Ephemeral instances

An ephemeral instance is a short-lived server for testing and experiments. You pay by the minute from prepaid credit, and it cleans itself up.

What they are

Ephemeral instances run entirely in memory. There is no disk, so when an instance stops, restarts, or is destroyed, everything on it is erased. That is how it is designed to work.

Cost

• 15p per hour, charged by the minute.
• Paid from prepaid credit. Top up on the Billing page (minimum £10, by card).
• No monthly invoice for ephemeral usage.
• Credit never expires. Unused credit is refunded on request.

Limits

• 24-hour maximum. Every instance is destroyed 24 hours after launch. We email you an hour before. Adding credit does not extend it.
• Zero balance. If your credit runs out, running instances are destroyed. The balance never goes negative, and we warn you before it happens.
• Maintenance. Planned platform maintenance destroys running ephemeral instances. We announce maintenance in advance on the status page.
• Your account has an ephemeral instance limit, shown on the Resource limits page.

Good uses

• Trying a tool or an operating system without leaving anything behind
• Running a test suite or a build
• Checking a change on a clean machine

For anything that has to survive, launch a regular server instead. See Understanding billing for the difference.