In Plain English: How Does Databricks Pricing Work?

In Plain English is a series of articles that aim to breakdown technical ideas in simple language. Complex language may be great for academia, but it’s not suitable for the typical data practitioner who just needs to understand the concept and apply it in real life! <img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*1JMrolamTI9ocC_QnZSfpg.png" style="height:342px; width:700px" /> <h1>1. Let’s start with a practical analogy</h1> <blockquote> Databricks’ pricing model is like paying for your electricity bill. You pay for the amount of energy that you consume. </blockquote> This is a practical analogy I use to explain how Databricks’ consumption-based pricing model works in layman’s terms. When we use electricity for lighting, heating, and for operating our appliances, we consume energy that gets measured by a unit of measurement called the kilowatt-hour (kWh). In a similar vein, when we use Databricks to run our ETL pipelines or train ML models, we consume computation power that gets measured by a Databricks Unit (or DBU for short). <a href="https://medium.com/@mendelsohn.chan/in-plain-english-how-does-databricks-pricing-work-c84adbc2d3e6">Website</a>