Budget for Genie after January 31, 2027, when free chat for named users of Genie One and Genie Agents ends. Each user then gets a monthly allowance and pays per DBU beyond it. SQL warehouse charges apply separately to every answer.
When you need this
- You are planning a rollout that runs past January 31, 2027.
- Applications or bots call Genie through a service principal.
- Finance asks for a monthly ceiling on Genie spend.
Evaluation criteria
What is free now
Which usage does the promotion cover?
Look forThe promotion covers LLM charges for named users of Genie One and Genie Agents, in the UI or the API, until January 31, 2027. It excludes Genie Code, compute, and service principals. Promotional usage appears under the GENIE_FREE_USAGE SKU.
What is free after
How far does the allowance go from February 1, 2027?
Look forEach user gets 150 DBUs a month, worth US$10.50 on AWS US East. One pool covers UI and API use of Genie One, Genie Agents, and Genie Code. Beyond it, usage costs US$0.070 per DBU, with no seat fees.
Service principals
Do bots and apps get free usage?
Look forService principals pay for all LLM usage. Calling Genie on behalf of each user keeps that user's allowance in play.
Compute
What does each answer cost in warehouse time?
Look forAnswers run as queries on a pro or serverless SQL warehouse at your normal rates (Serverless SQL is US$0.70 per DBU on AWS Premium, US East), outside Genie budgets. Watch each agent's warehouse as adoption grows.
Budgets
Where do you set the ceiling?
Look forCreate a budget in the account console on the Unity Gateway resource type tagged databricks-product: genie, with up to four shared thresholds and 20 per-user overrides. Blocking is approximate and alerts can lag, so system.billing.usage stays the source of truth.
Discovery first
How do you size per-user limits?
Look forRun alert-only thresholds for a 14 to 30 day discovery period, then set persona tiers from observed usage. Promotional usage does not show as billed spend, so size tiers from billed usage.
Questions to ask vendors
- Which integrations call Genie through service principals today?
- What is our monthly ceiling once the promotion ends, and who approves raising it?
- Which SQL warehouse does each agent use, and who watches its spend?
- Who reviews system.billing.usage for Genie each month?
Red flags
- Planning the rollout budget on the promotion without a line for February 2027.
- A Teams or Slack bot on a service principal with no budget.
- A Genie budget treated as the whole bill while warehouse compute grows.
- Blocking thresholds set before anyone has observed real usage.
Products in this piece
Sources
- Official documentation
- 6
- Public source
- 3
- Databricks: Genie pricing
- Databricks docs: Manage budgets and cost controls for Genie
- Databricks docs: Genie consumption guide
- Databricks docs: Genie
- Databricks docs: Create and manage a Genie Agent
- Databricks: Lakehouse (Databricks SQL) pricing
- Reddit post: estimating Genie cost per question (Jun 14, 2026)
- Reddit comment: tracking Genie budget policies after billing began (Jul 9, 2026)
- Reddit comment: attributing AI function costs to a Genie space (Mar 19, 2026)