Some service plans charge for compute usage and other types of resource usage. If you are the IBM Cloud account owner or administrator, you can monitor the resources usage to ensure the limits are not exceeded.
For Lite plans, you cannot exceed the limits of the plan. You must wait until the start of your next billing month to use resources that are calculated monthly. Alternatively, you can upgrade to a paid plan.
For most paid plans, you pay for the resources that the tools and processes that are provided by the service consume each month.
To see the costs of your plan, log in to IBM Cloud, open your service instance from your IBM Cloud dashboard, and click Plan.
- Capacity unit hours (CUH) for compute usage
- Resource units for foundation model inferencing
- Monitor monthly billing
Capacity unit hours (CUH) for compute usage
Many tools consume compute usage that is measured in capacity unit hours (CUH). A capacity unit hour is a specific amount of compute capability with a set cost.
How compute usage is calculated
Different types of processes and different levels of compute power are billed at different rates of capacity units per hour. For example, the hourly rate for a data profiling process is 6 capacity units.
Compute usage for Watson Studio is charged by the minute, with a minimum charge of 10 minutes (0.16 hours). Compute usage for Watson Machine Learning is charged by the minute with a minimum charge of one minute.
Compute usage is calculated by adding the minimum number of minutes billed for each process plus the number of minutes the process runs beyond the minimum minutes, then multiplying the total by the capacity unit rate for the process.
The following table shows examples of how the billed CUH is calculated.
| Rate | Usage time | Calculation | Total CUH billed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 CUH/hour | 1 hour | 1 hour * 1 CUH/hour | 1 CUH |
| 2 CUH/hour | 45 minutes | 0.75 hours * 2 CUH/hour | 1.5 CUH |
| 6 CUH/hour | 5 minutes | 0.16 hours * 6 CUH/hour | 0.96 CUH. The minimum charge for Watson Studio applies. |
| 6 CUH/hour | 30 minutes | 0.5 hours * 6 CUH/hour | 3 CUH |
| 6 CUH/hour | 1 hour | 1 hour * 6 CUH/hour | 6 CUH |
Processes that consume capacity unit hours
Some types of processes, such as AutoAI and Federated Learning, have a single compute rate for the runtime. However, with many tools you have a choice of compute resources for the runtime. The notebook editor, Data Refinery, SPSS Modeler, and other tools have different rates that reflect the memory and compute power for the environment. Environments with more memory and compute power consume capacity unit hours at a higher rate.
This table shows each process that consumes CUH, where it runs, and against which service CUH is billed, and whether you can choose from more than one environment. Follow the links to view the available CUH rates for each process.
| Tool or Process | Workspace | Service that provides CUH | Multiple CUH rates? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notebook editor | Project | Watson Studio, Analytics Engine (Spark) | Multiple rates |
| Invoking the machine learning API from a notebook | Project | Watson Machine Learning | Multiple rates |
| Data Refinery | Project | Watson Studio | Multiple rates |
| SPSS Modeler | Project | Watson Studio | Multiple rates |
| RStudio IDE | Project | Watson Studio | Multiple rates |
| AutoAI experiments | Project | Watson Machine Learning | Multiple rates |
| Decision Optimization experiments | Spaces | Watson Machine Learning | Multiple rates |
| Running deployments | Spaces | Watson Machine Learning | Multiple rates |
| Profiling | Project | Watson Studio | One rate |
| Synthetic Data Generator | Project | Watson Studio | One rate |
Monitoring compute usage
You can monitor compute usage for all services at the account level. To view the monthly CUH usage for a service, open the service instance from your IBM Cloud dashboard and click Plan.
You can also monitor compute usage in a project on the Environments page on the Manage tab.
To see the total amount of capacity unit hours that are used and that are remaining for Watson Studio and Watson Machine Learning, look at the Environment Runtimes page. From the navigation menu, select Administration > Environment runtimes. The Environment Runtimes page shows details of the CUH used by environments. You can calculate the amount of CUH you use for data flows and profiling by subtracting the amount used by environments from the total amount used.
Resource units for foundation model inferencing
Calling a foundation model to generate output in response to a prompt is known as inferencing. Foundation model inferencing is measure in resource units (RU). Each RU equals 1,000 tokens. A token is a basic unit of text (typically 4 characters or 0.75 words) used in the input or output for a foundation model prompt. For details on tokens, see Tokens.
Resource unit billing is based on the rate of the foundation model class multipled by the number of tokens. Foundation models are classified into three classes. See Resource unit metering.
Monitoring token usage for foundation model inferencing
You can monitor foundation model token usage in a project on the Environments page on the Manage tab.
Monitor monthly billing
You must be an IBM Cloud account owner or administrator to see resource usage information.
To view a summary of your monthly billing, from the navigation menu, choose Administration > Account and billing > Billing and usage. The IBM Cloud usage dashboard opens. To view the usage for each service, in the Usage summary section, click View usage.
Learn more
- Choosing compute resources for running tools in projects
- Upgrade services
- Environments compute usage
- Watson Studio offering plans
- Watson Machine Learning plans and compute usage
Parent topic: Managing the platform