Monitor usage using cluster and pool tags
To monitor cost and accurately attribute Databricks usage to your organization’s business units and teams (for chargebacks, for example), you can tag clusters and pools. These tags propagate both to detailed DBU usage reports and to AWS EC2 and AWS EBS instances for cost analysis.
Tagged objects and resources
You can add custom tags for the following objects managed by Databricks:
Object |
Tagging interface (UI) |
Tagging interface (API) |
---|---|---|
Pool |
Pool UI in the Databricks workspace |
|
Cluster |
Cluster UI in the Databricks workspace |
Warning
Do not assign a custom tag with the key Name
to a cluster. Every cluster has a tag Name
whose value is set by Databricks. If you change the value associated with the key Name
, the cluster can no longer be tracked by Databricks. As a consequence, the cluster might not be terminated after becoming idle and will continue to incur usage costs.
Databricks adds the following default tags to all pools and clusters:
Pool tag key name |
Value |
---|---|
|
Constant “Databricks” |
|
Databricks internal identifier of the user who created the pool |
|
Databricks internal identifier of the pool |
Cluster tag key name |
Value |
---|---|
|
Constant “Databricks” |
|
Databricks internal identifier of the cluster |
|
Name of the cluster |
|
Username (email address) of the user who created the cluster |
On job clusters, Databricks also applies the following default tags:
Cluster tag key name |
Value |
---|---|
|
Job name |
|
Job ID |
On resources used by Databricks SQL, Databricks also applies the following default tag:
Cluster tag key name |
Value |
---|---|
|
Databricks internal identifier of the SQL warehouse |
Tag propagation
Tags are propagated to AWS EC2 instances differently depending on whether or not a cluster was created from a pool.

If a cluster is created from a pool, its EC2 instances inherit only the custom and default pool tags, not the cluster tags. Therefore if you want to create clusters from a pool, make sure to assign all of the custom cluster tags you need to the pool.
If a cluster is not created from a pool, its tags propagate as expected to EC2 instances.
Cluster and pool tags both propagate to DBU usage reports, whether or not the cluster was created from a pool.
If there is a tag name conflict, Databricks default tags take precedence over custom tags and pool tags take precedence over cluster tags.
Limitations
Tag keys and values can contain only characters from the ISO 8859-1 (latin1) set. Tags containing other characters are ignored.
If you change tag keys names or values, these changes apply only after cluster restart or pool expansion.
If the cluster’s custom tags conflict with a pool’s custom tags, the cluster can’t be created.