# Cloud Pricing: what's an "action"?

**URL:** <https://community.temporal.io/t/cloud-pricing-whats-an-action/6969>\
**Category:** Community Support\
**Tags:** general-impl\
**Created:** [January 19, 2023, 12:45am UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/cloud-pricing-whats-an-action/6969 "2023-01-19T00:45:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sdonovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/35a633/32.png) [@sdonovan](https://community.temporal.io/u/sdonovan)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2023, 12:45am UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/cloud-pricing-whats-an-action/6969/1 "2023-01-19T00:45:01Z")

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Greetings. We’re looking at various Temporal-Cloud cases. What I can’t tell from the documentation is: what defines an **action**? I’m guessing it’s a list of specific history events, or groupings of events (e.g. 1 activity, which includes `scheduled`/`started`/`completed`).

I will go ask Sales too, but it also seems like a generic enough question. Note, maybe this is a documentation bug, because I don’t see a definition [here](https://temporal.io/cloud).

Many thanks!

Sean

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**Author:** ![maxim](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.temporal.io/maxim/32/8_2.png) [@maxim](https://community.temporal.io/u/maxim)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2023, 4:06pm UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/cloud-pricing-whats-an-action/6969/3 "2023-01-19T16:06:03Z")

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This is exactly what batch workflow samples demonstrate.

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**Author:** ![antonio.perez](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.temporal.io/antonio.perez/32/2417_2.png) [@antonio.perez](https://community.temporal.io/u/antonio.perez)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2023, 6:17pm UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/cloud-pricing-whats-an-action/6969/4 "2023-01-19T18:17:11Z")

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Hello @sdonovan

In general “actions” are defined as: activity, localActivity, workflow, childWorkflow, heartbeat, timer, signal, query.

We are going to add this to the documentation.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sdonovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/35a633/32.png) [@sdonovan](https://community.temporal.io/u/sdonovan)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2023, 7:45pm UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/cloud-pricing-whats-an-action/6969/5 "2023-01-19T19:45:01Z")

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So, for activities, an **action** represents a single (logical) activity execution (i.e. the `started`, `scheduled`, `completed` events – regardless of `success`/`failed`). Retries are considered additional executions, and incur an additional action for each retry.

Same would apply to child-workflows. For the others (`localActivity`, `sideEffect`, `heartbeat`, `timer`, `signal`, `query`), I think they only occur as single events (so, 1x action each).

Would be easy to construct code to trawl workflow-history and count the actions.

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![antonio.perez](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.temporal.io/antonio.perez/32/2417_2.png) [@antonio.perez](https://community.temporal.io/u/antonio.perez)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2023, 8:47pm UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/cloud-pricing-whats-an-action/6969/6 "2023-01-19T20:47:48Z")

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Hi @sdonovan

Every activity invocation, child workflow, signal etc… in your workflow code counts as one action.

So for the following “code”:

```auto
- activity1
- activity2
- activity3
- sleep
- childWorflow

```

There are 5 actions in the workflow + the workflow itself: 6 in total.

Every activity retry counts as one action, yes.

Antonio