Committed fees in a Direct Order are payable regardless of actual use.[2] For the framework that surrounds these rules, see Akamai Technologies licensing.
Editions
Delivery services are sold as separate named services rather than editions. The Service Descriptions describe, among others, Adaptive Media Delivery for adaptive bit rate streaming, Download Delivery, NetStorage, Advanced Cache Control and Adaptive Image Compression, and add-ons such as the Akamai Connector for Google Tag Gateway, which is an optional feature of Ion, Dynamic Site Accelerator and API Acceleration.[3] Some media services require the purchase of a compatible delivery service.[4] The Billing Terms give service-specific methods for a number of them:[1]
| Service | Billing method in the Billing Terms |
|---|---|
| Edge IP Binding, Foreground Download, Content Replacement and Blackout | Flat recurring monthly fee |
| Manifest Personalization | Hits of personalized manifests (usage-based) |
| Mobile Detection and Redirect | One-time activation fee plus monthly maintenance fee for the first domain |
| NetStorage | GB stored or Average GB Stored per month |
| Media Encryption | Uplift over the Adaptive Media Delivery rate, applied to encrypted GB per month |
| EdgeWorkers | EW Events per month by resource tier (Tier 100 or Tier 200) |
| EdgeKV | Reads, writes, deletes, lists and GB stored; requires EdgeWorkers |
| Media Services Live 4 | Minutes ingested or GB ingested, chosen when ordering |
| IP Application Accelerator | Users simultaneously using the Akamai network |
| Session Accelerator | Unique SSL session IDs simultaneously using the network |
Traffic delivered with Standard TLS is billed at the same rate as HTTP.[1] The Billing Terms give a worked Media Encryption example: at US$0.10 per GB for Adaptive Media Delivery and a US$0.02 (20%) uplift, delivering 100 GB of which 50 GB is encrypted costs US$11.[1]
Metrics
| Unit | Catalog row | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| 95/5 | 95/5 | The 95th percentile of usage, or its uncompressed equivalent, measured over five-minute intervals.[1] |
| MB, GB, TB | GB delivered | Total use or its uncompressed equivalent as measured by Akamai.[1] |
| Hit, million Hits | Hit | An HTTP request to an Akamai server for an object. Akamai counts all Hits on a page, including redirects, permission and other error Hits.[1] |
| Page View, MPV | Page View | Delivery of a text/html file, excluding 301/302 redirects and 404 pages.[1] |
| Digital Property | Digital Property | A Site with separately configured Application Services, reporting or invoicing, of at most one domain and ten hostnames.[1] |
| EW Event | EW Event | One invocation of an EdgeWorkers event handler.[1] |
| Workload Entitlement | Workload Entitlement | For Aura LCDN, 1 Gbps or 2000 HTTP requests per second of delivered capacity.[1] |
The Akamai Cloud billing guide notes that most Akamai products, including CDN and NetStorage, use decimal units, so 1 GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes; only certain compute services use binary gibibytes.[5] Reconciling Akamai CDN invoices against origin logs that report GiB will otherwise show a gap of about 7%.
Counting / floors
Which method applies. Unless otherwise indicated, Services measured in concurrent users, GB stored, Mbps, Gbps or another bit-per-second unit are billed on 95/5. Other usage is total use. All billing usage includes Midgress Traffic, the traffic from a midgress server to an edge server, unless otherwise indicated.[1] Catalog: Bit-rate, concurrent-user and GB-stored services are billed on 95/5. Midgress Traffic is billed in addition to other usage traffic at the Transaction Document rate.[1]
95/5 in practice. Under 95/5, Akamai samples usage every five minutes and bills the 95th percentile, so the highest 5% of samples in the month are ignored.[1] Short spikes therefore do not raise the bill unless they fall within the top 5% under the Superbursting rule. Akamai may also measure 95/5 per region where usage exceeds 20 Mbps, which can produce a higher total than one global percentile.[1] Catalog: 95/5 may be measured per region above 20 Mbps.
Superbursting. For Services billed in bits per second, an extra per-unit charge applies to usage above two times the commitment, to the extent that usage falls in the top 5% of five-minute intervals.[1] Catalog: Superbursting charge above twice the commitment. This is the one place where the top 5% of samples, normally discarded by 95/5, is billed.
