Cut our Databricks Apps costs by 76% with two scheduled jobs (start/stop)

protmaks — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 13:05:20 GMT

Databricks Apps run 24/7 with no native scale-to-zero. ~$350/mo per app (720 hrs), but internal dashboards/admin tools only get used a few hours/day. You pay for 100%, use ~15%.

We had a test app run idle for 69 days before anyone noticed. ~$800 wasted.

Fix — two scheduled jobs hitting the Apps REST API:

Notebook wraps the start/stop endpoints (params: app_name, app_command; supports all to target every app)
Job 1 — start: 0 0 9 ? * MON-FRI *
Job 2 — stop: 0 0 18 ? * MON-FRI *

Result: 50 hrs/week vs 168 → ~76% reduction. Users don't notice; app's up 9–18.

Gotchas:

Cold start is 2–3 min — schedule ~15 min before business hours
Add failure alerts (Slack webhook) or a silent failed start = angry DMs
Schedule a weekly stop all even in app-less workspaces to kill forgotten test apps

Doesn't cover multi-timezone or true on-demand, but handles ~90% of usage on a schedule + manual start for the rest.

Full text and examples: https://medium.com/dev-genius/cut-databricks-apps-costs-by-76-automate-start-stop-nearly-scale-to-zero-3e8447425ad5

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Cut our Databricks Apps costs by 76% with two scheduled jobs (start/stop)