AWS › Amazon DynamoDB

What is the difference between DynamoDB's on demand and provisioned capacity modes?

Intermediate

Answer

On demand capacity mode automatically scales to handle your application's traffic without any manual capacity planning, charging you based on the actual read and write requests made, while provisioned capacity mode requires you to specify a fixed number of read and write capacity units ahead of time, which can be more cost effective for predictable, steady workloads but requires careful planning to avoid throttling.

aws dynamodb update-table --table-name Orders --billing-mode PROVISIONED --provisioned-throughput ReadCapacityUnits=5,WriteCapacityUnits=5

Real-world example A startup with unpredictable traffic patterns chooses on demand capacity mode to avoid throttling during unexpected spikes, while a mature application with steady, well understood traffic switches to provisioned capacity to reduce overall cost.

Common follow-ups: What happens if a provisioned capacity table receives more traffic than expected?;Can you switch between on demand and provisioned modes later?

AWS Cost Management & Billing;Auto Scaling Groups