Databricks Free Edition Help topics

Cluster Creation Failed

nrajkumarf3 — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 20:19:03 GMT

Hi Everyone,

I am encountering an issue with Databricks cluster creation and would appreciate your support in resolving it.

During cluster launch, the creation fails with the following network health check error:

Error Details:

- Error Code: X_NHC_CONTROL_PLANE_UNREACHABLE
- Message: Instance failed network health check before bootstrapping with fatal error: X_NHC_CONTROL_PLANE_UNREACHABLE
- Failed Components:
1. centralindia.azuredatabricks.net (Outcome: unreachable, curl: (28) Connection timed out after 10001 milliseconds)
2. www.databricks.com (Outcome: unreachable, curl: (28) Failed to connect to www.databricks.com port 443: Connection timed out)

Could you please assist in checking the network connectivity and control plane reachability for this workspace to resolve this issue?

Please let me know if you need any additional logs or details from my end.

Databricks Free Edition – AI Playground Empty and system.ai Schema Does Not Exist

shiv5 — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 16:18:06 GMT

Hello Databricks Team,

I recently created a new Databricks Free Edition account using my Google account and also completed LinkedIn identity verification.

I am learning Generative AI and prompt engineering, but I cannot access any foundation models in AI Playground.

Workspace details:

Edition: Databricks Free Edition
Cloud: AWS
Region: us-east-2
Account: Newly created (November 3, 2026)
LinkedIn verification: Completed

Issues observed:

AI Playground does not display any available models. It only shows options to deploy foundation models, create external models, or use Marketplace models.
In Unity Catalog, the system.ai schema is missing.
When trying to access the Llama 3.2 3B Instruct model through Marketplace, I receive: Schema 'system.ai' does not exist.
When opening GPT OSS 120B from AI Gateway, I receive: Endpoint 'databricks-gpt-oss-120b' is no longer available. Please use Unity Gateway.
The Serving endpoints page shows no endpoints.

Could you please confirm:

Are system-provided Foundation Model APIs supported in Databricks Free Edition?
Why is system.ai unavailable in my newly created workspace?
Does my workspace require additional provisioning, permissions, or feature enablement?
What are the exact steps to access a foundation model in AI Playground without upgrading to a paid account?

I have attached screenshots of the errors.

Thank you for your assistance.

Subject: Databricks Free Edition – Workspaces Prefetch error 500 after successful OTP authentication

saranya1234 — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 09:43:13 GMT

Databricks Free Edition login issue - Workspaces Prefetch error 500

Hello Databricks Team,

I am unable to access my Databricks Free Edition workspace.

My workspace was working properly last week. Today, after entering my Microsoft email and completing OTP verification, I receive this error:

Workspaces Prefetch error: 500

My workspace hostname is:
dbc-1f5f20da-0aa7.cloud.databricks.com

My organization ID is:
7474659238871815

I have tried the following troubleshooting steps:

Microsoft login with OTP.
Email login with OTP.
Chrome Incognito mode.
Clearing browser cache and cookies.
Opening my workspace URL directly.
Testing the workspace using Windows PowerShell.

The login page responds successfully, but after OTP authentication, I receive the same error.

Could you please investigate this issue and help restore access to my existing workspace?

I would prefer to recover my existing workspace rather than create a new account because I have previous learning projects stored there.

Thank you.

Free Edition workspace errors: "Failed to load folder" (GetFilebrowserHeaderFolder unavailable)

judeantoony — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 08:47:41 GMT

Hi everyone,

I'm using Databricks Free Edition for a data engineering learning project. After a break of about 2 days, my workspace shows errors:

1. On opening the workspace: "Workspaces Prefetch error: 500"
2. After the page loaded: "Failed to load folder. The service at /graphql/GetFilebrowserHeaderFolder is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later."
TraceId: 00-d881bdc24bbb3449187f548e0ef5982c-7af9c8b2d2d3ae97-00

What I have tried:
- Hard refresh (Ctrl + Shift + R)
- Incognito window
- Different browser
- Clearing cookies and cache for the Databricks site

Workspace URL: https://dbc-9ddc46a1-1851.cloud.databricks.com/?o=7474646620348932
Edition: Free Edition (not Community Edition)
First seen: 03/11/2026 14:15PM IST

Has anyone else seen these errors recently, and is there a known outage or a fix? Thanks in advance.

