Spot instances can reduce the virtual-machine portion of Databricks classic compute cost. The cloud provider can reclaim them, so interrupted workers may delay or retry a job.
Spot pricing applies to the infrastructure charge, not the Databricks DBU charge. The total saving depends on the provider's spot price, the DBU rate, workload duration, and interruption behavior.
Spot instances fit workloads that tolerate worker replacement, such as retryable batch jobs. Interactive sessions and latency-sensitive workloads may require on-demand workers. Compare completed work, retries, runtime, DBUs, and infrastructure cost rather than the instance price alone.