Serverless Compute
You are charged whenever a container is running. This includes:- Running any code you’ve defined in an
on_startfunction - Running your application code
- Any
keep_warm_secondsyou’ve set
Reserved Machines and Your Own Hardware
Reserved machines are billed until they expire or you release them, even when apps are idle. Your own hardware has a Beam management charge. Hosted model rates appear in the endpoint catalog.Credits
Prepaid workspaces need credits to build and deploy. Add them in Settings → Credits.What About Storage?
Storage volumes are not billed as compute — you aren’t charged for keeping data in a volume while your containers are stopped.- Every plan includes unlimited storage volumes.
- Storage is included free up to 1 TB. Beyond that, it costs $0.021 per GB per month.
- Snapshots are included.
Default Container Spin-down Times
After handling a request, Beam keeps containers running (“warm”) for a certain amount of time in order to quickly handle future requests. By default, these are the container “keep warm” times for each deployment type:
Always-on settings keep containers running. Sandboxes use a lifetime instead of an idle timer; the Python default is 600 seconds.
Real-World Example
You’ve deployed a REST API. You’ve added two Python Packages in yourImage(), which are loaded when your app first starts.
You’ve also added a keep_warm_seconds=300, which will keep the container alive for 300 seconds (5 minutes) after each request.
app.py
- 1s to boot your application and run your
on_startfunction. - 100ms to run your task.
- 300s to keep the container alive, based on the
keep_warm_secondsargument.