Free Edition workspace not loading: "Workspaces Prefetch error: 500"

judeantoony — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 08:35:40 GMT

Hello Databricks Free Edition Support Team,

I am unable to use my Databricks Free Edition workspace. When I open it after login, the page shows the error "Workspaces Prefetch error: 500".

Details:
- Workspace URL: https://dbc-9ddc46a1-1851.cloud.databricks.com/?autoLogin=true&account_id=c343d6d0-d0c2-4bba-aa67-cf6f8f23508d&o=7474646620348932
- Account email: info.jude.antony@gmail.com
- Edition: Free Edition (the replacement for Community Edition)
- When it started: I came back to the workspace after about 2 days away, and the error has been there since then. Date and time first seen: 03/11/2026 14:00 IST
- What I see: [only the error page / the error appears after I log in]

What I have already tried:
1. Hard refresh (Ctrl + Shift + R) several times
2. Opening the workspace in an incognito window
3. Trying a different browser
4. Clearing cookies and cache for the Databricks site and logging in again

I am using this workspace for a learning project, so I would like to recover access to my notebooks, tables and dashboard.

Could you please check my workspace and let me know how to fix this?

Databricks Free Edition – Workspaces Prefetch Error 500 After Gmail Verification

Sam92 — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 08:26:51 GMT

Hi everyone,

I have been using Databricks Free Edition regularly for learning and practising Data Engineering. However, since today, I am unable to access my workspace.

I can log in successfully using my Gmail account and complete the email verification process. But immediately after verification, the workspace page fails to load and displays a server error with code 500."Workspaces Prefetch error: 500"

I also tried opening my existing workspace directly in a new browser tab, but I am facing the same issue.

I have already tried the following:

Logging in through Chrome Incognito mode.
Signing in again using my Gmail account.
Completing the email verification process again.
Opening my existing workspace URL directly.

Unfortunately, none of these steps worked.

I have created several notebooks, tables and data engineering projects in this workspace, so I am concerned about losing access to my existing work.

Has anyone faced a similar issue with Databricks Free Edition? Is this a temporary issue, and is there a way to restore access to the existing workspace?

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Databricks Free Edition – HTTP 400 "Unable to determine workspace context" (browser and CLI)

luisconcha — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 23:00:36 GMT

Hi everyone!

I'm having trouble accessing my Databricks Free Edition workspace on AWS, and I'm hoping someone here might have experienced something similar

The workspace was working normally on October 29, 2026, until approximately 20:45 UTC. I had successfully authenticated with the Databricks CLI, created and verified a secret, and accessed notebooks through the browser.

Shortly afterward, the workspace became inaccessible, without any configuration changes on my side.

Browser errors

Opening a notebook displays: "Workspaces Prefetch error: 400"

Accessing the workspace directly redirects to `/login.html` and displays: "We couldn't resolve this URL"

I've tried incognito mode and another browser, with the same result.

Databricks CLI error

Running `databricks current-user me --profile laccdatabricksfree` returns:

Error: error getting token: token refresh: fetching OAuth endpoints: failed to get OAuth endpoints: http 400: { "error_description": "Invalid request: Unable to determine workspace context for dbc-58ed4126-8b5c.cloud.databricks.com", "error": "invalid_request" }

The `databricks auth describe --profile laccdatabricksfree` command also fails, although both commands worked earlier.

Workspace details

- Edition: Free Edition (AWS)
- Host: `dbc-58ed4126-8b5c.cloud.databricks.com`
- Authentication: Google
- VPN/proxy: None

Similar issue with a previous account

Interestingly, my previous Free Edition workspace also became inaccessible with the message "We couldn't resolve this URL".

That account additionally experienced unexpected authentication redirects through `accounts.azuredatabricks.net` and `login.microsoftonline.com`, eventually resulting in a login error.

I'm not sure whether the two issues are related, but I thought this might be worth mentioning.

Any suggestions?

I'm using Databricks Free Edition for a personal Data Engineering learning project, and I'd really like to recover access rather than create another account.

