Pay As You Go

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What Does Pay As You Go Mean?

Pay As You Go (PAYG) is a utility computing billing method that is implemented in cloud computing and geared toward organizations and end users. A PAYG user is billed for procured, rather than actual, computing resources. The PAYG mechanism is derived from utility computing.

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PAYG is also known as Pay & Go, Pay Per Usage, Pay Per Use or Pay-As-You-Use.

Techopedia Explains Pay As You Go

PAYG allows a user to scale, customize and provision computing resources, including software, storage and development platforms. Resource charges are based on used services, versus an entire infrastructure.

Public cloud resources approach and apply the PAYG model differently. For example, a user provisioning a dedicated cloud server is generally billed according to server power and usage and on a recurring basis. Software as a Service (SaaS) works similarly, where a user leases software and customized features. Storage as a Service (SaaS) billing rotates on a frequent basis because storage requirements increase are usually subject to gradually increased pricing.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.