App platform pricing for multiple instance creation/deletion

Hello everyone!

I’m currently calculating the cost of using the App Platform for our review environments. I’m not sure how the pricing model will work for these kind of environments. These environments are spawn on the fly every time a new MR is ready to be reviewed. Once the MR is merged the review environment would be deleted.

Let’s take example of an app which contains:

• A dynamic frontend (NextJS or whatnot)
• One backend API
• A development database

Based on the requirements above we’ll probably create 2 basic instances and one database development add-on to host one of this app.

Let’s say there are 2 developers working on that app and each one opens 2 MR per day. Each MR review env will be up for 45min. We’ll consider these developers work 20 days per month.

How will the pricing model work in that case? I see two scenarios:

1. DO will sum up the time each of these instances were up and bill according to that total which would look something like that: 2 developers * 2 MR/day * 45min each MR = 180min uptime per day per instance. 180min * 20days = 3600min uptime per month per instance 2 basic instances * ($5 / 672 hours) * (3600min / 60) = ~$0.89 for 2 basic instances up for 60h each during the month. 1 dev database * ($7 / 672 hours) * (3600min / 60) = $0.625 for 1 dev database up for 60h during the month. The total would sum up to $1.5 for a whole month of that app review env.

2. Each of the review env spawn by the developer MRs exist in parallel. It’s not only one env that will be up consistently for the whole time of their usage. We will actually spawn 4 sets of these 3 instances every day. Since each instance is independent and is up only 45min their uptime will be rounded up to 1h. The calculation would look like this: 2 developers * 2 MR/day * 1h each MR = 4h uptime per day per instance. 4h * 20 days = 80h uptime per month per instance 2 basic instances * ($5 / 672 hours) * 80h = ~$1.19 1 dev database * ($7 / 672h) * 80h = $0.83 The total would sum up to $2.02 for a whole month of that app review env.

Notes: Regarding the 672h, I found the information here: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/pricing-for-app-platform?answer=68875.

Thank you for your help.