topic Does using SDK API calls cost money? in Administration & Architecture

Does using SDK API calls cost money?

Skully — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 16:02:50 GMT

When using the Databricks SDK to retrieve metadata—such as catalogs, schemas, or tables—through its built-in API endpoints, does this incur any cost similar to running SQL queries?

Specifically, executing SQL queries via the API spins up a compute cluster (such as a SQL warehouse), which results in usage-based charges. The question is whether accessing metadata through the SDK's native endpoints also triggers compute resources in the same way, or if it avoids those costs entirely. How the native endpoints actually work?

Re: Does using SDK API calls cost money?

ashraf1395 — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 06:55:52 GMT

Hi there @Skully, You are right since you are just fetching the metadata information from catalog, tables etc instead of directly interacting or running any SQL queries, it doesn't cost same as creating a compute.

when we retrieve the metadata information like catalog, info , tables etc the endpoint makes API calls to the compute pane getting info from the metastore instead of create an SQL warehouse. Hence cost is different(quite low or none). You can get more info about this by looking into the unity catalog docs.