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APPLIES TO:
NoSQL
MongoDB
Cassandra
Gremlin
Table
Azure Cosmos DB is available in two different capacity modes: provisioned throughput and serverless. You can perform the exact same database operations in both modes, but the way you get billed for these operations is radically different.
Detailed comparison
| Criteria | Provisioned throughput | Serverless |
|---|---|---|
| Best suited for | Workloads with sustained traffic requiring predictable performance | Workloads with intermittent or unpredictable traffic and low average-to-peak traffic ratio |
| How it works | For each of your containers, you configure some amount of provisioned throughput expressed in Request Units per second (RU/s). Every second, this quantity of Request Units is available for your database operations. Provisioned throughput can be updated manually or adjusted automatically with autoscale. | You run your database operations against your containers without having to configure any previously provisioned capacity. |
| Geo-distribution | Available (unlimited number of Azure regions) | Unavailable (serverless accounts can only run in a single Azure region) |
| Performance | Less than 10-ms latency for point-reads and writes covered by SLA | Less than 10-ms latency for point-reads and less than 30 ms for writes covered by SLO |
| Billing model | Billing is done on a per-hour basis for the RU/s provisioned, regardless of how many RUs were consumed. | Billing is done on a per-hour basis for the number of RUs consumed by your database operations. |
Estimate your expected consumption
In some situations, it might be unclear whether provisioned throughput or serverless should be chosen for a given workload. To help with this decision, you can estimate your overall expected consumption, or the total number of RUs you might consume over a month.