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Linking a cloud to a billing account

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Updated at April 28, 2025

You can link one or more clouds to your billing account. Both new and existing clouds can be linked. You cannot unlink a cloud from a billing account. Instead, you can relink it to a different billing account.

If a billing account is added to an organization, you can link clouds from your own organization and those from other organizations you have been granted access to in Yandex Cloud Billing.

Each cloud in Yandex Cloud must be linked to a single billing account. If you relink an existing cloud, you are effectively transferring it between billing accounts. For legal entities, you cannot relink a cloud and your DataSphere, Tracker, and DataLens services from a paid account to a trial period account.

Requirements for linking a cloud

Before linking a cloud, make sure that the billing account has been activated (has the ACTIVE or TRIAL_ACTIVE status) and the user has all of the following roles:

Linking a cloud

To link a cloud to a billing account or change the billing account a cloud is linked to:

  1. Go to Yandex Cloud Billing.

  2. Select the billing account you want to link the cloud to.
  3. Go to the Clouds and services page.
  4. Click Link in the top-right corner.
  5. In the Type field, select the type of the entity you are linking from the list and then select the cloud or service.
  6. Click Link; the cloud or service you added will appear in the list.
  7. If you are changing the cloud’s billing account, pay any outstanding charges on the old billing account.

If you do not have Terraform yet, install it and configure its Yandex Cloud provider.

To link a cloud, a service account must have the billing.accounts.owner editor role for the billing account.

  1. In the configuration file, describe the resources you want to create:

    resource "yandex_billing_cloud_binding" "mycloud" {
  billing_account_id = "<billing_account_ID>"
  cloud_id           = "<cloud_ID>"
}

    Where:

    • billing_account_id: ID of the billing account to link the cloud to.
    • cloud_id: ID of the cloud to link the billing account to.

    For more information about the yandex_billing_cloud_binding properties in Terraform, see the relevant Terraform article.

  2. Create the resources:

    1. In the terminal, change to the folder where you edited the configuration file.

    2. Make sure the configuration file is correct using the command:

      terraform validate

      If the configuration is correct, the following message is returned:

      Success! The configuration is valid.

    3. Run the command:

      terraform plan

      The terminal will display a list of resources with parameters. No changes are made at this step. If the configuration contains errors, Terraform will point them out.

    4. Apply the configuration changes:

      terraform apply

    5. Confirm the changes: type yes in the terminal and press Enter.

After that, the cloud will be linked to the billing account. You can check that the cloud is linked to the account on the billing account page in Yandex Cloud Billing.

To link a cloud, use the bindBillableObject REST API method for the BillingAccount resource or the BillingAccountService/BindBillableObject gRPC API call.

If you are migrating a cloud because you want to stop using the old billing account, make sure the free Basic service plan is activated in it. Otherwise, even though it has no linked clouds remaining, you will continue to be charged for the paid service plan.

Warning

Note that linking a cloud (or another container) to the blocked account will stop all your resources.

Resource management in organizations

  1. After your billing account is added to an organization, only those clouds and DataSphere, Yandex DataLens, or Yandex Tracker instances that were created in your organization and those clouds and entities from other organizations you were granted access to will be available for linking in Yandex Cloud Billing.

  2. The technical support service plan applies at the organization level and can only be changed by the organization owner. You can use a single billing account to pay the fixed support fees across multiple organizations that may have different support service plans activated.

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Downloading personal data linked to a billing account
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Changing the billing account organization