Has anyone experienced this workspace resolution error? Could it be related to workspace provisioning or authentication? Is there a way to check whether the workspace is still active?

I'd appreciate any suggestions or guidance. I'm happy to provide screenshots or additional diagnostics if useful.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Increase Unity Catalog tables-per-schema quota

windstone — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 06:15:15 GMT

My workspace has a UC resource quota of 100 tables per schema. I need this increased to 250. The schema ( Lakehouse Federation foreign catalog connected to PostgreSQL) contains 214 tables, but only 120 can be registered. The default limit should be 10,000 per the documentation. Please increase the quota so all 214 foreign tables can be registered.

Not able to access my old Databricks account

mohitsahu2014 — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 14:07:28 GMT

Hi Team,

I am still not able to access my Databricks page, when I am trying to do the login, I am getting this "You currently do not have access to Help Center".

Possible bug in Lakeflow Connect SQL Server ingestion with GUID primary keys – Missing records

volodymyr_b — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:43:43 GMT

Hi everyone,

We've encountered a strange issue with Databricks Lakeflow Connect query-based ingestion from SQL Server, and I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar.

We have a SQL Server table with 1,448 records and a uniqueidentifier primary key. When performing a full refresh, Databricks ingests only 364 records, but the pipeline completes successfully without any errors.

After digging into the cluster logs, I suspect the problem is related to how Databricks handles GUID ordering during snapshot partitioning.

The connector correctly identifies 1,448 distinct IDs:

-- logs
getSnapshotSplitsByNonNumericKey:
splitCount=1, totalDistinct=1448

However, the generated query applies the following filter:

-- logs
Pushed Filters: Id IS NOT NULL, (RPAD(Id, 36, ' ')) <= '38C5A9C6-D111-4182-8A7F-FFE14F608876'

The snapshot then completes with:

-- logs
numInputRows: 364
dropped: 0

What I think is happening

SQL Server compares uniqueidentifier values differently from their string representations.

My theory is that Databricks:

Retrieves the GUIDs using SQL Server's native GUID ordering.
Determines the upper boundary for the snapshot partition.
Applies that boundary using a string comparison (RPAD(Id, 36, ' ') <= ...).
Accidentally excludes records because string ordering and native GUID ordering are different.

For example, consider these two GUIDs:

38DE50FE-2AC8-46E8-91AB-EAB0A9E944B0
38C5A9C6-D111-4182-8A7F-FFE14F608876

You can reproduce the difference directly in SQL Server. Try this query:

DECLARE @guid_a uniqueidentifier = '38DE50FE-2AC8-46E8-91AB-EAB0A9E944B0';
DECLARE @guid_b uniqueidentifier = '38C5A9C6-D111-4182-8A7F-FFE14F608876';

SELECT CASE WHEN @guid_a < @guid_b THEN 'TRUE' ELSE 'FALSE' END, 'GUID'
UNION
SELECT CASE WHEN CONVERT(char(36), @guid_a) < CONVERT(char(36), @guid_b) THEN 'TRUE' ELSE 'FALSE' END, 'STR';

The result is:

TRUE     GUID
FALSE    STR

So the same two GUIDs produce opposite comparison results depending on whether they are compared as native uniqueidentifier values or strings.

My questions

Has anyone encountered this issue with Lakeflow Connect query-based ingestion?
Is there a way to override the automatically selected snapshot partitioning column in the pipeline configuration?
Are there any known workarounds that don't require modifying the source SQL Server tables?

What concerns me most is that the pipeline reports a successful full refresh despite missing a significant number of records. This could easily go unnoticed and lead to silently incomplete datasets.

Any insights would be appreciated. Thanks!

My data saved in the account lost

Krishinas — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 15:56:27 GMT

Hi, I was using databricks free edition and was having few learning data saved and running all off sudden, asked me to sign up again and i lost my data how to restore

Jobs suddenly stopped running with no errors

Aminsn — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 10:06:50 GMT

I have had a few jobs scheduled to run daily since last year. There were no problems for the first 10 months, but on 31 August 2026, the jobs suddenly stopped running, with no errors or messages indicating the cause.

I rescheduled the jobs, and they started working again. However, on 20 September, they stopped running once more, again with no warnings, messages, or errors.