Geo Pricing. With Geo Pricing, also called “delivered from” or “served from” pricing, the rate depends on the Delivery Geo, the location of the Akamai server that delivered the content, not the location of the end user. There are currently eight Delivery Geos, and Akamai may change the list as its server locations change.[1] Catalog: Geo Pricing applies the rate of the serving location. The network provider that serves a request is not always the end user’s ISP.[1]
Network Surcharge. A separate per-GB charge may apply to traffic served directly to certain high-cost network providers. It may differ by provider, and non-payment allows Akamai to suspend delivery.[1]
Overage. Overage is billed monthly in arrears. Where the Transaction Document gives no overage rate, the usage rate applies.[1] Catalog: Overage is billed monthly in arrears, at the usage rate if no overage rate is set. Akamai may also charge for traffic bursts or increased usage caused by the customer’s actions or by deviation from configurations specified in Service Documents.[4]
Digital Properties. Fees are per Digital Property unless otherwise indicated.[1] Catalog: Fees are per Digital Property of one domain and up to ten hostnames. The Billing Terms illustrate the limit with www.customer.com and images.customer.com: “customer.com” is the domain and “www” and “images” are hostnames.[1]
EdgeWorkers. A single user request can produce several EW Events, because each handler that runs during the request and response counts separately.[1] Catalog: Each EdgeWorkers event handler invocation counts separately.
Aura LCDN. Operators running Aura LCDN software must buy Workload Entitlements that meet or exceed the network-wide daily peak, reconcile once per calendar quarter and buy any shortfall within 30 days after the quarter. Use is also limited by Server Entitlements, one per physical Server.[1] Catalog: Aura LCDN Workload Entitlements are reconciled every quarter. See true-up.
Virtualization & partitioning
Delivery services run on Akamai’s platform, so customer-side virtualization does not affect counting. The exception is Aura LCDN, whose Server Entitlement counts each separate physical device, such as a blade or a rack-mounted unit, as its own Server.[1]
Cloud / BYOL
Not applicable. The delivery services are themselves cloud services. Akamai Cloud compute is billed separately; see Akamai Cloud pricing and billing.
Programs
Overage Protection. The customer and Akamai agree an Agreed Upon Monthly Traffic Level, and the Contracted Rate is the monthly fee divided by that level. Akamai may bill usage above 150% of the level at the Contracted Rate only after usage has exceeded 150% in any three months of a rolling 12-month period, and then monthly in arrears from the fourth month of overage for the rest of the Term.[1] Catalog: Overage Protection: excess over 150% billed only after three months in twelve. The same clause limits use to Affiliates existing at the Billing Effective Date; entities acquired later need written agreement.[1] Catalog: Entities acquired after the Billing Effective Date are not covered.
DDoS Fee Protection. For security services that front delivery, such as App & API Protector, DDoS Fee Protection replaces overage fees for a month with a DDoS attack by the Capped Burst Fee. The overage must exceed twice the average monthly overage of the preceding six months, the customer must notify Akamai support, and the credit request must be made within 30 days of the disputed invoice.[3] Catalog: DDoS Fee Protection needs overage above twice the six-month average.
Cloud Partner billing. Resellers and NAP partners selling Cloud Embed are billed a possible set-up fee and monthly usage fees, built from each Subcustomer’s Hit Count and GB by Cloud Partner Delivery Geo at wholesale pricing. There are seven Cloud Partner Delivery Geos.[1] Resellers must bind each Cloud Embed subcustomer to an acceptable use policy at least as strict as Akamai’s.[4]
Committed fees. Direct Order rates rise by 3% on each anniversary of the Billing Effective Date unless the Transaction Document says otherwise, and terms auto-renew unless notice is given 60 days before expiry.[2] See consumption credits and prepaid capacity for the general pattern of committed usage.
Out of scope
- Rates, commitment sizes and custom units, which are set in each Transaction Document.
- The country lists of each Delivery Geo, which are reproduced in the Billing Terms appendices.
- China CDN and Russia CDN, for which Akamai may limit the traffic purchased.
- Security services billed per request or per user; see Akamai security products licensing.