PTU deployments guarantee dedicated throughput and low latency, but they also require paying for reserved capacity at all times. In non-production environments—such as dev, test, QA, or experimentation—usage patterns are typically sporadic and unpredictable. Deploying PTUs in these environments leads to consistent baseline spend without corresponding value. On-demand deployments scale usage cost with actual consumption, making them more cost-efficient for variable workloads.
Provisioned Throughput Units are billed at a fixed hourly rate regardless of utilization. They are optimized for steady, high-throughput workloads. Non-production environments with low or inconsistent usage pay for committed capacity they rarely consume, making PTUs significantly more expensive than the on-demand consumption model.