I am wondering what is happening. This is very unreliable, and the fact that it occurs without any information whatsoever about the cause makes the situation unacceptable.

Can someone shed some light on this issue?

Accidentally removed the only workspace admin – Free Edition

RodrigoSilva — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 15:07:41 GMT

Hello Databricks Team,

I accidentally removed my own user account from the admins group in my Databricks Free Edition workspace.

I was the only administrator, and I can no longer access the Identity and Access settings.

My account still has access to the workspace, but it only belongs to the users and users-clone groups.

Is there any supported way to restore my administrator privileges without deleting the workspace?

My databricks URL: https://dbc-686a8fac-6dc1.cloud.databricks.com/

Thank you!

Unable to Start Serverless Compute in Databricks Free Edition

HariSankar — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 04:51:48 GMT

Hello everyone,

I am using Databricks Free Edition. I had not used my account for quite some time, and I recently logged in to start working again.

When I try to start Serverless Compute, I get the following error:
Cannot start serverless compute

Has anyone faced this issue recently? Is there any fix or workaround?

Could this be related to my account being inactive for a long time or a server-side problem?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

🚀 Quest 5 Submission: Intelligent RAG Knowledge-Base & Note-Taking Workspace

User_sky — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 18:17:24 GMT

Hi everyone! 👋

I am thrilled to share my final submission for Databricks AppKit Quest 5! I took the initial starter template and evolved it into a full-fledged, serverless Intelligent Knowledge-Base powered by Databricks Apps, Lakebase, and Foundation Model Serving.

Here is my project: 🔗 Live Deployed App: https://my-databricks-app-7474654586328503.aws.databricksapps.com/lakebase 🎥 YouTube Demo Video: https://youtu.be/n8nmNVhKEdg?si=leKi5vBQKmeYzBzJ

🌟 Going the Extra Mile (Training Voucher Eligibility)

To qualify for the Databricks training vouchers, I wanted to really push the boundaries of what this app could do. I implemented five significant custom features beyond the basic requirements:

Dual-Pane Markdown Engine: A fully functional Markdown editor with a live HTML preview tab to format notes professionally.
Focus Time Tracker: An integrated session stopwatch that tracks your active study/work time on a specific note and persists it directly to Lakebase PostgreSQL.
Bidirectional Note Linking: A cross-referencing system that allows users to link related notes together, creating a navigable knowledge graph.
Tokenized RAG Assistant: An AI agent that parses natural language questions (dropping stop words), searches Lakebase in real-time, summarizes insights, and provides clickable source citations.
Advanced Tagging & Priority: Visual priority badges and a dynamic tagging system for better organization.

🤖 Agents, Prompts & How I Built It

The Agent I Used: I used Gemini as my primary coding assistant and thought partner throughout this quest to iteratively build, debug, and deploy the application.

My Prompting Strategy: Instead of asking for everything at once, I used an Iterative Specification Prompting approach:

Template Injection: I fed the agent the DevHub RAG_TEMPLATE.md and told it: "Base the AI Assistant RAG on this template, and update my PLAN.md to reflect this new architecture."
Modular Planning: I prompted the agent to break the build into three distinct plans: 01-database-and-schema.md, 02-rag-assistant-service.md, and 03-frontend-ux.md.
Targeted Debugging Prompts: When I hit roadblocks, I used specific diagnostic prompts like: "My app fails to deploy with a '42501: must be owner of schema app' error in the SQL Editor. How do I fix the Service Principal permissions?" and "The RAG agent is doing an exact substring match and failing on natural language. Write a script to patch the backend SQL query to tokenize keywords instead."

How I Achieved the Tasks:

Schema Evolution: I first expanded the basic Lakebase schema to include tables for notes, tags, note_tags, and note_links with cascading deletes.
Frontend UI/UX: I completely redesigned the React frontend, adding the Markdown toggle (marked.parse), the interactive timer, and a dedicated RAG drawer.
Overcoming RAG Limitations: The biggest challenge was making the RAG agent understand conversational questions. I patched the backend to filter out stop-words (like "what", "is", "about") and dynamically build a parameterized ILIKE SQL query for the remaining tokens.
Deployment: After clearing up the local vs. Service Principal ownership conflicts in the Databricks SQL Editor by dropping the legacy tables, I successfully pushed everything to production using databricks apps deploy.

