Photon is frequently enabled by default across Databricks workspaces, including for development, testing, and low-concurrency workloads. In these non-production contexts, job runtimes are typically shorter, SLAs are relaxed or nonexistent, and performance gains offer little business value.
Enabling Photon in these environments can inflate DBU costs substantially without meaningful runtime improvements. By not differentiating cluster configurations between production and non-production, organizations may pay a premium for workloads that could run just as efficiently on standard compute.
Cluster policies can be used to restrict Photon usage to explicitly tagged production workloads, helping enforce cost-conscious defaults and reduce unnecessary spend.
Photon-enabled compute clusters incur a higher Databricks Unit (DBU) rate compared to standard compute. While the performance boost can be significant for complex workloads, the DBU multiplier — which can reach approximately 2.9x — may not be justified in development, staging, or ad-hoc environments where performance is less critical. This results in unnecessary cost when Photon is enabled for non-production workloads that don't benefit from its capabilities.
