: Instances are billed in one-second increments with a 10-minute minimum charge whenever an instance is created, modified, or deleted.
Unlike some other databases, DocumentDB charges for the number of I/O requests your application makes to the storage layer. documentdb pricing
This is the #1 question I see on Reddit and Stack Overflow. : Instances are billed in one-second increments with
| Feature | Manual (Fixed) | Autoscale | | --- | --- | --- | | | Always max | Scales from 10% to 100% of max | | Cost during low traffic | Full price | As low as 10% of full price | | Cost during spikes | Full price | Full price (but you don’t throttle) | | Best use case | 24/7 production | Variable workloads, bursty apps | | Feature | Manual (Fixed) | Autoscale |
The original DocumentDB was pricey and rigid. Today’s Cosmos DB gives you fine-grained control—but that control comes with complexity.
Furthermore, developers must utilize and TTL (Time to Live) indexes judiciously. While Change Streams are essential for event-driven architectures, they generate additional I/O operations that are billable. Similarly, TTL indexes allow for the automatic deletion of expired data, which is a crucial mechanism for controlling storage volume and, by extension, storage costs.