A huge thank you to the Databricks and AngelHack teams for putting together this incredible AppQuest. It was a fantastic hands-on experience with Lakehouse architecture!

#Databricks #DatabricksAppKit #GenerativeAI #Lakehouse #RAG #Serverless

Databricks Quest 4-(Deploy Your First Databricks App) success story

User_sky — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 14:30:28 GMT

🚀 Deployed Databricks AppKit + Lakebase: 2 Tricky Bugs & How I Solved Them!

Just deployed my first full-stack Databricks App using the AppKit Lakebase (PostgreSQL) template on serverless compute!

Using Gemini as an AI debugging agent via raw CLI logs in WSL, I diagnosed and resolved two critical roadblocks:

Bug 1: Missing DABs Variables (postgres_project)
- Fix: Added postgres_project, postgres_branch, and postgres_database directly under the variables: block in databricks.yml to unblock databricks apps deploy.
Bug 2: "Failed to Fetch Todos" (Silent Permission Denied 42501)
- Root Cause: Testing locally (npm run dev) first meant my personal user owned the app schema. The deployed app runs under a Service Principal, which was denied write access.
- Fix: Dropped the schema via DROP SCHEMA IF EXISTS app CASCADE; in the SQL Editor and redeployed. The Service Principal recreated the schema and took proper ownership!

💡 Pro-tip: When building with Lakebase, deploy first, test locally second so your App's Service Principal owns the schema from day one!

Databricks Account locked Issue

vikramraj — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 11:08:10 GMT

Hi Team

I am writing to raise a concern regarding continued difficulty accessing a Databricks free trial account using my company email address. This issue has persisted for an extended period and I would appreciate your assistance in resolving it. It would be really appreciable if anyone guide on this.

Details of the issue:

Company Email ID used for signup: [raj.sh@myCompanyName.com]
Issue duration: I have faced the same error for the past three weeks a screenshot is attached.
Partner: Even though we are partner with databricks
Error message (if any): [ "Limit Reached" I am getting: "You've reached today's limit and you've raised limit the maximum number of times this year . Your limit resets tomorrow" ]

I hope anyone of you considers this issue as we are working on a small POC to present a demo to internal clients. But we are completely blocked. Let me know if there is any way to unlock the account and use it , I am attaching a screenshot for refrence.

I await your response. Thank you for your understanding.

MetaData Framework for Multi-Level Silver Layer PK/FK Creation

SantiNath_Dey — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 14:02:56 GMT

Hi Team,
Our source data originates from MongoDB as hierarchical JSON and is ingested into our Silver layer, where it is already normalized into tabular structures. However, primary and foreign key constraints are not enforced during ingestion. We must establish and maintain PK/FK relational integrity post-loading through an automated post-processing step.The Challenge:The source system features a deep, multi-level parent-child tree hierarchy (e.g., emp -> emp_addr -> emp_addr_ofc). We require a metadata-driven modeling framework and script execution strategy to dynamically generate surrogate keys, resolve parent-child references top-down, and enforce relational integrity across all levels.

Please find below screen shot for your reference.

Recommendation for Data Reconciliation Frameworks (Legacy vs. Migrated Validation)

SantiNath_Dey — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 18:49:16 GMT

Hi Team,

We need to perform a data quality check between an legacy table and a newly migrated table generated by refactored code. Specifically, we want to validate:

Schema & Volumetrics: Total row counts, column counts, and column data type distributions (e.g., integer vs. string counts).

Aggregations & Hashes: Column-level aggregates (sum and average for numeric/decimal types) and overall table-level MD5 hashes.

Row-Level Integrity: Primary key-based row-level MD5 hash comparisons to detect individual discrepancies.

Although we currently use custom Python/PySpark scripts, is there an existing data reconciliation framework that can automate these checks and generate detailed mismatch reports for further analysis?

Demo: REQUIRED - Data Setup and Exploration

YuryRu — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 15:01:04 GMT

Hi!

I’m new to Databricks.
I’m taking the AI/BI for Data Analysts course, and I’d like to know how I can access the notebook “Demo: REQUIRED - Data Setup and Exploration.”