# Elasticsearch Serverless pricing demystified: VCUs and ECUs explained

DevFeed: [Elasticsearch Serverless pricing demystified: VCUs and ECUs explained](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/elasticsearch-serverless-pricing-demystified-vcus-and-ecus-explained-78813.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.elastic.co/search-labs/blog/elasticsearch-serverless-pricing-vcus-ecus>)

Author: Sander Philipse,Pete Galeotti

Published: 2025-12-19T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Elasticsearch Labs](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/elasticsearch-labs.md>)

Topics: [elasticsearch](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/elasticsearch.md>), [Elastic Cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/elastic-cloud.md>)

Tags: [2025](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/2025.md>), [autoscaling](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/autoscaling.md>), [basics](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/basics.md>), [costs](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/costs.md>), [customers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/customers.md>), [deployment](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/deployment.md>), [elasticsearch](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/elasticsearch.md>), [inside-elastic](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/inside-elastic.md>), [managed](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/managed.md>), [pricing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/pricing.md>)

## AI overview

The article explains how Elasticsearch Serverless bills for search, ingest, and machine learning resources through Virtual Compute Units (VCUs), with Elastic Consumption Units (ECUs) used for charges. It describes how workload size and complexity, Search Power, storage, token use, and project settings affect consumption, and outlines cost monitoring options.

## Source excerpt

Learn how Elasticsearch Serverless pricing works for Elastic's fully-managed deployment offering. We explain VCUs (Search, Ingest, ML) and ECUs, detailing how consumption is based on actual allocated resources, workload complexity, and Search Power.