Interactive clusters are often left running between periods of active use. To mitigate idle charges, Databricks provides an “autotermination” setting that shuts down clusters after a period of inactivity. However, if the termination period is set too high, or if policies do not enforce reasonable thresholds, idle clusters can persist for long durations without performing any work—resulting in wasted compute spend. Lowering the termination window reduces exposure to idle time while preserving user flexibility.
Databricks compute is billed via:
Interactive clusters continue accruing DBU and VM costs while running, including during idle periods. The autotermination setting determines how long idle clusters persist before being shut down automatically. Longer termination windows result in more idle time and unnecessary cost.
