What does the consumption-based model of cloud pricing mean?
A.You pay a fixed annual fee regardless of usage
A fixed annual fee is a subscription/license model, not consumption-based.
B.You pay only for the resources and services you actually use
Pay-as-you-go = billed per actual usage. Correct.
C.You must purchase reserved capacity before using any service
Reservations are optional discounts on top of consumption — not required.
D.You are billed per user license like traditional software
Per-user licensing describes SaaS licenses like Microsoft 365, not cloud resource pricing.
Why this answer
Consumption-based (pay-as-you-go) pricing bills for actual usage — compute time, storage consumed, transactions. No usage means no charge, which is what makes the OpEx model fundamentally different from buying fixed capacity.
Correct answer: B · Last reviewed 2026-02-13
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