Serverless Micro Apps
This feature is in Beta. To use it, a workspace admin must turn on Governed agentic app-building from the Previews page. See Manage Databricks previews.
A Serverless Micro App is a Databricks app that runs on a small, isolated, on-demand runtime. Each app scales down to zero when it's idle and scales back up when requested by a user. Each app runs at a fixed size of 1 vCPU and 1 GB of memory, and scales down after a default 30 minutes of idle time.
Serverless Micro Apps are part of a set of new Databricks Apps capabilities. For the bigger picture, see Governed agentic app building.
How scale up / scale down works
Each Serverless Micro App runs on its own lightweight, isolated runtime that Databricks manages for you:
- When the app is idle for the configured idle time, it scales down to zero and stops consuming compute.
- When a user next opens the app, it scales back up to one. The first request after the app has scaled to zero experiences a short cold start while the runtime starts; subsequent requests are faster.
You don't provision or manage servers for a Serverless Micro App. You build and deploy it with Genie App Builder inside an App Spaces, and Databricks handles starting and stopping it.
Properties of Serverless Micro Apps
During Beta, Serverless Micro Apps run with a fixed configuration:
Property | Value |
|---|---|
Compute size | 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM |
Configurable size | No. A single fixed size is available |
Scaling range | Scales between 0 and 1 instance |
Horizontal scaling | Not supported |
Default idle time before scale-down | 30 minutes |
State is not preserved when an app scales down and back up. When an app scales to zero, any in-memory or local-disk state is lost. Persist anything that must survive in a Lakebase table, a Unity Catalog volume, or another external store. See App state.
Two ways to host apps
Serverless Micro Apps are a different hosting model from standard, dedicated-instance apps. Databricks Apps offers two hosting models: dedicated instances that scale horizontally (see Horizontal scaling for Databricks apps), and Serverless Micro Apps that scale to zero and back up to one. A single app uses one model or the other; it can't use both.
Which to use
Use a Serverless Micro App for smaller departmental or personal apps that are used intermittently and where an occasional cold start is acceptable.
Use a dedicated-instance app when you need an app that is always on and responds without a cold start, needs to scale horizontally to handle high or concurrent traffic, or requires more consistent uptime.
Limitations
The following are current limitations of Serverless Micro Apps:
- A Serverless Micro App exists only inside an App Space.
- Serverless Micro Apps are built and deployed only through Genie App Builder; you can't migrate an existing app to a Serverless Micro App.
For the requirements to use these capabilities, see Requirements.
Pricing
During Beta, there is no charge for Serverless Micro Apps. However, cost and pricing for features in Beta are subject to change. For combined pricing across App Spaces, Genie App Builder, and Serverless Micro Apps, see Pricing.